Irrational Games' upcoming first person shooter, BioShock Infinite has had numerous delays and set backs during its development. The game is an indirect sequel to the previous games in the series and will be set in a new floating city.
After nearly three years of development, BioShock Infinite will finally release on March 26, 2013 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows PC. In a recent interview with IGN, creative director Ken Levine talked about the game's similarities and differences from the first two entries in the series.
"In terms of what stayed the same between the games, I think the core loop of amazing environment, detailed environment and improvisational combat with a ton of tools in a large tool set is very similar to the first game," Levine told IGN. "I mean, we've changed it to all new tools and all new environments and all new all that stuff, but those themes will remain very much the same."
Levine said that the studio did reuse certain key elements from the original games including several sound effects.
"And then there are certain things that just worked," Levine told IGN. "For instance, the quest sound and when your health is low there's a heartbeat sound. We used exactly the same sound from BioShock 1, just because those live in the meta space as well, so the player's already conditioned, and BioShock players especially, to understand what those things mean. And we worked really hard to get those right in the first game, so we were like 'why reinvent the wheel here?'"
The creative director said other parts of the game would be drastically different from the original BioShock and its sequel BioShock 2.
"Now the rest of the game, there's a fair amount of reinvention of the wheel," Levine said. "We basically walked away from all the things that we thought we were coasting on."
He went on to explain the many similarities between the first two games and said that although those elements worked well, the development team could not continue to coast on their previous accomplishments.
"We figured our audience would be expecting more," Levine told IGN. "They expect more each time and they deserve more each time. And to put down another $60 is a lot of money, and so we kept a lot the same but in terms of the content, there's maybe a few shared assets across the games, but it is an entirely new experience in how you have to think about your character as a person and not just a cipher."
BioShock Infinite will release on March 26, 2013 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows PC. You can read the rest of Levine's interview with IGN here.
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