The original Bioshock was a fantastic looking game when released in 2007, and it still holds up pretty well today. Graphics have advanced quite a bit since then, however, as anyone can see in Bioshock Infinite.
It makes you wonder how great the original would look if it were rendered with a modern graphics engine, but you don't have to speculate. YouTuber Noodlespagoodle has recreated segments of the game in Unreal Engine 4. He gathered the assets from the original game and produced the video below.
The results look very good, and provide an exciting taste of what we can expect moving forward into the next generation. This is only the work of one person and, while it looks good, you can imagine what a full professional development team would be able to do. We've seen tech displays that use the Unreal 4 Engine, but a game in motion is a different beast.
The shadows and lighting are particularly impressive in Unreal Engine 4, I think, as those aspects have always been a strong point of the engine. The object models and the Big Daddy look good, but I'm not quite as wowed by those aspects.
The fly-through of the room, containing some flickering lighting, various objects, and a Big Daddy character, ends at 1:15 in the video, giving way to an actual walkthrough of the room from a player perspective. This view gives you a chance to appreciate the graphics as you would in-game, an up-close look at the effects and models. Hopefully we'll see the engine in real games soon!
