BioShock 4 May Have an Edge Compared to Other Modern FPS … – GameRant

2007's BioShock was one of the best games of the decade, and refined some key philosophies while introducing its own mechanics, presentation, and narrative twists. It's a project that took the structure of System Shock 2 and subjected it to a libertarian spin. In many ways the Irrational-developed BioShock served as a direct response to Ayn Rand's works, but was also a stellar survival horror experience. 2010's BioShock 2 stayed in Rapture while the third game in the trilogy, BioShock Infinite, took to the sky in the floating city of Columbia. BioShock 4 will hope to continue the lofty legacy.

The series has been dormant since Burial at Sea, and though it's never been far from the minds of fans, games like Prey, We Happy Few, and Atomic Heart have done well to bridge the gap and fill the temporarily vacated hole that BioShock once filled. Now being developed by new company Cloud Chamber, BioShock 4 will be looking to reset the standard and swat away the impending competitor Judas, reestablishing its place as the king of first-person environmental storytelling. It's at an immediate advantage over the rest, as it was the one to put the bar so high in the first place, and can't be criticized for being just another BioShock clone.

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While Call of Duty prioritizes twitchy competitive combat and Battlefield insists on being realistic, BioShock is a first-person franchise that puts fun at the forefront. It's always been heavy on its science fiction influences and splicing (no pun intended) of narrative genres. Having a firearm in one hand and an elemental attack in the other gives players choice with each encounter, and makes battling through the setting enjoyable because there's always a trade-off for all the player's potential approaches.

In the first BioShock, for example, players can go in guns-blazing, or carefully use the environment and an ability to do damage in a more inventive way, like shocking a water puddle or using telekinesis to hurl an object from afar. The protagonist of BioShock 4 will surely have access to both guns and plasmids (though they may be called something different), which means that the game will have the same fundamental strength of its predecessors, ensuring it stays on the franchise's pre-prescribed path to success.

BioShock 4 being the newest entry in the series means there will be a lot of scrutiny, but this at least means that it won't have to reinvent the wheel and prove that it's more than just an imitation of Irrational Games' crowning achievement. Titles like the aforementioned Prey and Atomic Heart can be criticized, perhaps fairly, because they take too much from BioShock, whereas the fourth game in that series is building off the innovation of its predecessors. BioShock 4 may be struggling in development hell, but in a way there's less pressure in 2023, because it doesn't have the added requirement of changing the formula to make it different enough from the stories in Rapture and Columbia.

The only game that could perhaps say the same thing is Judas, developed by Ghost Story Games, which is made up of former Irrational Games staff and BioShock creator Ken Levine. Having that heritage could mean that those in the know believe it to be a more faithful continuation of BioShock, but the name means a lot, and BioShock 4 will stand alongside the previous games in the history books. It might be best, then, to rely on tried-and-tested gameplay conventions to help it resonate with existing fans as well as new ones.

BioShock 4 is in development.

MORE: BioShock 4 Can Still Beat Judas to the Punch

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BioShock 4 May Have an Edge Compared to Other Modern FPS ... - GameRant