Interesting interview with Ken Levine on RollingStone

RollingStone.. ahem.. rolled out a pretty cool article about Ken Levine with a really good interview. Levine talks about himself, his relationship with the Bioshock series and struggles with the publisher changing creative choices in favor of balanced gameplay. Some of the insight you gain into his character are really interesting when juxtaposed with the games he helped create. As someone that creates artwork from time to time I definitely can identify with his anxieties about creating something and then putting it out there for the world to judge. It was also really disheartening yet not uncommon to hear a lot of potentially great ideas get shot down by the publisher in order to make a more "gamey" experience, to make sure you don't ruffle too many feathers. While I don't love the Bioshock games from a gameplay perspective, artistically I think they are amazing and truly in a league of their own. Not many titles out there to this day are able to so completely command a sense of time and place.

--LINK-- Check it out

My choice quote from the article is definitely:

RollingStone: Everyone loves the game (Bioshock 1). Almost no one likes that boss battle.

Ken Levine: It's terrible. You have this great game, and then you end up fighting this giant nude dude. We didn't have a better idea.

That's a really insightful interview, I'd love to see some gamplay from that long lost game Levine mentioned.

As a player the battle between creativity and wider appeal is something that also bugs me. It's the reason Elder Scrolls games have got more generic with each game after Morrowind and I don't agree with it. People aren't going to not play a game beacuse it's too interesting.

Wait, I thought everyone liked subjugating giant nude dudes? That's what Giant Bomb led me to believe anyway.

I'd be interested to hear the dev commentary in the remaster, especially for the very end of the game.

"And now we have an escort quest with no failure state, and we...we were just out of ideas okay. Anyway our artist was pretty heavily into Watchmen...."

Great interview. Can't wait for the commentary when the game launches on PC in 12 hours.

This line sums me up pretty well. "Well, we're a miserable species. I am born with a depressive, anxious brain. So I'm full of regret.I use regret to say, "How can I do it better in the future?""

@alistercat: yah I'm real curious to replay that first game for the commentary but it's a bummer that it's apparently "hidden in the world" as collectibles instead of just being prompts in areas like the way Grim Fandango did it.

I've played it. : D

Was it as terrible as he purports it to be?

@humanity: It was a long time ago so anything that old to me seems rough at this point, hah. It's very tough for me to go back to older games.
I remember it just like he says though, very PS2ish era like a Zelda with a Legacy of Kain type of vibe in my opinion. It was far from complete at the time so some roughness was expected but nothing really sticks out in the slice I got to play. I remember a grappling hook for some reason if memory serves me correctly. Was maybe 13 years ago. : )

@franstone: Nothing with a grappling hook in it can be bad.

Definitely an interesting interview; it offers plenty of new insights into the development of the Bioshock games and the closure of Irrational. I liked that Levine's responses were candid.

I thought the reward structure for saving should be very minimal. You should really feel it in the gameplay: "Fuck, how am I going to get through this if I don't harvest?"

The fact that you ended up getting more ADAM by saving the Little Sisters always kind of annoyed me. It didn't seem thematically consistent. Regardless of their shortcomings, I loved Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite and they are among the best games I've played.

@humanity: Also, for what it's worth, I really liked what I've seen of you artwork and I hope to see more :)

The game that Ken Levine mentioned was eventually released by the company FX Labs and was called Agni : Queen of Darkness

@colossalghost: Yup! Grappling hook!