We've been chatting with 2K Marin ahead of BioShock 2's imminent release. With some big shoes to fill and a number of fans convinced that BioShock 2 should not have been made, we asked creative director Jordan Thomas how the studio is preparing for fan backlash, and how it regards the daunting task of following the original BioShock.
"Well, since the early days, I’ve been candid with the team about the fact that no matter what we finally produced, we had to be comfy with the idea that a lot of people would disagree with our core creative choices -- internally and externally," he explains. "For a lot of people, the idea of a sequel to BioShock will always be an abstract ideal, against which any physical experience (with realistic limits) must pale. It’s the nature of fan enthusiasm, I think, to hold a special place in our hearts for things that are novel, and originality certainly drove the first game’s success.
"Candidly, I think BioShock 2 will foster much more dissent than the first by its very nature -- we’re going to see some critics and fans who adore the particular ratio of nostalgia to novelty that we happened to choose, and that’s grand. But there will be others who wanted Something Else ™ so badly that they’ll crack open the backyard shed, gaze longingly at their favorite torches and pitchforks, and march on Novato. We had to make our peace with that over two years ago, scary as it is.
"Now that isn’t to say our game is perfect and we’re these misunderstood creative martyrs -- even if we weren’t being compared against that First Love effect, we’d have strengths and weaknesses like anybody."
So, 2K Marin was ready for the criticism two years ago, but now that we're a few days ahead of release and much of the backlash has been felt already, what does 2K Marin say to those people who argue against the need for a BioShock sequel? Hit the jump for more.
"Generally speaking, the argument that a sequel to X is doomed can only settled by a group of people who, themselves, were excited enough to return to that mythos that their passion is self-evident in the work itself," offers Thomas. "You can’t please everyone, but I’ve found that at the end of the day, if you take the problem of familiarity seriously -- and try to empathize with the audience -- you can offer a compelling experience in any setting.
"Personally, I found Rapture to be an extremely fertile setting for a new adventure -- along the lines of something like Silent Hill, subjectively different takes on the same town -- provided that the story had a different focus. In this case, a more intimate family struggle against the backdrop of an ideological war interested the team emotionally, and we threw our hearts into it.
"But we were honest with ourselves that our target was a meaningfully weighty new story within the world of Rapture -- a fresh perspective to follow Irrational’s epic, but not a reboot. In some ways, that choice was about respect."
Personally, I'd have just said "We're making it so shut up," but lucky for us that Jordan is a pretty talkative chap, yes? We'll have more 2K Marin comments coming all weekend, ahead of our BioShock 2 review on Monday. Keep your eye on Destructoid for yet more original content!
Contest:
9:00 AM on 02.06.2010
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I'm never going to be able to take this game seriously.
You really can't...
CURSE YOU LACK OF FUNDS!!!!!!
I mean
A: the ending of the first game was so God-awful that I'm happy they're continuing the story for that reason alone
B: there was allot of Rapture we didn't see in the first game and thus lots of potential for new levels
C: Bioshock was a great game, but it had it's flaws and like any game sequel Bioshock 2 can improve on what was started, it's not ALL about the story folks
But from what I've seen, it looks like it could really be a solid game in its own right, and one that could be worthy of the Bioshock name. I still don't see why it needs a multiplayer, but I don't have to play it. It was also developed by a different team than the main game, so I'm assuming the single player mode turned out precisely how it would have regardless. Not to mention it's not like the first Bioshock did everything perfect (the final boss), so you have to have realistic expectations.
And the Bomberman resemblance does nothing for me. A lot of video game characters look similar.
The second is that the original creative team is not involved with the game, considering the fact that the story was the byproduct of Ken Levine, the idea of adding on to his story without his involvement means that what you'll get in the squeal is simply the trappings of what made the first game interesting without any of the depth that supplied them with meaning. The Splicers aren't just a bunch of cool looking mutants with superpowers, they're Levine's comment on what he believes can happen to people if you follow the philosophy of Ayn Rand and hyper libertarians to it's conclusion. Rapture isn't a cool new setting to run around and shoot things in. Again, it's a metaphor that Levine uses to illustrate the underlying flaw in Objectivism and hyper libertarianism.
Dropping you back into that world doesn't expand on these things, it simply repeats them. Bioshock had something to say, it was Ken's story and he told it, continuing it serves no creative or artistic purpose only a commercial one.
Now do I think Bioshock 2 is going to be a bad game? No, probably not, it'll be a competent enough game, but it is an unnecessary one, and I'm sure the people who do buy it will enjoy it, but I for one will not.
Yes, because we all know that personal responsibility, the respect for one's self and individual rights can only lead to bad things. After all, look at the of the real life drug addicts. They really care for themselves. Objectivists, all of them.
Also, personal responsibility has never accomplished anything. Collectivism, which is at it's core Marxism, Socialism, and Communism, the society of dependence and servility, is the right and moral path to success and hapiness.
Rapture fails because of the logical conclusion of Objectivism and hyper libertarianism, which is that greed is good and the individual self is all that matters. Ryan sets up a society doomed to fail since it's entire ideology is at it's core, anti-social. If you want to live that life fine, but you can't do it in society. Any form of society.
Any form of the social contract requires you to supplant individual rights for collective rights. Otherwise the individually strong will take what they will, until those prayed upon band together and destroy the system that is abusing them. The situation with the destruction of the U.S economy is a picture perfect example of what happens if you follow this ideology. You have a group of people who happily destroyed the economy of a country because in doing so, they enriched themselves. It appealed to their sense of moral and social superiority, we are right because we can, and we can because we are right and whose to tell us we are not, the people whom we're exploiting? Of course not, after all if they were in the right we wouldn't be able to exploit them.
