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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: etc.

The bloodline of "Internet Raiders" is still continuing.

Editor's note: BioShock may not be an old game, but in the 16 years since its launch, it has been regarded as a classic for its contribution to narrative-driven games, excellent production, innovative play and influence. The development of "biochemical Raiders" is also closely related to another older game series that is also popular with players: Looking Glass Studios's "System Shock" series.

As we mentioned in the previous article, the more appropriate and hard-core translation of "Internet Raiders" should be called "system concussion". The background of the game is cyber punk and hacker intrusion that players are familiar with. there are also a lot of innovations in narrative techniques and game design. The development of "Internet Raiders 2" was handed over to Irrational Games, a team that ran away from Looking Glass, and the core of the team created "biochemical Raiders" a few years later.

Today we tell the story of the birth of biochemical Raiders.

The previous article: the entrepreneurial past of the founder of "biochemical Raiders"

In 1999, Irrational Games completed "Internet Raiders 2". The game gained a good reputation, but it was not very successful in business.

"We think that some of the concepts in 'Internet Raiders 2' still have room to expand, and we hope to continue to make games in this category." "those ideas were not very popular at the time," said Jonathan Chey, co-founder of Irrational Games and director of the development of biochemical Raiders. "at least in the years after the advent of Internet Raider 2, there were not a large number of imitators on the market because it was not a hot masterpiece. We think this area has yet to be explored and it should have been more popular."

This is one of the main motivations for setting up the project to develop "biochemical Raiders": developers want to create a game similar to "Internet Raiders 2" but with wider appeal.

Welcome to Soul City. The original idea of creating "biochemical Raiders" was born in 2002. Before that, developers reflected on why "Internet Raiders 2" was called a success.

"We realized that some elements of Internet Raiders 2 hindered the development of the game because they were so complex that they made players feel obscure or didn't like them at all." Chea points out that these elements include tedious operations, excessive menu navigation, and reliance on mouse and keyboard input.

As a design-led studio, developers often focus on the game mechanism rather than any plot elements first. Before finalizing any real plans or prototypes, the development team envisioned a highly recognizable way to play. In essence, the system divides in-game NPC into three types-drones, protectors and reapers. Among them, the drones' duty is to transport some valuable resources, the protectors will help the drones to complete the job, and the reapers will try to plunder the resources. The system was first proposed in 2002 and lasted until 2007 when the game was officially released.

"We created the role of the little sister because of the mechanism of the game at first." "according to our imagination, these creatures are like moving treasure boxes, walking around the checkpoints, and other creatures will take care of them," Chey explained. "however, we haven't made up our mind about what role to create to take on this task for quite a long time."

"biochemical Raiders" was originally developed separately by Irrational Games Boston, but as the project grew, developers quickly realized that it needed everyone in the company to be involved in building a series of systems that Irrational Games wanted to make the game world look authentic, whether players were involved or not. "so in the end, we designed little sisters, big dads and tinkers." "some of the monsters in the game are very interesting, they interact with each other, and players can interact with them in a variety of ways, not just looking for the best angle to shoot monsters," Chey said. "

Over time, the team gradually settled on the image of the little sister. "the little sister was originally called the collector and went through many iterations in the design. they crawled around like slugs, sucked things from corpses, and it took a while to become little girls in the game."

In the little sister's world, the enchantment city no longer hates terror, the body becomes an angel, and the blood becomes a rose petal background during the development of "biochemical Raiders." they also considered using a similar setting to "Internet Raiders": in a dark story full of political topics, players go to a space station to fight genetically modified mutants and save other characters from evil organizations. The development team eventually abandoned the concept, and Ken Levin, the screenwriter of biochemical Raiders, came up with other ideas.

