BioShock 2 Q&A: the trick to creating a critically acclaimed sequel

The first BioShock game surprised gamers when it debuted on the Xbox 360 in August, 2007. It was a horror-shooting game with mature themes and an imaginative story set in an underwater paradise gone bad. Today, Take-Two Interactive’s 2K Games division is launching the sequel, BioShock 2. The first game sold more than 3 million copies and got an average review rating of 94 out of 100 on the review aggregator Metacritic. Jordan Thomas, creative director at 2K Marin, had the task of heading the design of BioShock 2. We talked with him yesterday about the challenge of creating a brand new studio and creating a major sequel to a hit game at the same time. Here’s an edited transcript of that interview.
VB: What were some of the big decisions you had to make in designing this game?
JT: We decided early on to do a true sequel. That means the events of this game take place after the events of the first game. The back story is still in the past, and we are still in an alternate reality compared to real world history. It becomes about uncovering history. The story takes place in 1968, but, again, a different one than we grew up with. You play a Big Daddy, [a creature whose insides are fused with a big underwater diving suit] and your name is Subject Alpha. You are more human-like than some of the later models that were created. Unlike most Big Daddies, you are bonded to a single Little Sister [those are the cute girls that are central to the plot of the original game]. There is a meaningful father-daughter relationship there which provides your character with its primary motive. You wander around the city, pursuing that motive of finding and protecting your Little Sister, regardless of how little you know about that city. It’s mystery-driven. Another big decision was when we decided to include the Big Sister. This is an apex predator in the game, driven by artificial intelligence. She can appear dynamically, wherever you are in the game. The Big Sister starts a dynamic boss fight that occurs based on the player’s actions. If you get too many Little Sisters, she hunts you down. We are pretty happy with how she turned out.
VB: So the Big Sister is completely new?
VT: Yes, she is entirely new. They are made out of Little Sisters who had turned adolescent. We also made a big decision around the multiplayer component.
VB: Were some of these decisions in response to what the fans wanted? I supposed they wanted multiplayer?
VT: The fans wanted lots of things. You couldn’t find a more diverse bunch than BioShock enthusiasts. The game is intensely subjective. Everyone takes a different idea about what its strengths are. We had a lot of warring fans. We tried to compile the biggest trends and at some point we had to depart and pick a few creative vectors that we were interested in. We hoped we would build support for those vectors along the way.
VB: Was some of the story of the sequel planned before the first one shipped?
VT: Not really. Nobody really knew what the response to the original game would be. It had so many challenges that had to do with completing an original game. We casually talked about features for a sequel and high concepts, but it was informal. When 2K Marin was founded, we really started to think about how we would extend the narrative.
VB: BioShock was made by 2K Boston (Irrational Games) and 2K Australia. They are now making something else. They passed the BioShock sequel to you. How did you handle that hand-off?
VT: It was a challenge. 2K Marin had to build a studio from scratch in tandem with the development of this game. The 2K label wanted to create their own development house in the Bay Area. They seeded us with several people who became project leads. Alissa Finley from the original BioShock team joined us as project manager and provided what we desperately needed. The rest of us were artists and designers who worked on the original game. There were only eight of us at the time. Our job was to make sure that the city of Rapture was treated properly and that BioShock 2 is worthy of the name. We couldn’t lean to heavily on Irrational, which was working on its own new thing. Instead of pestering them, our job was to pore over the first game and learn everything there was to know about it. We had to be careful about respecting the canon of the first game and its back story. We tried to stay true to that legacy and offer some new surprises without trying to pretend the first game doesn’t exist.
VB: How many people did you have?
VT: Over 100 people across 2K Marin, 2K Australia, Digital Extremes (which did the multiplayer), 2K China, and Arkane Studios as well.
VB: How do you get your arms around a project that big?
VT: There were some growing pains. The original scope of our design was immense. It was too big. It would have really diluted our focus. One of my rookie director mistakes was to go too big at the beginning. That forced us to reshape as we went. Once we found our focus, the quality bar rose very quickly and we ended up with something we are very proud of.
VB: How do you view the commercial side here? The original game sold 3 million copies. I’m sure everyone wants this one to sell 5 million. How do you think about trying to achieve that?
VT: We had to lead our commercial thinking via our critical thinking. If anything, quality and narrative integrity drove the success of the first game.we had to lead our commercial thinking via our critical thinking. quality and narrative integrity drove the success of the first game. Our job has been to uphold the quality bar first and consumers will notice that. If you set out to create a game that is a big seller, typically what you create is something that panders to the audience or is too safe and low-brow. That would have hurt the target for BioShock, which is a mature audience product in terms of themes and not just gore. We tried to lead by what we thought the critics would say rather than just what some kind of commercial goal.
VB: The surprise of BioShock was that it was popular, given that it had dark themes and very mature story elements. It had lots of blood and horror on top of that. It didn’t seem mainstream at all.
VT: I would agree that the original game hit a sweet spot in critical thought and discourse, as well as fan appetite for something new. It was not about space marines fighting an alien force and spouting one-liners. The conventional wisdom was that if you were not making a game for frat boys to the max, you were naive. We were surprised that people enjoyed the game. I worked on the original and I was skeptical as well. I loved the universe of the game so much, but wasn’t sure if it would be popular. People wanted a better story and more meaningful freedom within the game mechanics.
VB: What things did you fine-tune for the sequel?

