Ken Levine interview
This interview first appeared in PC Gamer UK issue 233.
BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter like its predecessors, but a less lonely one. You play Booker DeWitt, who is trying to escape the flying city of Columbia with a girl named Elizabeth before a terrifying steampunk robot called Songbird catches her. The city is a spectacular airborne flotilla of districts suspended by vast balloons – a testament to America’s cultural might, and its fondness for things that are big but not terribly useful. Our last good look at the game was a spectacular 15-minute demonstration at E3.
I spoke to creative director Ken Levine about why Elizabeth is the centrepiece not just of the story, but of the technology that drives it.
The Darkness 2 demo is out now
Four arms are better than two when you’re being assaulted by a city of gangsters. The Darkness 2 demo, now available on Steam, will gradually give you use of all your arms, just as soon as you’ve made it through the intro cutscenes, and the on-rails shooter bit, and a few more cutscenes. Thankfully the demo has been put together to give us an overview of some of Jackie’s more powerful abilities, so it’s worth persisting to get to the gorier bits. The pseudo-cell shaded look is a nice homage to The Darkness’ comic book roots, too. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think. The Darkness 2 is out on February 7 in the US, and February 10 in Europe.
Bioshock Infinite to get “more demanding” 1999 mode
Remember back in 1999 when the millennium bug was threatening to destroy the world and games were a bit harder? Irrational are bringing a taste of that to Bioshock Infninite. It’s a hardcore difficulty mode with a difference. It won’t just decrease your health or increase the “enemy damage” slider, it’ll attach more meaningful consequences to your levelling choices, limit your resources, and require you to unlock combat specialisations to use weapons.
A new post on the Bioshock Infinite blog describes the new mode. “With every choice you make, there are irreversible implications,” the post says. “If your choices guide you down a path not suited to your play style, you will suffer for it.”
Darkness 2 demo dated
A trial for The Darkness 2 is heading to Steam on January 24 after a week of Xbox Live exclusivity, according to a post on The Darkness 2 site. Hopefully it’ll give us a generous chunk of time with Jackie and his demonic arm tentacles. In the first game they could throw cars about, or detach to become slithery spies capable of tearing enemies’ hearts from the shadows. It looks as though The Darkness 2 will be at least as gruesome as the original, but will wielding Jackie’s Darkness powers be quite as satisfying?
We’ll all get to find out in a couple of weeks. Hooray for demos! If you’re already certain you’ll like it, you can pre-order The Darkness 2 to get 10% off.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown screenshots get close to combat
Three more XCOM: Enemy Unknown screenshots have appeared on Game Informer, giving us a closer look at Enemy Unknown’s soldier and alien design. As with the original X-Com, soldiers will be fully customisable. Enemy Unknown’s combat engine plans to reflect all of these customisations visually with an engine that will let us zoom extremely close to the action. There’s no sign of the original’s bizarre haircuts yet, though.
First XCOM: Enemy Unknown screens and details beam down
The words “XCOM” and “strategy” together in the same sentence qualify as gentle, genocidal music to PC gamers’ ears, but throw in an “also on consoles” and the violin begins to shriek as the audience looks on in terror. So, is XCOM: Enemy Unknown in for an out-of-this-world bruising? Game Informer dropped the first details, and things actually appear to be looking up. Well, mostly.
X-COM Complete Pack super cheap on Steam and Gamersgate
XCOM: Enemy Unknown was revealed yesterday, a modern remake from Civilization developers, Firaxis. Tremendously exciting news for fans of the classic original, but what if you never played it? Steam and Gamersgate have you covered. You can get the XCOM Complete Pack today for a fraction of its original price. That means you can grab X-COm: UFO Defense, X-COM: Terror From the Deep, X-COM: Interceptor, X-COM: Enforcer and X-COM: Apocalypse for just £2.49 on GG, and £3.05 / $5.09 on Steam. Blimey. There’s just six hours left on the Steam deal. Go go go!
XCOM: Enemy Unknown – a new XCOM strategy game from the creators of Civilization
Civilization developers, Firaxis are making a brand new XCOM game. This one won’t be a shooter, it’ll be a proper strategy sequel. GameInformer break the news with a quote from Firaxis head, Steve Martin, who says that they want “to keep XCOM: Enemy Unknown true to the elements that made X-COM such a revered game while delivering an entirely new story and gameplay experience for both die-hard X-COM fans and newcomers to the franchise.”
It’ll have classic XCOM staples. A global strategic map, turn based combat and destructible environments. As the leader of the global alien defense network, you’ll have to liase with global leaders, keep the civilian population in check and upgrade XCOM’s defensive capabilities. XCOM is back!
