The inside story on how Irrational Games created the critically acclaimed current generation game using new technology.
In addition to the aforementioned technology changes, Kline said almost all of the original UE3 gameplay code was rewritten and the vast majority of UnrealScript code was removed. They extended the Unreal Editor toolset rather than replacing it, but very few systems remain "untouched.”
The Unreal Engine enabled the original world of Rapture to come to life leagues beneath the sea. Ken Levine and his creative team in Boston decided to venture into original territory with Columbia, while tackling deep new political themes with the ultranationalist Founders and the rebelling people’s movement known as the Vox Populi, and taking a very different look at an alternate 1912.
“It’s a very different engine than we had before,” added Levine, founder of Irrational Games. “For better or worse, we had to throw out everything we had in the first game because we could not build this new game on it. That engine was really good for building these tight corridors and these underwater, underground structures that would appear. But with these big open spaces where you’re fighting 10 or 12 enemies at one time, that’s something for which we needed to build a new piece of technology. We couldn’t have done it in the old engine, but our action has always been a company that’s creatively driven and the technology is designed to support creative effort.”
Levine said his team has amazing technologists who are always willing to figure out how to solve the toughest problems. That’s how the sky lines were built. The creative team dreamt up cool new gameplay elements, such as the rollercoaster-like Sky-Lines system that’s used to transport cargo, and the technology team built the necessary code to bring that fun new mechanic to virtual life.
“It was really challenging but once you have that visceral feeling of being on those Sky-Lines and figuring out how they would work in this world, how they would look in this world, how they would feel in this world, it got really exciting for us and we’re really happy with how it turned out,” said Levine.
With four years in development, using Unreal Engine 3 did save the team time in bringing this latest masterpiece to PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The team’s familiarity with the technology from the original “BioShock” also helped with introducing new code and new gameplay to the equation.
