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BioShock 2: Balancing Big Daddy

• By GamePro Staff
• November 04, 2009 12:27 PM PST
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BioShock 2's lead designer talks about the player's special relationship with Little Sisters, building a balanced Big Daddy protagonist and more.

We talked with BioShock 2 lead designer Zak McClendon about everything from the player's special relationship with Little Sisters in the game, why they eliminated "boss fights," and how they tackled balancing the potentially overwhelming power of BioShock 2's Big Daddy protagonist to ensure that the player still feels threatened by the malformed maniacs inhabiting Rapture.

GP: Many of Rapture's Splicers have become even more grotesque in BioShock 2. Are there other horrific new enemies that you're introducing the player to like the Brute?

Zak McClendon: One of the things we wanted to do for BioShock 2 was bring a lot more variety to the enemy set. When we had the idea of playing as a prototype Big Daddy, we knew we had to introduce enemies that were more vicious than your standard "deranged guy with a flashlight running at your face."

The big one we've got is the Brute Splicer, who is part of the original generation of Splicers, all the way back from 1959, who survived ten long years, splicing up and feeding off his friends. He's developed into this big, beefy beast who's capable of picking up large objects and throwing them at you.

Beyond that, the other Splicers have evolved as well. You've probably seen the Spider Splicers from BioShock -- those are the guys that crawl on the ceilings. The Spider Splicers have evolved since the original BioShock and now have much longer, distended arms that can punch through walls. There will be a bunch of different surprises like that as you play through the game.

GP: Was it difficult balancing the gameplay in BioShock 2 without completely over-buffing the Big Daddy, yet still living up to people's expectations of his power?

McClendon: Early on, living up to the expectations people have for the Big Daddy was definitely one of our first challenges. Since we're saying you're going to play as a Big Daddy, we had to determine what the absolutely essential things we had to include for the Big Daddy were.

If we didn't give players the drill to play with, people would have said "I can't believe they made a game where you're a Big Daddy and you don't have a drill!"

That determined a lot of the weapons and abilities you have in BioShock 2. From there, we figured out what we had to do to with the enemy ecology to have him keep pace with that.

From the core gameplay side, the action gets a lot more intense than the first BioShock. With some of the sequences we've shown, there's a higher turnover of enemies. Some guy with a stick doesn't present much challenge to you as a Big Daddy, but we've got a lot of enemies much higher up on that food chain, such as the Brute Splicer, and even deadlier foes like the Big Sister, who is terrifying to you even as a Big Daddy. Really, it's about finding a way to make you feel strong, but also make you feel threatened.

GP: A new feature implemented in BS2 is the hacking mini-game, which makes taking over bots and turrets much simpler, while still keeping you immersed in the action. What other gameplay tweaks did you guys make between the original BioShock and BioShock 2 to make the experience more streamlined?

McClendon: There a number of other things we've done to keep the player in the moment, which is why we chose to make hacking more weapon-like. It's localized in a weapon on your wrist and the game doesn't stop the rest of the simulation, so it's both more immersive and you can use it more tactically.

For example, you can hack a camera and then run around the corner, or you can hack right in the middle of combat. It was really one of our big "watch words" for the core design, just the idea of immediacy.

We also removed those blockages that players might have to playing with a system. The other big one on that front was switching over to dual-wielding. In BioShock, you had to switch between your weapon hand and your plasmid hand. Although you could still use them in combinations, for a lot of players that one little stumbling block was frustrating.

Now, because you're a Big Daddy, you can wield all those Big Daddy weapons with one hand, performing both simultaneously. It opens up a lot of fluid possibilities for different combinations between your weapons and plasmids, and never draws you out of the action by forcing you to flip through a menu.

GP: Making a sequel to one of the most acclaimed FPS games must have been a monster of a task. How did you guys manage to make Rapture different, but still visually close to the original BioShock?

McClendon: The main sequel challenge is if it's too similar, everyone's going to call you on it. If you're not familiar enough and you make things too different, it no longer feels like the same world.

Trying to figure out that dividing line is incredibly tricky. For us, it just came out of the concept of "ten years later." Rapture's a lot more decayed, it's very much falling apart, and the ocean's creeping in. There are places that have been totally reclaimed by the ocean and are now completely flooded.