Graham is jetting off to see it next week. If you’ve got any questions you’d like us to ask Firaxis, let us know in the comments.
Spec Ops: The Line trailer has dune traps, sandstorms, marines and madmen
Spec Ops: The Line had been lost in the sands until the appearance of last month’s trailers. Here’s another one, featuring more punching, occasional shooting and narration from a suspicious sort in a dark room with a microphone. Where do these madmen keep coming from?
The Gears of War influence is obvious. Beyond the unusual setting, it’ll be interesting to see if Spec Ops does anything new with the familiar cover-to-cover scrambling of the modern third person shooter. The treacherous dunes of an unstable desert city make Spec Ops stand out from the throng, but the early trailers are heavy with the tang of testosterone. We’ll have to wait and see if Spec Ops’ characters do anything to stretch the angry-bro-in-big-armour template. It’s due out next Spring.
Civilization 5 update aims to fix multiplayer, squashes bugs and exploits
It takes plenty of patience to make it to the end of a multiplayer game of Civilization 5, patience often stretched to breaking point by de-syncing games and ponderous AI turns. A new patch has arrived for Civilization 5 brings “significant improvements to general multiplayer stability” and does something fancy to the AI move caching, “improving turn-times significantly.”
Out-of-sync errors should be less frequent and the UI has been updated letting players see details of a game before jumping into lobbies. On the downside, Firaxis have plugged a few loopholes. In a move sure to be welcomed by the confused citizens, we’ll no longer be able to trade cities back and forth to heal them and “generate endless City Strikes.” Aw. Here are the full patch notes, from Steam.
Epic, Bioware, Bioshock Infinite reveals planned for VGAs, new THQ announcement this month
Now that the release armageddon that is November is over, it’s time for everyone to announce some new projects. The next week or so will be bustling with new announcements from Bioware, Epic and THQ, and we’ll get our first look at Bioshock Infinite for a while at this weekend’s Spike TV Video Game Awards ceremony.
First up, Bioware. They’ve been busy teasing a new game from a new studio in the run up to Saturday’s show, with a teaser image and a tiny trailer clip. With EA registering a number of Command & Conquer domain names recently, there’s speculation that a new C&C may be revealed.
Ken Levine on vocal protagonists and the use of silence in Bioshock Infinite
Without giving too much away, a key twist in the original BioShock story is to do with your character being completely mute throughout the game. It was an interesting twist on Gordon Freeman-like character design, and a comment on the game’s key themes of determinism versus free will.
In BioShock Infinite, the protagonist – Booker DeWitt – will be able to speak. In an interview with IGN, its creator Ken Levine explained the decision. “How do you go back and say okay, well you’re that kind of character again after you already had that discussion with the gamer?” asked Levine. “Our response to it was, let’s really place you firmly in the world this time. Let’s give you a story, let’s give you a character to develop a personal story…You’re very active, your story is very active, Elizabeth’s story is very active.”
Spec Ops: The Line trailers return to ruined Dubai, introduce evil flaming doom tower
Spec Ops: The Line has been AWOL for a while. When we first saw it, it was masquerading as a military man shoot featuring gruff soldiers doing war at each other in the bombed out ruins of Dubai. The Line has re-emerged, with a trailer and two montages showing some fire fights. The gruff men remain, and Dubai is still the setting, but there’s a gruesome undertone to the ruins that wasn’t there before. I’m pretty sure the giant evil flaming tower is also new. See footage of the game in action below.
Ken Levine says BioShock movie could still happen
Bioshock’s fathomless setting of Rapture is the stuff Hollywood studio execs dream of: an established IP, a chance to splash out on visual effects, and a Byzantine plot. But the BioShock movie – once attached to Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski – hasn’t surfaced yet.
Talking to Industry Gamers, Bioshock’s creator Ken Levine stated that the movie is “definitely something that’s still in the conversation”, so it’s not quite dead in the water. “We’d like to have a movie made,” said Levine. “But it would have to be the right one, and we’ve had the opportunity to get it made and unless all the right pieces are in place – it’s hard enough to get a movie made when all the right pieces are in place.”
Bioshock Infinite developer diary makes voice actor cry :(
The second video from the behind the series on Bioshock Infinite gets into the surprisingly intense voice acting sessions behind the E3 demo we saw earlier this year. To get the actor playing Elizabeth to feel sad about the horse that dies in the demo, the actor that plays Booker employs the classic acting technique of being really mean to her until she cries. “That wasn’t Troy just being an asshole, that was me asking Troy to get Courtnee to an emotional place” explains Ken Levine.
Still, everyone, including Courtnee, seem pretty happy with the results. I’ve embedded the full E3 demo below in case you missed it. Remember, real human tears were shed for that dead horse!
