BioShock Pitch
Before BioShock was ever released, it had to be pitched to people with money so that it could be created. Considering how strongly the imprint that game has left on the industry, that pitch must make for an astounding read, correct?
If your thinking follows that line (and this gaymer is always interested in how concepts differ from design to inception), Irrational has just the thing for you. They have been slowly releasing bits and bobs from their vaults over the last few months, and now they have released the original Bioshock pitch from 2002.
What you'll note is that while the general gameplay stayed intact (excepting story-based multiplayer deathmatch--so people complaining about its presence in the sequel can rest assured it was meant for the first), the story changed quite a bit. The original yarn appears to focus more of religious fanaticism rather than Ayn Randian objectivists.
Of particular interest is that the original protagonist sounded like a bit more of a character than the non-entity Jack was. While the story around Jack fits, and ties the entire game together, the original concept was to have a character named Carlos Cuello, a deprogrammer sent to the island to infiltrate a cult and save a princess heiress.
Another concept that changed was controlling the environment down to being able to saturate the air with more oxygen molecules in order to make electrical attacks more effective, and other little tweaks as such. While an interesting concept, I can see how that one may have been a little ambitious.
The end of the eight pages we're presented (so far only eight, they plan on episodically releasing more) makes note that everyone is waiting to see what the next Half Life or Halo will be, and that the FPS genre is particularly strong. Truer words...
VorpalBunny
Posted to Miscellany on 21 May 2010
Other stuff like this: 2k, bioshock, from the vault, irrational games, ken levine, pitch