VT: I’ll start on the mechanical front. The artificial intelligence is improved significantly. The enemies can use cover of multiple heights. They can jump from ledges to get the drop on you, throw things at you. they can jump off of a wall and land on your face in a single pinball-like maneuver. They can use grenades as a tactical flushing maneuver.
On the player side, the plasmid systems [which allow you to create your own weaponry] changed. We wanted you to feel like you were rolling your own shooter game. If you invest in the tools in the game, you can create weapons that do more damage and become more useful as the harder the game gets. You also get new tactical uses. You get an electro bolt 2 [which lets you shock opponents with electricity] and you are throwing chain lightening. You can fry someone where they stand and the electricity will arc to anyone standing nearby. That’s one example. The plasmids become more interesting rather than stale. That’s true of the weapons system as well. We want your favorite weapons to grow with you. You can wield two weapons at once and that makes things happen more fluidly. In the first game you had to switch weapons a lot. Now you can hold someone with telekenisis 3 and then gore them with your drill on screen. That’s cool. It helps the player feel like they are writing the experience.
On the narrative front, the story [in Bioshock] had to do with the player’s lack of free will. It was mocked. You followed orders. In the second game, your free will defines you. You make a number of decisions about the Little Sisters and the morally gray beings you meet along the way. You pass judgment on each of them and so you shape the outcome of the story in a way that wasn’t possible in the original.
VB: What did you do with the hacking mini game?

VT: It’s substantially different. Even fans of it got sick of it over time. It pauses the world and rips the player out of the simulation. Our goal was to keep it in the simulation. It no longer pauses the game and you can do it from a distance. That helps you plan how you enter a room now. You don’t have to blunder up to it. You can also affect the game; if you hack a security bot, you can do more damage with it if you do better with the hack.
VB: The plot takes place 10 years after the first game’s story. Have you added surprises to it?
VT: Without spoiling the plot, we don’t follow the same usual suspects structure.  We felt people would be watching for that. We went with a different set of reveals that are more personal because the player has direct control over the story. Sophia Lam is the villain and she is the opposite of Andrew Ryan from the first game. She is his old political rival and controls the city. She has created a kind of Rapture community cult called The Family. The player is the ultimate individual and is anathema to her plan.
VB: On the multiplayer game, you have it set in a different time line. Why?
VT: It takes place in 1959 to 1960 during the civil war that tore Rapture apart and brought dystopia to utopia. You take the role of one of several average citizens who were caught up in it. They enter into a kind of biological defense testing program. They’re doing this because they’re addicted to Adam [a regenerative substance] and want to survive in this post-Darwinian bloodbath. You grow your character as in the single-player game and participate in skirmishes that tore the city apart. You see more of the city when it was still utopian. There are unique characters and you can unlock their diaries. You find that Augustus Sinclair, who runs a kind of pyramid scheme in the multiplayer game, is also your companion in the single-player game.
VB: Was this a cheaper game to build since, you are building for the same consoles?
VT: I will not say it was cheaper to create. In terms of knowledge cost, we had a stronger foundation with the game. We had all built levels with the technology.  A lot of us knew what the problems were. But we had to integrate multiplayer and we had simultaneous release on all platforms. Those are big challenges. It was a very difficult game to make.
VB: How often are you going to do these BioShock games?

VT: A quality sequel can be done in just over two years. We took about 2.5 years. We have seen several in this generation of games that come in on that kind of timeline. I think an original game to the standards of something like BioShock take longer, and the original BioShock itself took significantly longer to get right.
VB: How do you feel about your launch window?

VT: I”m relatively comfortable with it. In the shooter space, we offer a lot that other shooters did not. People seem very excited. There are a lot of preorders. We are sanguine, but you never know.
VB: What sort of fan reaction are you looking for?

VT: The interesting thing so far is that no two reviews are a like. We come in at 80 out of 100 for some people and 90 out of 100 for others, but they don’t bring up the same things when they talk about what they love or criticize. They’re as different and night and day. People agree that we are worthy of the BioShock name and that alone is a tremendous thing for a new studio that is following up on a franchise that is beloved. It will be interesting to see what kind of reaction we get when 2K Marin creates something all its own. We are excited to see what comes next.
VB: Is BioShock 3 on the roadmap?
VT: There is nothing concrete enough to start talking about yet.