Tons of BioShock 2 Details From Our Conference Call With 2K Marin and Digital Extremes

February 8, 2010 – Though it took a few minutes for everyone to work out the technical kinks, once the conference call began, a bevy of details began emerging about BioShock 2, which comes out tomorrow.

I was excited (and lucky) to be a part of the conference call, which took place on Friday night and featured Jordan Thomas, Creative Director at 2K Marin, Zak McClendon, Lead Designer at 2K Marin, Hogarth De La Planet, Lead Environment Artist at 2K Marin, Mat Tremblay, Multiplayer Art Director at Digital Extremes and Jesse Attard, Multiplayer Lead Programmer at Digital Extremes. The conference call allowed the minds behind BioShock 2 to discuss any and all subjects pertaining to the blockbuster follow-up to 2007s multiple Game of the Year award winner, BioShock.

While the conference call lasted an hour and a half, I’ve sorted through all of the information to bring you some of the most interesting facts about the game just before its release. So sit on tight kids, here is a flood of BioShock 2 details:

• You will have free will. That’s right, no more “Would you kindly?” manipulating your decisions. You are the first Big Daddy, and you will have your own mind and be able to make your own decisions, whatever they may be.

• Jack Ryan is a figure of intense religious debate in Rapture ten years after his disappearance.

• Some characters will be returning including Tannenbaum and, in a way, Andrew Ryan. His presence is still felt everywhere including in a very creepy amusement park of sorts that was meant to “indocrinate” kids on the subject of Objectivism.

• There is no “canonical” ending to BioShock.

• You are a Big Daddy and yes, you do have a drill.

• You will be much more agile than a classic Big Daddy. You will have the ability to use Plasmids as well.

• Big Daddy’s will still be a tough fight. In addition to the Rosie’s and Bouncers, there will be a new type of Big Daddy to fight as well, the Rumbler.

• Big Sister’s will be a tough opponent. Grown up Little Sisters, these Big Sisters are freaks of nature due to the amount of ADAM that they have been injecting.

• Prepare to be ambushed. As a Big Daddy, you can team up with a Little Sister to help you find ADAM, but setting her down to extract the ADAM will lead to some seriously intense ambushes.

• Moral choices will be more difficult. In BioShock it was admittedly just as easy to win the game by saving the Little Sisters as it was to harvest them. In BioShock 2, the journey will be much more difficult if you choose to rescue Little Sisters. You will have to survive on gathered ADAM from bodies rather than harvesting Little Sisters, which requires more exploration, more ambushes, and a longer gameplay experience.

• Vita Chambers can be turned off at the beginning of the game. Remember the Vita Chambers of BioShock? Where you died fighting a Big Daddy, spawned in great health and came roaring back to take him on again? No more. If you want. You can turn off Vita Chambers so that you have to reload a game when you die.

• Big Daddy’s slowly heal. Unlike in BioShock, where Big Daddy’s health would remain steady even if you died, in BioShock 2, they can slowly revive themselves, making the fight much tougher.

• Frequency of encounter is greater in BioShock 2. While BioShock often built up tension and fear by maintaining long periods of silence, BioShock 2 will feature Splicers who are more active in attacking you.

• There will be some “normal” human characters in the game. Not all of the inhabitants of Rapture will be crazies fighting for ADAM. Some will be normal characters who help make the city feel less empty and who are important to the narrative of the story. A complaint from the first game was that there were no normal characters and so the team at 2K Marin corrected that aspect of Rapture.

• The A.I. has been significantly improved. Splicers will work together to set up ambushes. They can all use grenades now and will find cover. They are more mobile and there’s a large diversity of splicer types.

• More weapon upgrades available.

• Improved hacking minigame that doesn’t pause the action around you.

• 2K Marin determined that the final boss in BioShock was one of the weakest aspects of the game. Though short on details about what the final act will involve, they said “Suffice it to say, we’ve done things differently.”

• You can play as a Big Daddy in some multiplayer games. Much like The Tank in Left 4 Dead, the Big Daddy will be available as a randomly assigned character in game modes such as Capture the Sister.

• Many multiplayer modes including: Civil War (Team Deathmatch), Capture the Sister (CTF), Free For All and Atom Grab (Oddball).

• Multiplayer game will take place in Rapture at the beginning of the fall. City will largely be intact, allowing gamers to explore the city of Rapture as it once was.

Have questions about the game that weren’t answered? Ask them below and we’ll do our best to answer them based on our conference call with the development team.