Well, it’s pencils down time at Irrational Games.

Our goal has always been to make the player a participant in our games. The worlds of Rapture and Columbia are dripping with detail and story. Combat is full of player-driven options.

We don’t want you to observe Booker DeWitt as he fights his way through BioShock Infinite. We want you to be him.

BioShock Infinite’s city of Columbia is a place of mystery, danger and action. And after nearly five years of building it, I’m proud to tell you it no longer belongs to Irrational Games. It belongs to gamers.

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Hi everyone. As I’m sure you are aware, BioShock Infinite will be gracing our consoles soon for some more high quality first person shooter action and we’ve teamed up with the team at 2K Games to bring you some great pre-order offers to whet your appetite!

Firstly, everyone who pre-orders BioShock Infinite through the PlayStation Store will automatically be given the first BioShock as a free gift on delivery of BioShock Infinite.

Secondly, PlayStation Plus members will receive 10% off the Season Pass price from today until the launch of BioShock Infinite on 26th March.

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The toughest question to answer is “How do you write for a BioShock game?” Wait, let me back up.

I started at Irrational almost a year ago. At that point, there wasn’t a “writing team”, it was just Ken Levine. Luckily, Ken is a smart guy and knew that the game was going to be big. Bigger than any game he’d worked on before.

So I tricked him into hiring me, and a couple months later we realised it was still a REALLY BIG GAME, so Joe Fielder tricked us into hiring him as well. And the three of us, along with Jordan Thomas, tried to wrangle the beast that is BioShock Infinite.

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In a clever touch, the opening of BioShock Infinite subtly parallels the first moments of the original BioShock. In both games you find yourself adrift in an angry ocean, slowly making your way towards a lighthouse that juts proudly from the sullen sea. The key difference this time is that you don’t plunge into the frigid depths of the Atlantic, but soar far into the heavens above in search of Columbia, a rogue city-state that seceded from the US in an alternate-history version of 1912.

In both games, things are not as they first seem. BioShock’s undersea city of Rapture ran on ambiguous agendas cloaked in philosophy and punditry, but was clearly in its death throes from the first moment you set foot in its haunted hallways.

Columbia’s sickness is also terminal but lies deeper, eluding immediate detection. In fact, your first 30 minutes in Columbia are warm and peaceful, almost idyllic. The glow of countless candles lights your way into the city, while angelic choirs drone pleasantly in the background.
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Imagine you get to work with Robb Waters, the concept artist who visualized the cover of System Shock. The Trickster in Thief. Man-Bot in Freedom Force. BioShock’s Little Sisters. Sander Cohen. And BioShock Infinite’s Songbird.

Now imagine you can get him to personally conceive and oversee the production of the coolest statue in the world.

Then imagine we put that huge sucker in a period-style box, with custom artwork by Robb and Irrational concept artist Jorge Lacera. And that box went IN the collector’s edition box so you could leave that guy unpunched in his original packaging while you tear happily into the rest of the goodies.

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