Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We usually steer clear of the arts and crafts region of bloggery, but I’ll make an exception for the link Dartt just forwarded to me: How to make a Big Daddy costume in a whole bunch of fairly complicated steps. Amazing, ridiculous stuff. Compare and contrast with 2007’s costumes…

This news is spreading rapidly over the net. It seems that the PS3 is good for something other than playing your Blu-Ray discs. News For Gamers have completed the PS3 version of Bioshock, to discover a fifteen second teaser for the second game. It’s apparently called Bioshock 2: The Sea Of Dreams and you’ll find images from it beneath the cut. EDIT: Also, thanks to the comment-threaders, video. Go watch!
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Kieron’s currently out at the Develop conference for us, so expect exciting missives soon. Or, more likely, incoherent booze-addled rambling about Kenickie. So, while he struggles manfully to work out what a wireless internet is, we can instead harken to reports from elsewhere in gamingdom. Specifically Videogaming247’s coverage of Ken Levine’s bravely-named “BioShock and Awe: Immersing the Gamer in an Alternate World Without Drowning Out the Gameplay” lecture and some quotable interview gobbets they tickled out of him afterwards. Tempestuous Mount Bioshock never quite goes dormant, it seems.

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Gosh, all that hoo-hah about Bioshock’s limited number of installations and activation process seems like a long time ago, but I suspect it’s still an open wound for some folk. A vocal portion of Bioshock’s players were angry – “Ken Levine personally kicked my girlfriend to death” angry. Will they be any less angry now 2K’s lightened its infamously ruthless DRM (as promised many moons ago)?

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University of Connecticut Associate Professor of classical studies Roger Travis has started a blog comparing videogames to the classic tales of the ancient world. His latest post, “The profundity of Halo and Bioshock (and the Iliad)”, puts our favourite first person shooters up there with the greats of Ancient Greece.

Am I saying, a critic of video games might ask, that Halo and Bioshock are capable of the depth of artistic-philosophical expression reached by the Iliad in the Choice of Achilles? After all, when the Homeric bard has Achilles say that maybe the undying glory isn’t really worth it if you lose your life, he’s doing an artistic thing that we’re not used to thinking video games can do.

Here’s the answer: Yes, I am saying that.

Duke Nukem is more like Odysseus, you see. (Or is that Serious Sam?)

Who cares whether BioShock 2 will be any good without Levine at the helm, BioShock 3 has been announced! Gamespot spoke to Take-Two’s chairman, Strauss Zelnick, who suggested that the third game in the series would be released to coincide with Gore Verbinki’s film of the original story.

This came about when asked if the next game and movie would align. He said,

“It’s unlikely that the picture would be released to coincide with BioShock 2. It would be more likely that it would be released coincidentally with BioShock 3. That also remains to be seen.”

BioShock 2 is roughly scheduled for the third quarter of 2009, with the film tentatively set for 2010.

Oh yes – Rapture for real will be quite the sight to behold.

Oh no – It’s to be directed and produced by Gore ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Verbinski. Well, the first film was loads of fun, but even discounting those sequels, high seas hi-jinks seems an unusual pedigree for undersea rumination upon the nature of man. But hey, both have water and zombies.
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Developed by 2K Marin, a recently-formed internal studio staffed by some of the original BioShock team – but not Ken Levine [Actually, yes, Ken Levine will be involved in some fashion, even if only a figurehead role - Kotaku-fuelled edit].
Released late next year.
That is all.

Is it a surprise? No, it’s not even slightly a surprise. But it is all official now.

To be honest, I’ve nothing else to add to Walker and Alec’s opposing yet illuminating pieces. Just the urge to form a triad of Ken Levine Eyes grew unbearable. Forgive me.

Sometimes, we like to race. Today, John won, throwing up his thoughts on Ken Levine’s recent post-mortem natterings about Bioshock’s narrative before I could lay my oafish mitts to a keyboard.

After literally seconds of consideration, I’ve decided to do so anyway, as a) John’s kindly gotten the hard labour of summary and quotation out of the way for me and b) I’ve got some slightly different feelings about what Levine’s said/is maybe trying to say/perhaps failed to say. This isn’t at all a rebuttal to John’s piece, though there are inescapable elements of point-counterpoint.

Apologies, by the way, if we’ve gone a little September 2007 today: Bioshock’s one of those games that never quite goes away.
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