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.
By Kieron Gillen on September 21st, 2010.
While it was never going to be a PC game, there’s historical interest in Irrational’s first attempt to make a game before the console. The Lost was a third-person horror game for the PS2 which was trying to put in a mass of the sort of System-Shock-2 RPG-elements into a Dante-esque world. Irrational have been rooting through their files generally, and released some of the concept art and design notes, which are fine to stare at/read. As picked out by Chris Remo, I especially like the contrast between really specific guidelines (like the door hole being precisely 216 x 128 units) to the gloriously foggy (I quote: “Any other cool shit you can dream up”).
By Kieron Gillen on September 19th, 2010.
Just a quickie here. The full Bioshock Infinite gameplay footage video which I saw in August on the game’s unveiling is going live on 21st. However, they gave Gametrailer TV a few short snippets in their latest show. So you can watch that, or just go to the cut-for-youtube snippet Phill found below…
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By Kieron Gillen on September 17th, 2010.
Following on from their splendid covers, Game Informer have put a selection of information from their Bioshock Infinite coverage online. Everyone’s picking over the full set of propaganda posters and nosing at the screens, but the real interesting new information is actually about the factions who are tearing Columbia apart. The nationalistic, conservative Powers That Be versus the Vox Populi anarchist front, who apparently draw from 1970s German terrorists like the Red Army Faction (i.e. Baader Meinhof).
So – Bioshock Infinite features the Powers That Be. And what do you have to do to the powers that be, Chuck?
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By Kieron Gillen on September 5th, 2010.
Game Informer are actually having a worryingly impressive run of covers. Following the stark Batman: Arkham City ones last month, this time they’ve got three fantastic period-styled Bioshock Infinite ones - two above, and one highlighting the be-hatted “Handyman”. Go over to Joystiq to have a nose at both the final versions and various work-in-progresses.
By John Walker on August 18th, 2010.
A couple of new BioShock Infinite screenshots have appeared out of GamesCom. There’s not much more to say than that, but you can see them below, and continue wondering what on Earth the game is going to be like. You can read our coverage of the game so far by clicking here.
By Alec Meer on August 3rd, 2010.
That’s the studio formerly known as 2K Boston formerly known as Irrational to you. As in Ken Levine’s original-name-reclaiming bunch: the developers who made System Shock 2, SWAT 4, Tribes Vengeance, Freedom Force – and, of course, Bioshock the first.
And there’s that Pandora’s box opened. The important news, though, is that Irrational are finally taking the lid of whatever their new project is next week. Several years in the making, massively mysterious: whatever it is, whatever it’s like, it’s bound to be a big old chat-magnet.
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By Kieron Gillen on May 21st, 2010.
Irrational’s blog takes great joys in pulling out various bits and bobs from the cupboards and doing a show-and-tell. Latest is the original early-00s Bioshock Pitch. They’re serializing it across several entries but you can follow the first eight pages here. And it’s nifty stuff, in noting what remained (a lot, conceptually) and what changed (almost everything, in terms of specific execution). This stuff is always fascinating. And while we’re on the topic, you’ve read Planescape’s Vision Statement, yes? More developers should totally release this stuff. It’s absolute treasure.
By Alec Meer on December 15th, 2009.
Alternate post title: Conumdra. For this is a short semi-text adventure from Tom Jubert, who’s best known for writing the Penumbra series of heavily bephysicsed action-puzzlers. Apparently ir/rational began life as minigame for inclusion in one of the Penumbras, but now find itself standalone.
It is a free videogame.
Therefore you will play it.
It tests your logic and deductive reasoning.
Therefore you may be too lazy to play it.
But you should.
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By Jim Rossignol on September 29th, 2008.
A couple of weekends ago Alec and I got together with some journalist chums and dragged computers and a folding table into our friend’s lounge. It was the JournoLAN: a tea-and-biscuits PC hookup in an editor’s comfortable home. In there we mucked about installing patches and discussed the error messages being displayed by a desyncing instance of Supreme Commander. We also played SWAT4. It was incredible.
I’d previously enjoyed SWAT4 when I played it at review, but the attention paid to the multiplayer section was reduced to a couple of distracted lunchtimes in a noisy magazine office. To my disappointment, we never really got to grips with it. This time, however, we were determined to get stuck in, and the co-op takedowns were absolutely riveting.
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By Kieron Gillen on April 3rd, 2008.
[Since it's Space Week, it's a good time to pull my Edge-commissioned Making Of System Shock 2 feature out of Stasis. The material for this was drawn from the lengthy conversation I had with Ken Levine last year. So, yes, before Bioshock. I'm quite fond of this piece, if only as it reveals the secret origin of the Psychic Monkeys...]
The lights are low. Everyone’s panickedly fighting against a seemingly impossible, oppressive deadline. At every turn there’s a crippling lack of resources. Viewed by any objective criteria, the small inexperienced team doesn’t have the skills to achieve their aims. They’re all crammed into a single room – in fact, half of one, since it’s one room bisected with screens. When you look at where and how Irrational worked on their first game, it’s easy to think of the claustrophobic horror of RPG/Shooter System Shock 2 as a pure product of its environment.
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