BioShock was once an iconic franchise. The first installment won countless awards, receiving praise for its storytelling, mechanics, and world design. The second game’s narrative was less well-received, but its gameplay was once again highly commended, and its Minerva’s Den DLC saw similar praise.
However the third BioShock installment, BioShock Infinite, proved much more divisive. With a new game finally on the cards after an eight-year hiatus, the eventual reveal of BioShock 4 has fans excited about 2K’s dystopian shooter once again. However, developer Cloud Chamber Studios must avoid some of the missteps of its predecessor if its new title is destined for success.
Key Areas Where BioShock Infinite Went Wrong
The original BioShock was a spiritual successor to System Shock and its beloved sequel, but was not constrained by the setting of its predecessors. Rather than revisiting another space station, developer Irrational Games transported players to a secret city at the bottom of the ocean, and the originality of BioShock’s distinctive backdrop won the game many fans. The submerged urban nightmare of Rapture was widely praised, with players enjoying its back story as a failed utopia, constructed to enable science and industry to proceed without the fetters of law or morality.
When BioShock Infinite decided to set its story in a different location, fans were initially intrigued. Instead of a barnacle-encrusted underwater ruin, the game promised a sky-bound paradise whose sinister underbelly was much less overt. Whilst this originality deserves credit, many fans were underwhelmed by Columbia, and were disappointed that the game didn’t revisit Rapture’s subaquatic hellscape.
The plot of BioShock Infinite was also criticized by some reviewers, both for its complicated plot-twist ending as well as its controversial approach to the topic of racism. The new game needs to find a balance between delighting fans with surprising narrative developments, and alienating them with overwritten, exposition-heavy dialogue and a confusing or divisive story.
Some elements of BioShock Infinite’s gameplay were also condemned, and ought to be avoided in the upcoming sequel. The decision to replace claustrophobic corridors and fraught enemy encounters with a series of arena battles was not universally popular. Furthermore, while the first game seamlessly integrated its mechanics into its story, the third installment contained several instances of ludonarrative dissonance, such as its protagonist Booker DeWitt losing money every time he is resurrected. This arbitrary toll is never explained, and was criticized for not making sense in the context of the game’s story.
How BioShock 4 Can Improve Upon BioShock Infinite
Some of these problems were undoubtedly a result of BioShock Infinite’s troubled development cycle, and BioShock 4 has a great opportunity to avoid these issues. With practices like "crunch" under increased scrutiny, Cloud Chamber Studios will hope to escape reproach for subjecting its staff to unreasonable working hours. Plus ideally, this should help avoid making multiple changes to the title’s design or core concepts during its development, resulting in a possibly unbalanced game.
This will not be easy, however, with the game reportedly featuring a Fallout-style open world structure, rather than the linear approach adopted by the franchise’s previous entries. Developing a convincing and immersive game world of the size and complexity that modern players have come to expect will be a mammoth undertaking, particularly one set in a universe with such a stellar lineage and huge levels of fan anticipation.
Cloud Chamber Studios certainly faces a challenge if it wishes to replicate the success of the earlier BioShock games, but the title represents a great opportunity for the recently-formed division of 2K. Fans eagerly await more information about the game, whether it takes them to a city in the sky, a sunken metropolis, or somewhere they’ve never been before.
BioShock 4 is currently in development.