BioShock is undergoing some big changes just as the gaming industry enters the next generation of consoles. 2K opened a new studio, Cloud Chamber, to tackle a fourth installment in the franchise. The studio has expressed a desire to deliver the kind of experience fans expect from the series, but there are some big opportunities for the new title to push itself to the limits.
From the size of its world, the unfolding of its story, and its combat, the next BioShock game should try and deliver an experience which takes the series far beyond its first three games. Though Cloud Chamber will likely be tentative to make large changes in the studio’s first outing with the franchise, here are some changes that should be made to make the next BioShock a truly next-gen experience.
BioShock World and Storytelling
BioShock games are known for their worlds. Rapture, the underwater libertarian dystopia from BioShock 1, 2, and the Buried at Sea DLCs for Infinite is an incredibly famous setting. Columbia, the main setting from Infinite, took players to a floating World Fair-style city in the sky, but the focus on the game’s setting as its primary metaphor for exploring the rise and fall of an ideology remained the same.
While the new BioShock should of course try and create a new original city which has its own story to tell and its own philosophy to put under the microscope, this will likely already be a priority for the team at Cloud Chamber. What should be focused on, however, is the potential the new next-gen engines have to make a BioShock city which pushes the game’s technology limits as well as its story.
The new BioShock game should consider building a huge, open-world city which players can explore. Previous installments have proven to be relatively linear despite promising big cities to explore, with players unlocking new areas by progressing through the story and usually running and gunning from point A to point B.
The fourth BioShock should aim to create a bigger city than the games have seen so far, and could even aim to tell a story which can unfold in a number of different ways depending on which areas are visited first. It shouldn’t be the same as an open-world RPG where the main story takes little precedent, but could perhaps be more similar in its relationship with its game world to titles like the 2018 God of War reboot, which took a more open-world approach than God of War 3.
This allowed for environmental storytelling to flourish. Considering the fact that the BioShock games have relied a lot on environmental storytelling before, particularly through tape recordings which can be discovered throughout the games, creating a larger, more open city setting could be a great step forward for Cloud Chamber’s take on the franchise.
BioShock Combat
The next BioShock should also attempt to fix one long-running criticism of the series. BioShock's combat is not the franchise’s strong suit, with BioShock games often being criticized for the repetitiveness of their combat and the use of bullet-spongey enemies like the Handyman in Infinite.
If Cloud Chamber can transform BioShock into a tighter shooter which accommodates a variety of playstyles and which has greater integration of some of the sci-fi weapons like Plasmids and Vigors into weapon customization, the game may truly feel like a worthy successor to the first three BioShock games. The critical focus on BioShock, particularly the praise, has always been on its story and setting, and while living up to expectations on those fronts will be a big challenge for Cloud Chamber, there are still plenty of opportunities to make the next BioShock feel like a worthy sequel on the next-gen consoles.
BioShock 4Â is in development.