Ken Levine hat in einem Interview weitere Informationen zum kommenden dritten Bioshock-Spiel enthüllt.
Die Website vg247.com hatte die Chance mit Ken Levine von Irrational Games zu sprechen und konnte folgende Informationen zu Bioshock Infinite ergattern. Außerdem wird die Frage geklärt, warum das Spiel den Titel "Bioshock" im Namen hat und was die Fortschritte des neuen Spiels sind..
“I think the fact that the physical location is different is not the only thing that defines a BioShock game. I think there are plenty of other themes that define it that way. It’s a BioShock game, in the same way that a Call of Duty game is a Call of Duty game or a Zelda game is a Zelda game. What you’re doing in terms of gameplay – it’s centered around moving through this world that’s incredibly detailed and realistic yet kind of fantastical. The fact that you have weapons in one hand and powers in the other hand and it’s all about how you take on challenges with those powers that you have a good degree of control over – those things make it very much a BioShock game.”, so Levine.
“I think what’s interesting is that defining what a typical encounter is in BioShock Infinite is going to be very tough. When we started the BioShock franchise, one of the biggest challenges we had was when the player encountered the Big Daddy for the first time. The natural reaction of the testers was that they’d whip their gun out and start shooting it, because that’s what you do. When you see somebody in a first-person shooter, you shoot ‘em. We had to do a ton of work to train the player not to shoot the Big Daddy immediately. Like if you remember, it was four – maybe five – times before you were in a place where you could actually shoot him. We sort of did all this work to make the player understand that there were other ways to approach the problem. So we really tried to expand that thinking in BioShock Infinite to a broad range of AI – that there are AIs in the world that have different [behaviors]. Sometimes they’re not going to fight you at all. Sometimes they’re going to find you in the right conditions. The example we gave is that you come into a bar and there are all these guys, and you’re not sure what’s going to set them off. Maybe nothing will set them off unless you take your gun out and start shooting them. There’s a whole range of activities that could set them off. It’s sort of like, you know, in your personal life, you come home and sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to say to your significant other that may set them off [laughs]. Or they may say something to you.”
Levine sagte: “So some people have said to me, ‘How do you know what’s going to make them fight you?’ And I’m like, ‘Well that’s part of the interesting thing. You don’t.’ You learn things along the way. There are certain tools you’re going to have that are either going to turn enemies into friends or sometimes friends into enemies. But that whole messing with the AI space – you know, finding groups that are opposed to each other and being able to exploit those oppositions to your advantage – those are some of the really fun things that we started in BioShock, but we’ve moved it away from the Big Daddy space and into a much broader AI space."
In Bioshock Infinite wird zudem nicht nur der männliche Hauptcharakter von Bedeutung sein, dennoch auch Elizabeth wird wichtig sein - vielleicht sogar wichtiger als der Spieler selbst, erzählt Levine. Dies ist wichtig, weil der Spieler Elizabeth befreien und anschließend beschützen muss. “There are always moments where she offers opportunities for you, and you can take advantage of those opportunities, or you can just ignore them. In the actual game itself, it’s basically she can offer up stuff almost everywhere. And it’s really about you deciding what are these opportunities you’re going to take, because she doesn’t have an unlimited power set in terms of how much she can do for you. So you have to choose. It’s going to be very, very interesting. I mean, she’s a narrative driving force in the game, certainly. But she’s also something that really expands [your options]. She’s another arrow in your BioShock powers quiver. We’re expanding that quiver substantially for the game itself in terms of the powers you have in your hands, but also Elizabeth adds a whole new spectrum to that."
Der Entwickler erklärt: “When we started with this companion character, we said, ‘Well, it’s easy to have Booker form an attachment with Elizabeth.’ That’s easy, right? I just write that. Booker says, ‘You’re awesome,’ and Elizabeth goes ‘You’re awesome too!’ That’s the easy part. The hard part is how you make the player form an attachment. And what we did – we’re going to be showing a lot more of the dynamics of their relationship in the next demo – is we said, ‘OK, what makes people form attachments in life?’ Especially very quickly, right? Because these people just met each other. If you go back to those relationships you’ve had in your life where you just meet somebody and the attachment grows quickly, there are several things to be thought about. One is that generally people thrown into a crucible together – into a dangerous, challenging, stressful situation – often form relationships more quickly. And the way they form them is they end up making sacrifices for each other. It’s doing things together that cost them. When somebody makes a sacrifice for you, that’s an incredibly bond-forming experience. That’s the root of every powerful relationship.”
