sisslethecat
Announced officially a few years ago (albeit without a scrap of information), BioShock 4 continues to allude attempts to get hype about it. Yesterday, we got our first real update on it in years — thanks to job listings made by the new developer, Cloud Chamber:
On the one hand, these are all very interesting — on the other hand, there’s two major aspects to this that stand out. One of which is that, despite having been announced over a year ago now, work doesn’t seem to have progressed much in that time. Hiring senior writers, modelers, and world designers seems like something that would’ve been done first, but perhaps the project has hit some rough patches along the way. Presumably not as rough as some other games recently, but it still seems surprising. The other aspect is actually reading through the description for the senior writer listing:
Cloud Chamber is looking for a Senior Writer to join our talented Narrative team to bring the world of BioShock to life once again. Under the supervision of the Lead Writer, and collaborating closely with the Narrative and Design teams, our Senior Writer will craft memorable narrative arcs, write dialogue, and breathe life into our characters. Experience in writing for games, with a particular aptitude for managing the nuances of interactive storytelling, would be ideal for this role. We’re hoping to find someone who can weave impactful, character-driven stories in an open world setting.
Open world you say? The first two games in the series used an interconnected series of hub-worlds, that could be traveled back and forth throughout the game, while BioShock Infinite went with a more or less completely linear design. Jumping the series into an open world seems like quite the change, especially given the series’ core loop being designed around combat arenas mixed with exploration. This listing seems to indicate a much stronger emphasis on character interactions, something that was deliberately absent from the first two games (as Jack and Delta couldn’t speak, and the characters they interacted with were often kept at an arm’s length), and handled entirely in scripted cutscenes in BioShock Infinite.
The game is seemingly still years away, so it’ll be quite a while before we know for sure what direction they plan to go in here, but these listings seem to give us a pretty good idea. You can look over all of their listings here, in case your curious (or looking to join their team yourself). We’ll keep our eyes open for more information, hopefully sooner rather than later.
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