BioShock Interview

The guys at CVG are next in line with a detailed BioShock interview, though this particular Q&A offers some insight from senior designer Joe McDonagh.

Q: There’s been a lot of talk in the run-up to release about the Little Sisters and the emotional choices you make. Is there a lot of those 24-style decisions you’ll have to make in the game?

A: This game is all about choice. That’s the central and most important principle of this game. I think when dealing with narrative you always have to have gameplay ramifications. If the story has no relevance to gameplay people just don’t care about out.

So what we’ve tried to do is make those choices profoundly powerful and moral. I think that it’s easily been the most challenging part of this game; getting that right.

I’m really interested in mature entertainment; I like Taxi Driver, I like The Godfather, so I really want to play games that have really sophisticated moral themes and deal with them in a mature and adult fashion. I don’t want to be patronised and deal with this Disney-style formality or what’s right and what’s wrong.

I think what we’ve done is to effectively ask players to make an unbelievably difficult decision, and express that in a very powerful way. I don’t know if you noticed, but one of the things that’s really amazing is when the Big Daddy dies the Little Sister morns him.

If you watch them walking around she sings to him, she skips along behind him and, you know, it’s uncomfortable; we’re really pressing buttons.

Game designers talk a lot about talking to gamers on an emotional level, and that’s what I think we’re trying to do; engage you in this world, engage you with the fate of people in it and ask you some difficult questions about how you’re going to interact with these people. We’ll have to wait and see if we’ve actually managed to pull that off.