That completely transforms the space. Taking places that were true to Rapture was actually one of the easiest things for us to do because we had such strong creative direction from the original game. Underwater, art deco utopia -- it's pretty easy to riff off of that and come up with interesting, new locations that would be in this underwater city.

We have playable locations like Ryan Amusements, which is this "objectivist propaganda theme park," complete with a big ride and animatronics that are meant to scare children from ever wanting to go to the surface. We executed that in the grand Rapture style, with all the gorgeous architecture and ostentatious decoration that they had, and then applied that "ten years later" layer of decay, where the animatronics are rusted, falling apart and shooting out sparks. We just want to capture that familiarity and what Rapture means to people, while making it fresh for them at the same time.

GP: We've learned that there are several references to Andrew Ryan in BioShock 2, even though he's not the game's antagonist this time around. Will BioShock 2 fill the gap in the storyline between BioShock and BioShock 2?

McClendon: Gaps will be filled, such as the things that are more germane to the player's story: our villain, Sophia Lamb, her rise to power, as well as how she opposed Ryan. There are parts of that timeline that are going to be filled in, especially the ten years between BioShock and BioShock 2.

Part of Ryan Amusements came to be such an early level was that we wanted a fun way to show people who never played BioShock what Rapture was all about. So, we came up with this idea of a propaganda amusement park to give first-time BioShock players a Rapture crash course. But, filling in some of those gaps is important to the story overall, even if you've played the original BioShock.

GP: Are Little Sisters going to play a bigger role in BioShock 2 than just harvesting corpses for their ADAM?

McClendon: For the players, it's interesting because as a Big Daddy, there's an expectation that you've got a special relationship with the Little Sisters. You mean something to them and they trust you implicitly. The player as a prototype Big Daddy bonds to one special Little Sister that you've been searching for the whole game. But as a Big Daddy, the Little Sisters inherently trust you.

Yes, they're a little crazy, and even if you manage to take out their Big Daddy, they still inherently trust you. There's this blind faith in this protector that's going to always watch over them, even if "Daddy" dies. The Little Sisters thinking is "oh, wait! He didn't die, it's you! Hey, you're back!"

In BioShock 2, we give you the opportunity to fulfill that trust and really be that nurturing protector all the way down the line. But you can betray that trust either immediately or later.

When you take out a Big Daddy, and you're faced with the Little Sister, your initial choice is no longer to just rescue or harvest her. You can now adopt or harvest her. If you're the player that's like, "to hell with these little girls; they're creepy and I just want ADAM," you can harvest on the spot. If you're the kind of player who is really buying into being a Big Daddy, and it's meaningful for you, you can pick up that little girl, put her on your back, and she will guide you to bodies around Rapture where you can defend her to get more ADAM.

You can do that several times, and at the end of that experience, you once again have the choice of rescuing her, turning her human or betraying her trust and harvesting her for more ADAM. All the big choices you make in BioShock 2 affect how characters react to you too. You determine what their ultimate fates are. Choices have a larger impact than just a rendered movie at the end of the game this time.

GP: There were only a handful of boss encounters in the first BioShock, which made the game feel a bit lopsided. How are boss battles handled in the sequel?

McClendon: Traditional bosses tend to be very, "here's the attack that you have to use in order to open their weak point and shoot them." The first BioShock had some bosses, but it was just a normal Splicer with double the hit points. So, we tried to get our "boss feeling" out of the systemic gameplay.

When you fight a Big Daddy, that should feel like a boss. When the Big Sister comes for you, that should feel like a boss too. Emotionally, these situations should feel like boss fights. There are important characters in the story that you will face in different levels of the game, but it isn't a focus like the battle from the end of the first BioShock, where it evolved into a giant glowing boss that you had to fight. The focus is on having those gameplay peaks and valleys exist within the gameplay systems themselves.

GP: What's the overall theme in BioShock 2, that you're this monster among monsters?

McClendon: It's more about the player's fragility than anything else. In BioShock, you were human, and when you were faced with these crazy people down below you really had to scrape and scrimp to survive. In BioShock 2, you're starting a little higher up, but the world has evolved over ten years to be a lot more vicious. It's really about how feral and animalistic the world has become.

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