system shock 2 made by same people that made bioshock

So I think that given infinite time you could always do more. Your constraints are defined by the team and the time and the platform, and then of course your ability and imagination. You always have to make decisions and compromises. When you look back at the original game and you think about how overwhelmingly positive the reaction was to it, what do you see about it with 2013 eyes, where you might say “That was a compromise,” or “We could have done that better”? You live with it, you build it, you fall in love with it, then at some point it’s time to cut the cord and let it go. We’re ready to give this game to people and see their reactions because that’s when it gets really interesting, you know, getting out in the world.

How are you doing? It’s been what, seven years since I saw you, before the first BioShock came out? (This is part one of a two-part interview - part two is here.) I tap Google Voice’s record button and we’re off. Nowadays he’s under intense scrutiny from BioShock wonks, following up one of the highest-rated games of all time (he wasn’t directly involved in the official sequel, BioShock 2) with BioShock Infinite: a thematically linked first-person shooter that trades BioShock‘s deep-down-below for the way-up-high, and Rapture’s mid-1950s art deco objectivism-forged claustrophobia for a floating American sky-city dubbed Columbia circa 1912 - a city riddled with fascism, racism and religious zealotry. Before Irrational, he worked for one of my all-time favorite design houses, Looking Glass Studios, helping craft the watershed stealth PC game Thief: The Dark Project.

No pressure! Levine is the co-founder and creative director of Irrational Games, where he’s been the guiding hand behind video game milestones like System Shock 2 and the Freedom Force real-time strategy games. Which is good, considering he’s about to release one of the most anticipated video games since, well, the original BioShock. Henry-winning story, my chest compressed as if by galactic forces. I’m a runner, too, though as I’m speaking to him by phone, listening to him catch his breath, I feel like I imagine the characters in Kevin Brockmeier’s “The Ceiling” must by the end of that elegiac O. Aha, I think, something we have in common.

System shock 2 made by same people that made bioshock