This week we’ve had some fantastic news. There’s a new BioShock game in the works, which is definitely BioShock 4 because BioShock Infinite is a mianline game to me, and it’s being developed by a brand new studio called Cloud Chamber. If you’re not excited by this news, then why not? the BIoShock franchise has told consistently compelling stories ever since its inception, and that’s mostly because those stories don’t get told unless they’re deemed worth telling by the developers. Now that there’s a group of people dedicated to working on a new BioShock game, I’ve been thinking about where it should go. Here are a couple of ideas I’ve had.
BioShock Cloud Chamber
This one is a little convoluted, so bear with me. A cloud chamber is a very real device that allows the user to detect particles, visualising ionising radiation. You can read more about it here, but that’s the sort of gist I need you to have for the following BioShock story idea.
For this story, players take on the role of a protagonist, who can understand what they’re doing or not it doesn’t matter too much, who is working in a cloud chamber with doorways. The cloud chamber not only gives the protagonist, and whoever built it, the ability to see the visual pathway into other dimensions, which were revealed towards the end of BioShock Infinite, but it also has doors into all of them, or a single doorway that can be configured to each dimension.
The protagonist is just doing maintenance, they aren’t initially someone who is important to the universe. However, an event that leads to a doorway to a new dimension opening thrusts them into the centre of the story, a conspiracy that sees one force attempting to control every dimension or timeline, and they’ve just found this cloud chamber. Whatever happens leaves the protagonist stranded in a new dimension, and they need to work their way back to the doorway so they can come home, but they don’t know where they are.
This is when the story could go anywhere. The dimension’s world would be similar to Rapture, a city built on specific ideals, but it could be anywhere, or in any time. As the story develops, the protagonist would realise that this is just another world that this controlling force is after. Unlike BioShock 1 and 2, in which the city was already destroyed, or Infinite, when we witness the unrest as it happened, this game would have a cold war invasion of sorts. A new group would turn up part way through the story, but the protagonist would know them as this controlling force, whilst everyone else would take them at face value.
By the end of the game the protagonist would have shaped the outcome of events through their actions with key people in the dimension, and key enemies within the controlling force, making for multiple outcomes, none of which would be the right outcome, if that makes sense. The idea for the ending would be to make the player question their choices, and wonder if this dimension would have been better off without their involvement in events.
BioShock but in Space
This idea is much more simple, but still very BioShock. The city would be in space, but the game would remain largely the same. The society is built on an ideal, possibly that they’re better than everyone, but it could also be a slum city that has been created to house the worst of humanity. Instead of the city seeing an uprising, or everyone going mad, the city would be obsessed with currency. The currency in this case could be oxygen or water, and the richest people have it stockpiled.
In an effort to help others, the protagonist could be forced into doing a job for one of these powerful people. The job would be okay on the surface, but have a choice that would split the city, it’s just the protagonist doesn’t know it until they’ve completed the job. Faced with the outcome of their actions, the protagonist is flung into a world that knows what they’ve done, a city split between loving them and hating them. From here the protagonist could become a warlord, taking areas of the city by ordering around their supporters. Alternatively, the protagonist has the option to try to undo their actions, and restore the city to how it was.
Once again, the ending would make the player question everything that they’ve done.
Those are my ideas for a couple of new BioShock games! If you have any ideas I’d love to see them in the comments, so type away. Don’t be afraid to let me know what you think of mine.