What the hell is Take-Two doing? Can they not make the next BioShock without Ken Levine, the franchise’s creator?

We heard rumors of a fourth BioShock installment in April 2018, five years ago. Then, Jason Schreier wrote that it was a secret project being launched by a new 2K (=Take-Two) studio in the San Francisco Bay area. As it turned out, it was the SECOND attempt, as Schreier later reported again that from 2015 until the end of 2016, Certain Affinity was working on resurrecting BioShock. Take-Two finally confirmed in December 2019 that Cloud Chamber was working on the new BioShock. Some developers at the Novato studio have also worked on previous episodes.

According to OopsLeaks, the project had already undergone a reboot by then, as between 2017 and 2019, the studio (which at the time didn’t have a public name) was working on a different concept, and a twin city concept was in the pipeline. A slide from a presentation for internal use was leaked. The first city would be a free, wealthy city run by a successful businessman. There would have been a border region between the two cities, with many conflicts due to differing views. The second city would be an isolated, underground city, separated from the world above and run by a dictator who would rise from there.

Only since 2019, the concept has changed again, and the new BioShock is now set in a city in Antarctica… or not, because according to OopsLeaks, BioShock 4 was rebooted AGAIN in the summer of 2022, which hasn’t changed location-wise, but has been drastically rewritten. Hence, we are not surprised that the leaker mentions a development hell because the work structure is not organized enough, many people are leaving the team, and many employees have no experience here. The team in charge of the narrative is said to be unable to assemble a meaningful story, which is why the game has been redesigned. But maybe they are on the right track because there are few job offers for Cloud Chamber.

It sounds shocking.

Source: WCCFTech