Also you might want to have a look at the countries that lead in quality of life, life expectancy, access to health care, education standards and results, access to social services, economic growth and stability, lower crime levels, lower levels of violence, oh and to trot your little canard out, lower levels of drug abuse. You'll notice something funny, all of them are what you would call socialist to one degree or another. The very concept of a society implies collectivism, the realization that shared risk, means shared reward. If you don't like it then go live in the woods, and stop using the collectively paid for roads, fire and police services, public utilities, and in ironies of ironies, the internet, created by that most socialist of organizations, the United States Military.
@Anthony and other dissenting gamers
We as gamers, sometimes often do get to caught up in the 'first love' effect of a new cool game. Plenty of gamers just enjoyed Mass Effect 2, but why does this same crap not be said about that game, or similar others? Us gamers have selective memories. If you are basing such thoughts on story and universe alone, that's not good enough, because we as gamers don't know a scratch of what gets left out of a game along its development cycle.
Now, while you moan about Levine not having his hand in B2, I bet it has his blessing (please point me in the direction of his talking against it, when he's going to get some of the money it earns, regardless). There's also the fact that a development team is not made of one person (that's right, Ken Levine did not make and concieve Bioshock all by himself, shock horror). There are others who helped create the original, some of whom have no doubt worked on B2. Achievement consistentcy upheld (we'll see).
Its natural to fear the unknown, to a degree. Sequels are such an unknown, but any nutcase who were to say 'get rid of them' and 'everything must be original' would be doing this industry and any other creative one, a big disservice. Sure not every sequel will be a gold star one, (that's why we have game reviews etc) but failure to try a create a sequel, is sometimes the biggest waste of resources and talent.
Think about that, as you read these names.
Burning Rangers
Blastcorps
Vagrant Story
Full Throttle
Grim Fandango
G-Police
Moonstone
Freedom Fighters
All these games were awesome too (perhaps you can think of some more examples), but they are also tragedies, as we never got awesome sequels to build on them, and open up their worlds to new fresh players, as well as old seasoned ones. Thus, their worlds now sit forgotten in game limbo, the destination of retrogamers and collectors alone. This is one of the industries greatest crimes, IMO.
Everyone and thing deserves a second chance to shine. To not try again, is to deny us something potentially greater. Bioshock 2 deserves its second shot (just as much as Mass Effect), after a cracking first game. Don't let your fear of the unknown, claim your optimistic light of hope.
I've never read it, but my dad did, and he tells me "Fountaine's Home for the Poor" never could have happened in Atlas Shrugged, because they never would have let in people that would need it. The whole idea is that hard working people should be less afraid of cleaning their own toilets than they are of freeloaders.
Just sayin.
2K Marin had yet to actually produce anything other than the Bioshock PS3 port, that's why fans are feeling anxious.
Oh yeah and I guess 2K coming out and saying 'we're going to whore the shit out of the bioshock license!' doesn't exactly instil expectations of a quality product.
@Mrrandy
Aliens was a good sequel and a natural progression of the story, so I really don't know where you are going with that. If you don't personally like it, that's your opinion, (but in the grand scheme of sequels) it done okay. Where the Alien series went bad was with the fourth film debacle, and cloning of Ellen Ripley. Alien 4 should have followed a new cast in a similar situation, (well it was, but might have been better minus Alien Ripley) like the comics always had done, but the rest is history.
The only thing I enjoyed about Alien Res, was the parallels between Ripley and Call, who were both rejects of the military and corporations, both kind of like the walking dead, barely human and untouched by age and time. No home or family ties, running with bounty hunters, and now the bounty is on their heads. What next for them? As a fourth film, its dragged the series to far though. Its going to take something really good, to get a fifth one done.
And the less said about those AvP abortions films, the better. These were always a bad idea, if they weren't going to follow the comics. Waste of money.
As for the upcoming Alien reboot/prequel, I think there's room to tell about the crashed ship, its dead pilot and where it came from (in a similar way I'd like to see a prequel of Bioshock, be it in film, game, animation etc). I'll look forward to watching it, as its a cool universe with a lot of questions unanswered, that deserve to be.
Mr Randy, nice that you replied, but I notice you couldn't answer any of the vital question I posed in the first post. Never mind, though.
I'm not sure why you thought I was replying to your comment, because I wasn't. In fact, I was replying to whoever said that they were worried about this game because Ken Levine wasn't involved. This is why I brought up the case of Alien and its sequel, because I think that's a good example of a sequel being successful without input from the original creator.
Really, I was agreeing with you, even though I hadn't yet read your post when I wrote my comment. To reiterate my point--and maybe I should have been more clear originally, but posting from my phone makes that difficult--was that nobody thought Alien needed a sequel, but after the movie was released the dissenters were singing a different tune, because said sequel was fantastic. (I personally think Cameron's film is leaps and bounds better than Scott's, even though they're different genres so it isn't exactly fair to compare the two. I'm not much of a fan of Fincher's or Jeunet's attempts, which is why I didn't bring them up.)
I'm sorry I confused you with my comment. I wasn't trying to debate you, and I didn't intentionally ignore the points you brought up in your comment, because, as I said, I hadn't read it (and since I agree with you anyway, there'd be no reason for me to try...)
BioShock 2.
System Shock 2.
BioShock 2.
System Shock 2.
BioShock 2.
Think about it.
Maybe?
So far, so might-be-the-first-thing-I-buy-from-Steam-when-I-get-my-PC-up-and-running.
Yeah, it's a sequel. What a revolution. It's like Hamlet 2. Actually, if it were like Hamlet 2 that would be amazing.
I would have been fine without a sequel to Bioshock. I loved it, everyone did, but it seems that I am not the only one uneasy about Bioshock 2. However, I will reserve judgment until I play it through and dab into the multiplayer.
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