NEW YORK — There couldn’t have been a more fitting place for BioShock designer Ken Levine to unveil his latest videogame vision than the Plaza Hotel’s Terrace Room.
“The time for silence is over,” Levine told reporters gathered Wednesday evening in the grand room, which has been meticulously restored to its 1920s-era opulence. Members of the media were led down a black-draped corridor and a spiral staircase for a preview of Irrational Games’ BioShock Infinite, which will ship in 2012.
That’s five years after the release of the groundbreaking BioShock , a game that seduced shooter fans with its dark, intelligent political satire. BioShock 2 , a sequel released earlier this year that was produced without Levine’s involvement, felt a bit like a retread.
With the creative force behind the original game back in the mix, BioShock Infinite looks like it will lift the series to new heights.
The BioShock Infinite trailer, screened at the press event and viewable below, begins underwater. But any thoughts that the game will be set in the twice-explored underwater libertarian dystopia of Rapture quickly melt away as we emerge from a fish tank and are violently thrust into the floating city of Columbia.
“We’re not in Rapture anymore,” Levine said. “It’s the city of Columbia — not a secret city hidden underwater, but one lost up in the air.”
Levine explained the game’s back story: The city of Columbia started out as the Apollo project of its time, an emblem of American ingenuity and the success of democracy. But it soon became more like the Death Star. After its initial mission of peace, a violent international incident causes Columbia to disappear into the clouds, out of human eyes and out of America’s control.
In BioShock Infinite, you play Booker Dewitt, a disgraced former Pinkerton agent “who gets things done,” said Levine. Visited by a mysterious man in your room/office above a bar, you’re hired to find Elizabeth, who has been imprisoned in the lost city of Columbia for 15 years. Your employer somehow gets you to Columbia and you find Elizabeth, but getting her out of the city is hugely problematic. She’s got special powers, she’s at the center of the international conflict, and you have to fight together to escape the city in the sky.
The demo Levine showed was impressive. True to the original BioShock, the new game is a rich mix of historic nostalgia and sci-fi: Shotguns, cyborgs and plasma weapons mix with beautifully eerie scenes and eerily beautiful music. Enemies can be anything from a man on a soapbox espousing the dangers of foreigners to a bone-crushing cyborg that wants to take Elizabeth back. A key mode of transportation are “skylines” — railways in the sky you can slide along, zip-line-style.
Image courtesy Irrational GamesBioShock Infinite offers players plenty of explosions, blood spatter and weapons from which to choose. You can break open crow statues to gain powers. They might not be as potent as Elizabeth’s, but they enable you to move things around from a distance or set a flock of birds on people. Elizabeth is the master conjurer, and together you can summon a lightning storm to electrocute a swarm of attackers.
But in the spirit of the BioShock series, your every action brings consequences. Sure, Elizabeth can swirl every metallic object in sight into a lethal fireball, but afterward she collapses in exhaustion — just as a robotic wraith enters the scene.
Image courtesy Irrational GamesAfter the demo, the lights came up and Levine, in dramatic style (he studied theater at Vassar), said, “I present to you, Columbia!”
Black drapes started to fall away to reveal giant murals of the fictional city, interwoven perfectly with the glamor of the Terrace Room‘s 1920s Italian Renaissance-style figural paintings. The drama was stifled by a drape malfunction, and the last flowing walls stood stubbornly as repetitive mechanical clicking did nothing to make them fall. They finally did.
The murals made it feel like you could be in a plaza-in-the sky in the city of Columbia, perhaps before it devolved into its violent state in the game.
The elaborate reception — with its waffle bar, blackberry-and-basil lemonade, shots of cold cucumber soup, old-fashioned carnival hotdogs, open bar stocked with premium liquors, and games of ring toss and bottle-throw — made it easy to overlook the imperialist propaganda on the wall.
The BioShock Infinite posters (shown above) sent home with attendees were rather innocent. But others were much more sinister. One showed George Washington bathed in the golden light of Lady Liberty. At his feet were stereotypical images of foreigners and a banner warning against the dangers of foreigners. At the four corners were emblems for faith, purity, prosperity and defense.
Another bore a picture of Lady Liberty with the words: “Youth of Columbia — Will you be her sword?”
The one most evocative of Nazism was a fair-skinned lady, under which were written the words: “Her eyes, so blue. Her skin, so white. Or are they? We must all be vigilant to ensure the purity of our people.”
As stunning, complicated and potentially controversial as BioShock Infinite ‘s Columbia may be, lead artist Shawn Robertson says it wasn’t easy letting go of the familiar setting of the previous BioShock games.
“It wasn’t easy to say we were done with Rapture. It was not easy going to the bright sunny day of Columbia,” he said. This is an entirely new nightmare vision; not a single line of code was taken from the original.
“We don’t like to make it easy on ourselves,” Robertson said, but this new vision has apparently inspired the team at Irrational. “We’ve already generated more art now than we ever did with BioShock,” he said.
Guests were sent home with a bottle of liquid labeled Murder of Crows, but there was seemingly no way to open it.
Photo: Olivia Koski/Wired.com