"according to our original idea, the story took place on an island after World War II." Recalling the inspiration of the story of biochemical Raiders, Chey said, "during the war, the Nazis built a secret base on the island, but it was later abandoned, leaving only some fanatics and the results of their crazy experiments." There are obvious similarities between that secret base and Soul City in the game, and you can imagine how it gradually became an underwater metropolis conceived and built by Andrew Lane. Of course, it has also undergone many changes in the whole process. "

The change in the final theme of biochemical Raiders has something to do with 2K Games's acquisition of Irrational Games. 2K allows you to create any story freely, as long as you ensure that the core game mechanism of the little sister and big dad remains the same. Later, Levin visited the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York, witnessed its Art Deco aesthetics and learned about the troubles encountered during the construction of the Rockefeller Center. Inspired by it, he put forward the concept of Soul City.

In biochemical Raiders, Soul City is an undersea city built by the villain Andrew Lane, whose name is similar to that of Ann Rand, an American writer and founder of the philosophical school of objectivism, whose rational egoism has become one of the core elements of the game narrative.

At this stage, the positioning of "biochemical Raiders" is no longer limited to the spiritual sequel of "Internet Raiders 2", but hopes to tell a richer and deeper story.

The art style of the game is quite special, only a few games in the world can be called "art", "biochemical Raiders" is one of them. "generally speaking, the development process is getting smoother and smoother." "We used the Divine Theft engine when we made the two 'cyber Raiders', while the 'Bio Raiders' became the 'Unreal' engine," Chey said. of course, apart from the 'Theft' series, Raider 2 is the only project that uses this engine, so it's hard to even call it an engine. "

For the team, the engine change brings a lot of benefits because they have accumulated a wealth of experience by developing "SWAT 4" and "Tribes" using the "Unreal" engine. " We already know a lot about 'illusory' engines and can spend less time doing basic work and more time doing more complex things, especially in narrative and screenwriting. I think any FPS game has to start doing this after the half-life. "

"biochemical Raiders" gave birth to the term "narrative imbalance" (Ludonarrative Dissonance), which is used to explore the contradiction between the mechanism of play and the theme of the story. "biochemical Raiders" has more plot scenes than "Internet Raiders 2". "there are only a few episodes in 'Internet Raiders 2,' and it's a little rough," Chey said. the script itself is quite good, but from the current point of view, the animation effect and the way of expression are ridiculous. "

During the development of biochemical Raiders, Irrational also avoided some of the problems that Internet Raiders 2 had encountered, including too high operational accuracy for players and too cumbersome or complex menus. Biochemical Raiders not only introduces players to the features of the game more efficiently, but also minimizes and simplifies player interaction outside the way the game is played. To achieve this goal, biochemical Raiders introduced vending machines tied to specific games, allowing players to interact with various mechanisms in the game world without having to look for the necessary options in a series of menus.

For example, players can upgrade their character abilities through the "Collector Garden" machine in the game, use the "gene pool" machine switching skills, find "people power" machines to upgrade weapons, or store the necessary items in the "value Circus". This may sound more complex than various menus and submenus, but it is more natural, intuitive and easy for players to interact with vending machines in the game world than using the mouse and keyboard to manipulate menus in traditional PC role-playing games.

Internet Raiders 2 combines science fiction, horror and role-playing elements, and the supernatural ability system of the creepy AI image "SHODAN" and "Internet Raiders 2" has not been fully utilized. " Chea added, "it's cool, but in the context of the game, it's not as important as we thought." Developers had hoped to use the system to encourage online Raiders 2 players to try different styles and replay the game over and over again, but found it too easy to be ignored.

"We think it's a waste, and most people don't even know how to get through the game, let alone play it three times. Therefore, we hope to give players more unified access to these systems. Compared with the supernatural ability system of Internet Raiders 2, the plasmid system of biochemical Raiders plays a more important role in narrative and play."

