BioShock 2: Undersea Dystopia, Continued

Say you find yourself in a highfalutin Sausalito wine bar. You're talking games. What's your go-to franchise? Certainly not Gears of War's meat-and-potatoes shooting, not the blue collar brawling of Madden. No, only the fancypants philosophical leanings and grim dystopian narrative of BioShock will serve. Case in point, this video. 

As everyone not dwelling beneath rocks knows by now, BioShock 2 is coming this fall from 2K's new Marin studio north of San Francisco. The development team features several key members of the original Boston and Australia teams, and indeed BioShock 2 itself features most of the key elements--art design, locations, open-ended action, foreboding atmosphere--of the original game. But the Rapture of 10 years later is even more broken down and dangerous than in the first game.

I'm surprised 2K has chosen to show so much of BioShock 2's main antagonist the Big Sister this early on. She's got the appearance and strength of a Big Daddy, the telekinetic powers of a tweaked-out Splicer, and the nimble moves of a ninja. She's the new ruler of Rapture and she's hellbent on preserving the ecosystem--splicers, Little Sisters, and Big Daddies--that the player character demolished in the first game. When you disrupt that hierarchy, you'll get to see her up close and personal.

The Big Sister is a scary opponent, but she won't be invincible; 2K Marin says you'll be able to defeat her (though they didn't use the word "kill") when she attacks, and you'll be rewarded in a handsome, unique way for doing so. Who the Big Sister is and why she's kidnapping little girls from the mainland, bringing them to Rapture, and turning them into a new generation of Little Sisters are pieces of information that will surely be central to the story in the new game.

The design of your character, the first-ever prototype Big Daddy, allows for a strange mix of brutal melee attacks (the Big Daddy's drill and shoulder charge are front and center) and plasmids. If you look closely at the character's left hand, you'll see little holes that seem specifically designed to expose the flesh of the man inside and provide an outlet for plasmid powers like Incinerate. Why was he designed that way? I'm especially looking forward to seeing how 2K Marin ties together all these narrative threads, referencing events that happened even before the first game and bringing them together with the calamity that ensued after you changed Rapture forever.

The designers aren't exactly reworking the formula from the first game; instead they're building directly on what was already in place. From the way you can mix plasmid attacks together (setting Cyclone Traps on fire with Incinerate, for example) to utilizing the Little Sisters as Adam harvesters for your own gain to making use of that diving suit to finally get out into the ocean itself, this seems like it will feel very much like a BioShock game... only a BioShock game that will let you do a few more things than you could the first time.

It must have been a tall order being handed the reins on the BioShock series and having to find a way to further a story that, good ending or bad, felt like it wrapped up tidily after a single game. The quality of this sequel in my mind will absolutely hinge on the skill and narrative savvy with which 2K Marin extends that storyline. How believable, unpredictable, and satisfying will that new story be?

We'll find out this fall when BioShock 2 ships simultaneously to PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 this fall.