“I think one of the primary examples is people fall in love with their doctors. Again, because they’re in a dangerous, stressful situation and here’s somebody who’s really pulling out the stops for them. So Elizabeth and Booker quickly form this relationship based upon the fact that, well, they’re not having a very good time [laughs]. They’re probably having the worst time of their lives, and they’re the only ones there for each other. They’re the only ones that each one can turn to. So we look into our own lives and the problems we’ve had – the sickness we’ve had, the financial problems we’ve had – and the people that have been there for us and the things they’ve done for us. That’s what we use for an inspiration in thinking about this relationship.”
Im Spiel ist es außerdem wichtig, wie man spielt und wie man mit dem Thema umgeht. Hier sind nicht nur Optionen oder Gegensätze entscheidend, sondern vor allem die spielerische Erfahrung, die der Spieler durchlebt. “I think that generally, our feeling is that most people feel trapped in between very, very polarized viewpoints and are really somewhere in the middle of that. You can get crushed by those viewpoints. Our personal feelings come more from that – of being somebody who doesn’t wake up every morning knowing exactly what their political viewpoint is, exactly what their social viewpoint is, and going out and spending every ounce of energy making sure people get in line with that viewpoint. I think we’re more about asking questions and providing answers. I think in terms of how we think about it, we have less of a Manichaean view of the universe. To me, the real world is a little more complex. There are some extremes, obviously. I mean, if you invoke Godwin’s Law – bring up the Nazis – and you find these real extremes where it’s kind of hard to find any positive viewpoint. But in general, I think that the world’s a pretty murky place. If you really try to find white hats and black hats, it’s very tough to find them in the real world. But I think we’re attracted to them because it’s simpler, and people like simplicity.”
“I think if you played our other games – System Shock 2 and BioShock – we’re not generally fans of saying, ‘here’s a definitive statement about the world and how it should be,’. With the first demo of Infinite, we had a lot of responses saying, ‘oh, you’re attacking this group. You’re attacking that group.’ They’ve not seen what else is going on in Columbia. We’re into presenting a bunch of different viewpoints and saying, ‘Here’s the good, here’s the bad. Why don’t you sort it out?’”, so Ken Levine.
Levine ist der Meinung, dass man einen Multiplayer-Modus nur integrieren sollte, wenn man dazu eine gute Idee hat und nicht weil ein Mehrspieler-Part gerade besonders "in" ist. “BioShock’s a great example. We sold 4.5 million units. To some degree, that was a victory of, ‘Let’s make the right product – not what a marketing survey tells us.’If we had a great multiplayer thing to say in that game, we would have made a multiplayer mode. We would have done it if we had something to say. But we just didn’t, so I didn’t want to do what I had done before. I didn’t want to be forced to fill a checklist some marketing guy had about what a product should be. Most people tend to ignore a multiplayer mode that isn’t compelling. That’s way more common than anything else. People work all this time to create a multiplayer mode, and you can go on Xbox Live and you literally see – even in some good multiplayer games – six, eight, or ten people playing the game. Literally. In the world. It’s heartbreaking. If you’re going to do that, it’d better not be because some marketing guy is telling you to do it. It’d better be because you have something to say. There’s a bit of suspended disbelief, right? You know, in BioShock 1, you’re going around the world and you’re exploring all this interesting stuff and answering all these moral questions. And you’re also shooting dozens and dozens of people to death. We give a reason, you know, because they’re coming after you, basically. But it is a little strange, right? No one can deny the suspension of disbelief you have. I feel this too when I’m watching a TV show. Some cop show or something. I’ll be like ‘wow, the cops in this city are very attractive!’ It’s ridiculous how good-looking all the victims and all the cops are. How photogenic they are. But when you watch a TV show, people like looking at good-looking people. When you play a videogame, people like shooting stuff quite often.”
“If you look at, say, Heavy Rain, I think they try to explore different areas of the challenge space. You can argue that’s more or less interesting as a challenge than shooting people. It’s generally easier to get past the suspension of disbelief problem, but you also have the question, ‘Is it as fun? Is that a fun challenge?’ For whatever reason, the physical act of leading a target and shooting at it is an interesting, challenging fun dexterity problem,” he tells us. Games generally involve some interesting, fun challenges – whether it’s dexterity or mental. Videogames that don’t have that – more narrative fiction, like Swords and Sworcery on the iPad – there’s not really a gameplay component to them. But Irrational is making games. I like games. I’ve always liked games. I’ve always played games. I’ve always liked games that have some kind of challenge component. So I think I’ll continue to make games that have stories, but I really like the fact that games are games.”, sagt er.
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Game: Bioshock: Infinite | Genre: Ego-Shooter | System(e): PS3, Xbox 360, PC | Release: 2012
Hersteller: 2K Games | Entwickler: Irrational Games | USK: -
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