If you played BioShock, you remember the opening level of the game. Who could forget it?
In a cool new video, ex-Irrational designer Bill Gardner sits down with IGN‘s Ryan McCaffrey to play through “Welcome to Rapture”, the iconic opening level from the first BioShock. They chat while they play, hitting topics that range from the origins of the baby carriage revolver-splicer to the great internal debate over whether players should be able to use a wrench to break locks off doors.
If you’re a BioShock nerd, it’s a fun watch. I replayed the first five or so hours of this game little while back and was struck by just how much gusto it has, and what a showstopper of a performance it often was. Gardner describes their team as hungry, and nearly a decade since the game came out, that still shows: These people had something to prove, and they proved it.
Be right back, gonna go replay BioShock again.
Comments
12 responses to “A Trip Back Through BioShock’s Fantastic Opening Level”
I sure do remember it. Seeing as it’s one of the few games that made me stop and go “oh. I wish I had that money back” 😛
But at least it was only $15, so not that big a loss.
With you there…. Got repetitive fast and always felt “floaty”.
Got suckered on Infinite too…. grumble grumble grumble…. At least i finished that one…
Seriously? What was it that made you feel like you’d wasted your $15 on it? Not trying to be an asshole, just genuinely curious.
Kinda what mypetmonkey touched on up there. It didn’t “feel” right. And it just didn’t seem fun at all.
It’s hard to remember clearly, since it was a good while back now. I’d always been interested in the game since reading about it in Hyper or whatever, and it sounded really cool. Finally ended up with a 360 so I could actually give it a go, went to get stuck into it and it was just “nup, I can’t play this”.
My god I miss hyper badly 🙁
It wasn’t a solid shooter and it had watered down RPG and horror elements and I think it had 3 types of enemy with limited AI.
If you dug the setting, all the rest was just gravy really
what? what is this??? …….
one of the better game openings I have played in a long time, sets the tone and world up quite nicely.
Easily makes my top 10 of all time, it has an atmosphere that few games top for me.
Probably the last game that I was truly hyped for from its announcement and I wasn’t disappointed when it came out. Amazing opening, atmosphere, location, set pieces. One of the few games I’d consider equal part art and part game but one that excels in both areas.
I both thoroughly enjoyed Bioshock and also ultimately disappointed by the time I reached the end. I was a big fan of System Shock and could see the influence. It definitely felt like a “lite” version, but I was alright with that. What left me disappointed was at the end of the game I was essentially a master at all trades. When I finished System Shock (more specifically, #2), I immediately started up the game again, building a Psi character to see how they played where before I was more into hacking. Bioshock had a little tool to do the hacking for me, could use all the weapons and had the best plasmids. There was no reason to replay.
I would have liked to have seen a mode where you couldn’t use all plasmids, weapons and build turrets, just enough to focus on one or another. Maybe have all the weapons but if you had the best upgrades, you couldn’t use the best plasmids and vice versa? Ditch the auto-hacking too. For me, Bioshock 2 did the opposite – it turned it even more into a linear shooter than #1.
Bioshock is still one of my favourite games, I just wanted more replay value.
I was thinking of streaming a ‘No Adam’ run.