New 2K Studio formed for BioShock 2
It's double whammy time: Not only is BioShock 2 in the pipeline, but so is a new X-Com game!
Before you start OMGing and WTFing about the sheer possibility of a new BioShock game, there's something you should know.
According to industry insider Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars and a job posting up on Gamasutra, the new game won't be headed up by Ken Levine, the man responsible for BioShock the first. Instead, it'll be made by a new 2K studio which is being founded specifically for the task.
The new studio, 2K Marin, is being founded by the remnants of the dev team from the first BioShock. Apparently, not many of the original staff wanted to work with Ken after BioShock.
"2K Boston is still recovering - a good chunk of the BioShock team did not want to work with Ken ever again, and 2K definitely understood the sentiment and let them set up a new studio so that they can make Bioshock 2, leaving Ken with Project X. A good chunk of the other senior 2K Boston people who were sick of Ken but didn't move to San Francisco ended up scattering to other AAA developers instead. In Quincy, they're essentially rebuilding a team from almost scratch again." Says Surfer Girl, who got tipped off by an anonymous source.
So, what is Ken Levine up to? Well, by the looks of it he's going to stay on in 2K Boston and is starting work on a new project called Project X which has been confirmed by some of the fleeing developers as being a new X-Com game.
Details beyond that are pretty scarce at the moment and it'll certainly be a while before we see anything come out of either studio, but until then you can always share your thoughts with us in the forums. You can also check out the new BioShock mod which we've featured in this month's Mod of the Month.
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Discuss in the forums ReplySame here, anyone got any information on that?
The idea of a new X-Com is intriguing...as long as it doesn't end up being dumbed-down like seemingly everything else lately.
Not too excited by the idea of BioShock 2, I'm in the camp of heretics who weren't very impressed by BioShock.
Now hear me out on this CURAAAZY idea........
GETTING BIOSHOCK 1 TO BLOODY WELL WORK!
3 Months now
THREE MONTHS I AND MANY MANY OTHERS HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR A RESOLUTION TO THIS CRASHING PROBLEM.
AND WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN DOING?
EH?
STARTING A NEW DICK OFFICE>........................ARAGHGGGGHFHFGGHGH!
</end of rantorama>
Andy
Definitely.
It wasn't the spiritual successor to System Shock, it was System Shock Lite™ for Joypads.
I'm cynical about it, I know, but BioShock was nothing more than an overhyped disappointment for me.
I guess it would have been too much to ask for a game that could live up to its predecessors from the glory days of the 90's and isn't watered-down (pun not intended) for the console market.
I'm really starting to sound like an anti-console forum-troll here, but I think my bitterness is understandable when considering Deus Ex vs Invisible War, Morrowind vs Oblivion, Fallout 2 vs Fallout 3, System Shock 2 vs BioShock, etc etc..
Someone please prove me wrong. :(
Bethesda and Eidos Montreal, I'm looking at you. I'm not hopeful, but I'm looking at you.
Bioshock was the most overhyped PC game of 2007.
Had it came out now, with pretty much all the GOTY aspirants released, it wouldnt have the same impact.
As for X-COM, the last title worth playing was Terror from the Deep. New versions fail to provide the same atmosphere.
I quite liked apocalypse but I still prefer TFTD and the original UFO.
UFO:Aftershock was quite fun too but still not as atmospheric as TFTD. :(
Still, we can live in hope.
As for Bioshock, I liked it but wasn't blown away by it.
Maybe my hopes were too high from reading all the reviews... :/
And is this Ken guy really such an asshole to work with??? :D
Managed to get to Fort Frolic before giving up on it.
I also sound like a console-hater troll these days ... and maybe i am ( :D )
I will say what's expected from me to say : add UT3 to that hist of yours ;)
I love Enemy Unknown, am so-so on terror from the deep (so, so very hard!) quite like apocalypse (It may have had its failings in some ways, but it did evolve a fair bit of the usability in interface etc) don't mind interceptor (but wish they'd spent a little more time on the bugs and the flight engine ..) hate enforcer.
The after series has overall been a little dissapointing, they started out with a very rushed game that tried to be ambitious in some ways, then each further game has trimmed back the ambition but improved whats actually there with afterlight being the best yet, but the second and third went with static maps and become so very, very repetitive (and the first wasn't truly random, but it was better then completely static).
My solution? Revert. Retrograde. I just shelve my love of graphics and my need to buy expensive hardware every 5 months, and play Morrowind, Deus Ex, Final Fantasy VII and Silent Hill 1. After a while, the horrible graphics don't phase you, and you realise how much better games used to be :p
You're preaching to the choir. :p
I'm playing through Fallout & Fallout 2 for the umpteenth time at the moment (literally, F2 is minimised on my taskbar) and I actually love the graphics of both games - The artwork is gritty, but gorgeous in its own way - I don't need graphics to be cutting-edge, I just like them to be pleasing to my eyes. :)
Using the engine tweaks dll-mod by timeslip allows for some small improvements to the engine, but what I really want is a full-screen gaussian blur/softening filter so that the game doesn't look as pixellated in its 640x480, 256-colour glory on my 22" screen. Certainly not necessary to enjoy such exceptional games though. ;)
I play through Deus Ex, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 1/2/TOB, FF7, FF8 & System Shock 2 at least 4-5 times per year. Each.
I dread the day that I finally get too bored of any one of the above to play through it again, but if it hasn't happened by now... :)
:D