Based on the experience of creating a supernatural ability system for Internet Raiders 2, developers have made it clear which abilities or skills should be eliminated in the development of biochemical Raiders. "biochemical Raiders are more focused on the overall situation in design. Some of the considerations in Internet Raider 2 are not very mature, there are several supernatural abilities that are useful, but many other skills go unnoticed." "because we have built similar systems, we can ensure that all capabilities are widely used in biochemical Raiders," Chey said. "

Far-reaching impact from "biochemical Raiders" to the completion of development, inseparable from the financial support of 2K Games, Irrational Games improved all aspects of "Internet Raiders 2" and finally came up with a better game. " I hope biochemical Raiders can present a large number of gameplay systems from Internet Raiders 2 to more gamers, and at the same time, Ken (Levin) has implemented many narrative ideas that he thinks are very important in this game. "

In August 2007, the first generation of "biochemical Raiders" landed on PC and Xbox 360platform and achieved great success. "biochemical Raiders" won several "Game of the year" awards and later developed into a series that sold millions of copies, with players and commentators praising the narrative theme and the integration of role-playing elements. And iconic visual effects. Of course, this does not mean that "biochemical Raiders" does not have any defects.

Chea admitted that the "biochemical Raiders" was a bit of a failure, and the second half disappointed many people. " Boss battle is not the focus of our research and development, I find that we are not always good at making endings, whether it is "Internet Raiders 2" or "Bio Raiders", the ending is the worst part. This tends to put a lot of pressure on us: we need to make the ending cool enough and create something special, including Boss wars, new environments, and so on. "

However, biochemical Raiders still left a deep impression on people. "it's a great game, but in my opinion, its greatest achievement is to prove that this kind of game has a market." "I even think it spawned the whole market," Chea said. Compared with similar games such as Internet Raiders 2, Breaking out the siege, Theft: dark Project and Genesis: underworld, biochemical Raiders is the first to sell more than 1 million copies. It makes many publishers, including 2K, have a strong interest in this kind of game, in addition, I think it also affects a large number of other games in the same category. "

On the other hand, biochemical Raiders has also made many players realize that FPS games can be smarter, more in-depth stories and fascinating ways to play, rather than always letting players point guns at their enemies' heads. "I am very satisfied with biochemical Raiders, and there is no doubt that it is one of the proudest works of my entire career in developing games." Chea said.

Predation in 2017 is the best of many spiritual sequels, not the ending. Sixteen years later, most of the main developers of biochemical Raiders left the field of large-scale narrative games.

Chea left Irrational Games early to make some small mobile games in his new studio in his hometown of Australia. Ken Levin stayed and completed the Bio-Raiders trilogy, 2010's Bio-Raiders 2 and 2013's Raiders: infinity, which is a prequel to the original game.

After the release of biochemical Raiders: infinite, Irrational Games announced a restructuring, downsized and renamed Ghost Story Games, with the aim of developing smaller games. Levin is still the leader of the small studio, with about 15 people in his hands. After that, the development team fell into a long silence, publicly reporting that Levin had changed the direction of development many times and that new projects had been restarted so many times that no results had been shown in seven or eight years. However, at the end of 2022, Levin came up with a trailer for his new film "Judas", which worked well at the game awards. This is a sci-fi theme of the first-person shooter, from the art style, still with a strong "biochemical Raiders" mark.

The painting style of "Judas" is very outstanding. 2K retains the copyright of "biochemical Raiders". In 2019, 2K's subsidiary Cloud Chamber announced that it would continue to produce "biochemical Raiders" games, and the former artistic director and level designers of the "biochemical Raiders" series also joined the studio. No more information has been revealed about the new work.

At present, the closest "Raider" lineage to players is the "Internet Raider: remaking", which is expected to go on sale in March this year. The creation of the game is magical-it was started by Stephen Kick, a fan of the series and game artist, who set up his own company, Nightdive Studios, to buy the rights to the series through distribution and other funding, and began making a remake of the first generation of the series in 2015. The reproduction has completely revolutionized the original graphics, sound and UI, and even invited dubbing actors from the original villain "SHODAN" to participate in it, but the various stories that happened during development may be enough to write another article.

No matter what the quality of the game is, this is the first chance for the new generation of players to get to know the classics up close. The bloodline of "Internet Raiders" continues.

At least a modern game acceptable to everyone. This article was compiled from: https://www.gamesradar.com/the-making-of-bioshock-how-irrational-games-created-an-fps-thats-still-celebrated-15-years-on/

Original title: "The making of BioShock: How Irrational Games created an FPS that's still celebrated 15 years on"

Original author: Adam Barnes

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