Preview: Let's Look at BioShock Infinite

{sidebar id=1}I am a huge fan of the BioShock series. The original BioShock came out of nowhere to create one of the most atmospheric and well told stories I've experienced within the medium. The second game came along and while the story wasn't nearly as great, the gameplay was absolutely superb. However, the gameplay and story don't matter if it's not accessible in the first place.

BioShock Infinite is being shown off at E3 and it’s a bright change of pace compared to the first two. We no longer are exploring the underwater city of Rapture but are instead atop a city in the skies called Columbia. It takes place much earlier as well, taking place in 1912 as opposed to the 1960s environment of the previous installments. You play as Booker DeWitt, a man tasked with finding someone named Elizabeth who has been trapped in Columbia for a long time. You soon find out she has some powers of her own and is able to manipulate "tears" in the environment that look like they allow her to possible teleport items or people through time and space.

The core gameplay look largely unchanged from the previous titles. Instead of Plasmids you'll be using "Vigors," but they act in the same way. There will of course also be shooting, and it's the interplay between the two that has made BioShock stand above other first-person-shooters. On the consoles these are used with the left and right triggers while on the PC they're mapped to the different mouse buttons. The BioShock games haven't scored incredibly high on our AbleGamers reviews, largely due to mobility. The console versions haven't had remappable controls but the PC versions have very in-depth remapping capabilities. Unfortunately I don't see this aspect changing when BioShock Infinite hits shelves. Ken Levine, founder of the developer Irrational Games, revealed at the Sony press conference that BioShock Infinite will support the Playstation Move, though this will likely require the same amount, if not more, precision than the standard controller.

One of the new aspects of the game is the new type of travel system that goes around the city of Columbia. Its original intention is to latch onto the top of train car-like cabooses for pedestrians to travel about the city. These sky-rails give a new form of movement to the player in a different way, allowing you to latch on to them with a tool and fly across the city at very fast speeds. It's still unclear as to how the player will be able to use these and if they will be scripted or not, but from the videos it looks like they will be very faced paced firefights taking place while using these sky-rails.

Colorblind gamers have a reasonable cause for concern while approaching the BioShock series, since BioShock 2 shipped with a minigame that made the game almost unplayable for red/green colorblind players. Luckily they became aware of the issue soon after launch and released a patch that corrected the problem. BioShock 2 was under a different developer though, so hopefully Irrational can learn from their mistakes and not repeat them.

Dialogue subtitles have also always been supported, but enemy noises are surprisingly absent. BioShock Infinite is still a decent time away, releasing at some point in 2012, so anything could still be included. I definitely look forward to more information from Irrational Games about BioShock Infinite in the future.