2K Marin says Rapture is key to BioShock, promises more characters

Same here. :\

You just don't appreciate the great comic relief an unforgettable sidekick can lend to one of these shooter type games!

I felt the same way. I thought I might have missed a part where Marin actually mentioned that character.

HOLY CRAP! A customizable Big Daddy would be almost as cool as you giving me five dollars.

I agree that the original game needed more of those types of characters, though I thought the Sander Cohen bits were rather repetitive and not the strongest part of the game.

I didn't like Fort Frolic. I thought it was kind of dull....

I thought it was a pretty common general consensus that most people enjoyed Fort Frolic because it was so different from the rest of the game. (Pretty sure they even mentioned it on the podcast?) I don't know about anyone else, but I think between the ice man and shotgunning splicers who hurl themselves at you keeping time to ballet music isn't really boring. The atmosphere in that level alone was fantastic. More levels designed around the character and mentality of the people who lived there -- and possibly still do -- instead of only generic faceless residents sounds like a blast to me.

The world presented to us in the first Bioshock was fascinating, but people act like it was all mined already. Hardly. So we got a full picture of Tenenbaum, Ryan, Fontaine, and Cohen. That's IT. For an entire city population, that's a lot of potential perspectives left totally untapped. (And if they find more ways to reveal character and personality outside of found audio recordings, all the better.)

@stupei ace defective: I think people are skeptical about this sequel because it is not under Kevin Levine anymore, and because a lot of people are afraid of a "rehash" of the previous game, and returning to Rapture SEEMS to confirm these assumptions. Plus, many felt that BioShock was great as a standalone, masterpiece of a game and they didn't want a sequel period.

As for your argument, Sander Cohen was most likely spliced up AND definitely crazy AND he "hid his face from the camera" --- all attributes that are the opposite of what Jordan Thomas specifically mentioned as new character insertions. If anything, a new Sander Cohen type character is the opposite of what Thomas is talking about introducing into BioShock 2.

@ Saria the Cat In the context of the interview, the "hid his face from the camera" thing is directly in response to Thomas saying that they wanted to address complaints about the first game -- specifically that every character who wasn't a boss fight tended to interact with you through a glass window. When you finally see Tenenbaum, her character model doesn't even acknowledge you standing there. I didn't at all mean to suggest that I want a photocopy of Sander Cohen with an identical set of characteristics. What I mean by a Sander Cohen experience is a character who isn't just a voice on the radio, but in fact seems to have an impact and a presence in the world he inhabits. Every inch of Fort Frolic has Cohen's fingerprints on it and there is more than one set piece where he has a direct impact on your interactions with the game -- through the splicers who drop down from the ceiling freaking you out the first time to the dancing couple in his apartment or his grand entrance on the stairway. That's more than you get from any other character in the game.

So the guy responsible for the area of the last game that had some of the most in-depth interactions with another character is heading part two and says there are going to be deeper characters with more meaningful interactions? Not exactly shocking, but good news all the same. I mean, it's a video game, so any promises of unforgettable encounters and guaranteed empathy have to be taken with a grain of salt, but no more so than anything else running on AI.

And honestly, I have no idea why anyone ever thought Bioshock 2 would take place somewhere other than Rapture. What, because of a shot of a beach in a teaser? Really?

Personally, I didn't finish Bioshock and think "well, that really stood all on its own and I have nothing else I want to know about the world of Rapture." I thought, "Well that's great, so what about all the other people?" Maybe I'm weird. Don't get me wrong, I thought the story of the Little Sisters was interesting, but it never struck me as the ONLY story there was to tell in the city. The fact that there are so many other lives and lifestyles hinted at in the audio diaries that are never dealt with except for a mere glimpse suggested to me from the beginning that they knew they had a lot they could go back to in a sequel.

I mean, I could see if people were complaining that they are burnt out on plasmids -- well actually, no I couldn't, because they were fun and if the game finds a way around obnoxious collect-a-thon missions at the end of an area then its gameplay will be BETTER than the first -- but the main complaint seems to be that we're going back to Rapture. In a game praised for its innovative story concepts and the interesting universe, it's weird that people are so upset by the idea that the game at least MIGHT reveal more about a world where we've only just scratched the surface.

I don't think Fort Frolic was particularly memorable. *Sander* was memorable, but mostly as an adversary. Also, the only thing that separated him from all the other characters is that you could choose whether or not to kill him.

I don't think that's what the new developers have in mind. And once again, they are *new* developers, and this game is essentially high-production fan fiction. It may be good, but skepticism is certainly warranted.

Fort Frolic wasn't exceptionally beautiful or scenic, but Fort Frolic IS Sander Cohen. His creepy obsessions adorn every wall. That's what I meant about personality. There are plenty of locations in the first game that are more majestic, but few that embody their inhabitant so well.

And @HitNRun, sure, skepticism is always a good idea, but that's the case with nearly every video game. There are a million factors that can go just the slightest bit wrong one way or another and wreck an otherwise wonderful gaming experience. Approaching the promises developers make to us with skepticism is just smart self-preservation at this point. The response to this one so far, however, hasn't really been skeptical so much as outright derision even before we saw any gameplay footage.

@stupei ace defective: Oh, I am in the same boat as you in terms of that lust for more story after beating the game. And I remain skeptical yet hopeful. I just understand why other people are up in arms about BioShock 2. You don't want to see a beautiful thing ruined.

It would be great to see better character development. It was really the immersive atmosphere (and that includes the characters) that made the first game for me, and I want this second game to draw me in just as much.

Saying "Bioshock is Rapture" is like saying "Star Wars is the Death Star."

Big Daddie plushie +1

I think it's more like saying, "Lost is The Island". Which would be more accurate.

I don't know if you could consider the Death Star in the Star Wars movies to be a character, but you can consider The Island a character because it seems to have a will of it's own.

I fail at commenting.