The next BioShock from 2K's new studio Cloud Chamber

[vortex]

What are they even going to tell with this one? Rapture is gone, or so I believe, and Infinite had some weird shit going on I'm sure can't be given a sequel to. What is this going to turn into a Far Cry style franchise? Next stop, not Communist China? Ha, as if that'll happen.

Au contraire, Infinite may be streamlined in gameplay but had tremendous impact on the story and the world. They literaly have infinite possibilities to choose. I would be eager to see a medieval city but spliced with sci-fi-ish stuff.

 

[DalekFlay]

Yeah, all you need to do is make a shooter with (very) light immersive sim elements, set it in some crazy city with a lighthouse, and boom you've got a Bioshock game.

 

[vortex]

Overview:
1) new setting
2) next gen title
3) "Wes Anderson like precision and panache in your camera positioning and movements" and "Create and implement systemic, in-game, scripted cinematic sequences" <<<< ???????
4) "Develop an FPS combat paradigm that is accessible, satisfying, and allows for a high degree of player expression and experimentation within a highly reactive world. Look beyond direct conflict, accommodate various play-styles and design encounters that can be resolved through player ingenuity. Design and create systemic world moments, bespoke quests that breathe life into the levels of the game. Combine hand-crafted set-pieces and systemic interactions to create a "living” world that offers players variety at every step of the game

I hope not that many cinematic moments.

https://twitter.com/MauroNL3/status/1293138723073392641

 

[JDR13]

Are any devs of the former games working on this?

 

[LESS T_T]

Looks like whoever these devs working on this are going for something more ambitious than a cinematic pew pew.

https://boards.greenhouse.io/cloudchamberen/jobs/4172209003

Someone to push further the development of our AI Systems in a strong narrative and systemic game. We have high ambitions for tying AI and storytelling together and it will be your responsibility to crystalize that ambition around several AI systems. You will be in close collaboration with Design leadership to flesh out the designs and finalize the implementations for an urban crowd system and the systemic tribal ecology of a sometimes hostile AI. You will lead the engineering side of those objectives. You will also be expected to help push our conception of what is possible in this arena doing as much to advance the ambition as you will attempt to build it.

What You Will Do

• Collaborate with Design to create a vision for a meaningful AI urban crowd system
• Own the architecture and implementation of everything in that vision
• Create intuitive Design-facing tools for authoring/scripting crowd behaviour
• Help identify any additional team members necessary to achieve these goals
• Help to push the envelope of what is possible with interactive crowd systems

https://boards.greenhouse.io/cloudchamberen/jobs/4109997003

Our ideal candidate has an innate sense of how game systems connect and enhance one another in an emergent sandbox world, as well as for the player-facing signs and feedback that are required for an intuitive player experience.

• Interactive world systems and non-AI systemic ecology
• Player growth systems and progression
• Game balance and economy

Or they surely know linear games don't work in 2020s.

 

[Wunderbar]

Biopunk 1977

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/bioshock-4-job-listings-appear-to-confirm-an-open-world-and-sidequests/

BioShock 4 job listings appear to confirm an open world and sidequests
It’s gonna be one of those.

Cloud Chamber, the 2K Games studio tasked with developing a new BioShock game, has listed a handful of new dev positions on its website. The job descriptions appear to confirm at least two things about the long-in-gestation project: that it’ll be open world, and that like most open world games, it’ll have both primary and secondary quests.

The description for the senior writer role is the most illuminating, apparently confirming both the open world and the quest format. "We’re hoping to find someone who can weave impactful, character-driven stories in an open world setting," it reads, while later it specifies that the successful candidate will "brainstorm primary and secondary mission content with design."

Elsewhere, Unreal Engine 4 experience is considered "strongly desired" for one role, while a lot of emphasis is placed on this BioShock having a "living" world. That’s the kind of buzz term you’d normally ignore, but it seems to entail more than the usual random NPC encounters, with the senior world designer expected to "design and create systemic world moments, as well as bespoke quests, that breathe life into the game."

The AI programmer role has some interesting tidbits: that candidate will "create a vision for a meaningful AI urban crowd system" and "help to push the envelope of what is possible with interactive crowd systems."

Of course, there’s the chance that whatever Cloud Chamber is cooking at the moment might change dramatically during development, and given the nature of some of these roles, it looks like development isn’t closing in on a release just yet. That’s ok, because despite the last BioShock game releasing in 2013, a planned follow-up from another 2K studio was cancelled in 2016.

 

[J_C]

BioShock 4 job listings appear to confirm an open world and sidequests

Oh for fuck's sake, don't people have enough of open world games? Every new AAA games is an open world in this day and age, full of a million icons on the world map with boring side activities.

