Yesterday, we brought you Ken Levine’s explanation of BioShock: Infinite’s 1999 mode. The response was, perhaps inevitably, divided. Here’s the second part of my chat with him, in which he anticipates that, as well as addressing the fact he can only offer a biased opinion of his game, the problem with out of context headlines, tennis in BioShock, why SWAT 4 would have been a very different game under his stewardship and, yes, why “if you’re a reader on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, you are sophisticated enough to not listen to what Ken Levine says.”
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Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Posts Tagged ‘Irrational’
"Maybe I have a weird fetish for tennis I never thought about…"
Levine On… Bias, Trust, SWAT & Tennis
By Alec Meer on January 24th, 2012.
Why BioShock: Infinite is for you
You’re Going To Suffer: Levine On 1999 Mode
By Alec Meer on January 23rd, 2012.
Late last week, Irrational announced 1999 mode for BioShock: Infinite – an attempt to recapture the sense of binding decisions, permanent consequences and hard-as-nails challenge that we perhaps associate with a lost era of gaming. In this first of a two-part interview, I nattered to avuncular Irrational bossman Ken Levine about why they came up with 1999 Mode, what it entails, why it’s a very different prospect to simply a ‘hard’ difficulty setting, why he doesn’t want non-hardcore gamers playing that mode, and whether or not it’s a reaction to disappointment about BioShock from System Shock fans.
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BioShock: Infinite – I Find It Kind Of Sad
By Alec Meer on December 11th, 2011.
Straight from the Gears of War / Mad World school of ironic juxtaposition-based maudlin marketing, this new vidotrail for BioShock: Infinite features EXPLOSIVE ACTION set against someone singing unhappily. It’s quite affecting, I’ll give it that, but I think we’ll need someone to do the excruciatingly dedicated frame-by-frame analysis thing to identify exactly what new stuff we’re seeing.
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Rational Discourse: Levine And Del Toro
By Adam Smith on November 18th, 2011.
Do you enjoy conversation between passionate individuals? If so, the recent Irrational Interview featuring Ken Levine and Guillermo Del Toro is a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend an hour of your day. The Mexican author/director is working on a horror game and the first part of this audio was posted on Halloween so I expected a focus on spooky happenings but the conversation is much more wide-ranging. There is some discussion of monsters but mostly it’s two men discussing the joy of the creative process, as well as the frustrations that can arise in the film and game industries.
Del Toro is frank as ever, at one point describing working on projects with no personal interest as like trying to “fuck without a boner”. He does swear a lot. Ken slowly warms to the idea of this navvy-like behavior and by the end they’re both at it. Two parts. Downloads here and here.
Card Hunter: Irrational Co-Founder Goes Solo
By Alec Meer on July 20th, 2011.
The danger of a phrase like ‘Irrational Co-Founder’ is a bunch of people will probably presume you’re talking about Ken Levine. So let’s get that clear up-front: this is not a post about Ken Levine. This is a post about another founder member of System Shock 2/BioShock developers Irrational. Jon Chey has been with the studio since the very start, and prior to that did a stint at god-factory Looking Glass – so he’s someone you should take an interest in. Lately, he’s been heading up the former Aussie wing of Irrational, rebranded as 2K Australia and which did a bunch of the work on BioShock 2 and the upcoming XCOM (I know, I know) – but now he’s going it alone as an indie dev named Blu Manchu. The first project puts board games, card games, browser games, RPGs and strategy games into a blender, so he’s not exactly starting off small.
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How Infinite Fixes BioShock’s Key Problem
By Alec Meer on June 22nd, 2011.
The upcoming third BioShock game intends to fix an oft-made criticism of the Rapture-set original games, according to Timothy Gerritsen, Director of Development at Irrational Games.
The Executive Producer on Bioshock Infinite admitted to RPS in an interview published today that, in the first Bioshock, “we failed in giving you a sense of that city underwater.”
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This Little Pinkerton
Freedom On Rails: Bioshock Infinite Interview
By Dan Griliopoulos on June 22nd, 2011.
Agent Dan stalked the halls of E3 until he caught up with Timothy Gerritsen, Director of Development at Irrational Games and Executive Producer on Bioshock Infinite. They then talked Heisenberg, Bader-Meinhoff, pulp fiction, psychoses… and sometimes even Bioshock.
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Who’s Fighting Who (& When) In Bioshock 3
By Alec Meer on June 17th, 2011.
Well, obviously pretty much everyone’s fighting you – it is a first-person shooter, after all. But there’s also inter-factional conflict in 2012′s Skyoshock, as one Mr K. Levine reveals below. What on earth could make the denizens of a rebel, militaristic, ultranationalist city in the sky turn against each other? Oh, riiiiiight. Also: time travel.
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Look, Sky-walker: BioShock Infinite In Motion
By Alec Meer on June 7th, 2011.
Only a shortie for Ken & chums’ latest, but it’s pretty confident proof that we’re not in Rapture anymore, Andrew. Rocket-spewing zeppelins, anti-gravity powers, gruesome splatting via sky-crates and, at the end, a hint of how large the environments may be. Also, it really plays up the fact that this is a buddy game – but not exactly a buddy comedy. Read the rest of this entry »
Sky Walker: Be In BioShock Infinite
By Alec Meer on April 11th, 2011.
I’m changing my name to Brian Nothing. This, I feel, is my best hope of being selected to be the gamer whose name is given to a character or location in Bioshock Infinite. Think about it: a sort of home-spun domesticity, coupled with a statement of nihilism. It’s perfect for a game about a conflict-torn community in the sky. Maybe, though, I shouldn’t have changed my name to Alec Meer from Alec Zeppelin-Lord al those years ago. Honestly, I kind of regret that now.
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Irrational Interviews The Late Kieron Gillen
By John Walker on October 6th, 2010.
Anyone remember Keiran Gillon? I’m told he used to be a writer for this site, before he upped and left to start some career writing for Whizzer & Chips or something. Well, after an age of silence his name has resurfaced, being interviewed on the Irrational Interviews podcast.
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