The BioShock Franchise

Objectivism, Collectivism, Jingoism. BioShock is a place of -isms.

Among video game franchises, BioShock is the one of the most visually and morally ambitious, under the watchful eye of Irrational Games creative director Ken Levine. And with BioShock Infinite, the third game in the franchise, about a year away from release, and a possible film adaptation in the works, I thought now would be the good time for a retrospective on the franchise.

Who's Yo Daddy?

The original 2007 game is one of the most visually stunning video games ever, with a deep and intricate mythology and even tighter gameplay. Regarded by many as a spiritual successor to Irrational's earlier effort System Shock 2, BioShock ranks among my favorite video games. From hunting Big Daddies and saving their Little Sisters to learning the tale of Andrew Ryan's creation of the underwater Objectivist society known as Rapture, it is one of the most emotionally involving games of all time. Therefore, when a sequel was announced in late 2008, color me excited.

Being a Big Daddy ain't as cool as it sounds.

BioShock 2, released in 2010, brought back most of the franchise's familiar elements, and gave a new protagonist in the form of one of the original Big Daddy prototypes, Subject Delta. Unfortunately, you never really feel like a Big Daddy, with a gameplay system that was almost exactly the same as the original. If you were another human, this wouldn't be a big deal, but as Delta, you fell just as easily as Jack would to weak Splicers in the first game. With a Rapture that lost its sense of wonder, to a Collectivist conflict in the story that felt awfully tacked on with its female antagonist (which paled in comparison to the original concept), to the greatly oversimplified yet ridiculously overpowered Big Sisters (the original concept featured just one as the main villain, and that idea was AWESOME), you'd have to wonder why the game feels like such a carbon copy of the original. And then you realize it's because the game was developed by 2K Marin, the people who ported the original game to the PS3, and the ambitious minds at Irrational were scarcely involved at all. Marin gave it their all, but BioShock 2, while being a fun and competent sequel (with a strong final act), just couldn't live up to the original. A new direction was clearly needed.

I'm a little bit country......

Then in August 2010, that new direction arrived, as Irrational Games' "Project Icarus" was revealed to, in fact, be BioShock Infinite. With a new city (the sky-city of Columbia), new powers, a new story, and a new mythology overall, this looks to be the franchise's shot in the arm. Booker DeWitt is no Jack or Subject Delta, having a face and a voice, and a clear objective, that being to rescue Elizabeth, a girl being held captive inside the sky city. Elizabeth has some interesting powers, that Ken Levine refers to as "tears", which allow her to alter reality, while Booker gains powers called Vigors (this game's Plasmids). While Infinite retains some of the old game's concepts, a new setting seems to be what Levine always intended. This could be one for the ages.

As for the film adaptation, it currently appears to be in limbo. Gore Verbinski of the Pirates of the Caribbean series is attached as a producer, while Juan Carlos Fresnadillo of 28 Weeks Later was last set to direct. While 2K Games is still committed to the project, Verbinski says the funding has dried up. I hope this gets made as was intended, but that seems unlikely now.

BioShock Infinite is currently scheduled to be released in the second quarter of 2012.
The BioShock film's release date is unknown.

Star ratings for the first two games:
BioShock - 5/5
BioShock 2 - 3.5/5