The original Bioshock (and System Shock) games were quite open, but they managed to find a good balance between giving the player space to explore, but not being a full on open world games.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

There are quite a few former BioShock 1/2 + Prey (2017) + nu-Deus Ex devs working on this, so I'm willing to give them a chance.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Another linear compass-quest-driven boring shooter.

 

[Ghulgothas]

I'd be down for another Prey, but dressed up in the fashion of a setting a few revolutions removed from the one we're in now.

Man, I should be sad that the first thing that comes to mind is another goddamned Far Cry though.

 

[DeepOcean]

If they do the open world like Metro Exodus did, it wouldnt be that bad but that isnt exactly full open world, hope it isnt full open world on a giant map because that is guaranteed for waste of time nonsense filler content everywhere with a few short main missions.

 

[karoliner]

It's going to be shit.

 

[vortex]

Main mystery key is where is it going to be set? My take is going to be on the unique island where one would go underneath, up on hanging things in the sky or even underwater Rapture-like.

 

[fork]

It's going to be shit.

Bold prediction, especially on Shilldex 2021.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

The settings and art design of Rapture and ummm... Columbia(?) were the only remotely interesting things about these games to begin with. If they come up with another cool locale to set the game in then I will no doubt pick it up on sale for $5 6 months after it flops (and I will also no doubt play no more than half of the game before tossing it in my Steam rubbish bin).

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Doesn't the plot of every Bioshock game involve the revelation that everything went according to the big bad's plan and/or that he was controlling you all along? How is that going to work with an open-world game. What, are they going to record a thousand different variations of a single line when the player reaches the final boss, each dependent on how many bear skins you have?

 

[JDR13]

Another linear open-world compass-quest-driven boring shooter.

Fixed that for you.

 

[lightbane]

AAA industry is creatively bankrupt, example number 12341st.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

AAA industry is creatively bankrupt, example number 12341st.

That's why they have invented the AAAA industry! Like Cyberpunk 77, but with 4x more bugs!

 

[vortex]

https://www.gamesradar.com/bioshock-4-could-release-in-2022-alongside-a-remaster-of-the-original/

The leak, which Nvidia has acknowledged as containing "released and/or speculative" PC titles, features a listing for 'Bioshock 2022'. That could mean that the new BioShock game announced by 2K Games and Cloud Chamber Studio in December 2019 might be releasing next year. There's also a listing for something called 'Bioshock RTX remaster', but no further reference to a release date or any other details.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Bioshock 2 was the best of the bunch.

I know I was interested in bioshock because we weren't getting anything else in the genre. 2 just seemed like an improvement on 1 in every way. It was fine.


But... was system shock 2 really that deep? It's a great game (well the first half) but at its heart was a corridor shooter. It was neat to be able to choose what you were going to shoot down the corridor, but I think to call SS2 a masterpiece and to call bioshock a boring linear shooter isn't quite fair.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Doesn't the plot of every Bioshock game involve the revelation that everything went according to the big bad's plan and/or that he was controlling you all along? How is that going to work with an open-world game. What, are they going to record a thousand different variations of a single line when the player reaches the final boss, each dependent on how many bear skins you have?

If that's what they do again, wouldn't it just work exactly the same way it did in the original?

 

[Btan0]

But... was system shock 2 really that deep? It's a great game (well the first half) but at its heart was a corridor shooter. It was neat to be able to choose what you were going to shoot down the corridor, but I think to call SS2 a masterpiece and to call bioshock a boring linear shooter isn't quite fair.

I'd argue that, while Bioshock had less boxed-in level design, it was much more linear in terms of level progression. You could revisit levels in Bioshock but there's practically no reason to do so, unless you missed a little sister and need more Adam. In SS2 there were much more meaningful reasons to revisit levels, such as finding appropriate chemicals to analyse materials or needing to unlock/deactivate something a few floors down in order to open a hatch in engineering (or something similar, it's been a while since I played it). The depth of System Shock 2 comes from how it embraces the idea that you're on a space ship; you're not just going from level A to B to C to D.

That being said, System Shock 1 blows 2 out of the water in terms of organic progression.

 

[ciox]

Bioshock never even lets you visit more than one new area at once. What is wrong with you guys.

The bathyspheres in Bioshock 1, despite having the whole ocean open to them, can magically only visit 1 new area at once, and bathyspheres and backtracking were completely removed in Bioshock 2.
At least in Shock 2 you gain access to a bunch of new explorable areas now and then, like with Deck 4 and Deck 5 both opening up at once, and Deck 6 becoming accessible once you've solved all the problems on two large decks in whatever order you feel like.