BioShock 4 has a huge legacy to live up to. The original BioShock and BioShock Infinite were both praised for their settings and stories, as well as tackling tougher philosophical themes than many other games in the shooter genre as players explored failed utopias and their dark consequences.
The path forward for BioShock 4 is not clear, though the franchise has been handed over to Cloud Chamber, a new studio set up by 2K to handle the project. However, if there’s one series that can teach BioShock about surviving and adapting as a long-running video game franchise, it’s Assassin’s Creed. Assassin’s Creed may play very differently to BioShock, but there are tricks and changes that have been made over the years to help the franchise stay fresh after over a decade of nearly-yearly releases.
Assassin’s Creed and BioShock first released in the same year just a few months apart, but since 2007 the two franchises have taken very different routes. BioShock followed up with a sequel, BioShock 2, but is considered by many fans of the franchise to have only truly realized the potential of sequels set in the BioShock universe with BioShock Infinite. Infinite posed itself as a sort of spiritual successor unrelated to the story of the first game, before revealing itself as a deftly retold version of the first game’s story in a new setting as one possibility among many parallel universes.
Ironically, however, it is Assassin’s Creed which is better known by most gamers for repeating and adapting its formula. In most of the games the same premise is established: the player is the descendent of an Assassin who, using a device known as the Animus, can access their ancestral memories and experience life as an Assassin facing down the sinister Templar Order as it conspires for world domination at different points of history.
Recent installments of Assassin’s Creed have begun to diverge more and more from that original formula in terms of both story and gameplay. Not every Assassin’s Creed game contains the Assassins and the Templars anymore, though admittedly they still use parallel precursor organizations like the Hidden Ones and the Order of the Ancients. The real formula break, however, has been in the games’ genre.
There has always been a sci-fi element to the Assassin’s Creed games necessitated by its framing device. However, recent installments like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla have included direct depictions of mythical figures and creatures. In Odyssey, for example, players can encounter many different beings from Greek mythology, explained as half-human hybrids created as experiments by the Isu people of the First Civilization, another part of the franchise’s lore that explains much of the series’ less realistic features.
It’s not just the genre of the story that has changed, however. Since Odyssey, the games have become more and more like action RPGs than simply action adventure games. Odyssey saw the introduction of dialog options, including the ability to flirt and start romances in the game. Valhalla would continue the trend, allowing players to choose Eivor’s gender and determine far more of their own story, even though the broad strokes of the plot remained the same.
BioShock 4 should consider adding some RPG-based dialog options. This wouldn’t be the first big change. BioShock Infinite gave its main character a voice, giving the game a far more narrative-driven feeling than BioShock’s Jack, a silent protagonist who mostly uncovered the story of Rapture through his environment. It wouldn’t be the first time a BioShock game has played with RPG elements either.
In Infinite, there are times when Booker DeWitt is offered a choice. Elizabeth will ask Booker which brooch he prefers, one with a bird, and one with a cage. His choice has no effect, but there’s no way for the player to know that at the time. In the end, the arbitrary nature of the players’ decisions in the game comes to reflect the nature of the multiverse the characters find themselves in – each choice is just one of many tiny differences that exist between dimensions while fundamental things remain the same. As Elizabeth explains, “there is always a lighthouse, there is always a man, there is always a city.”
However, this isn’t a ploy which could easily be pulled off twice. Fans expect their decisions to have consequences in story-driven games, and BioShock 4 won’t just be able to reveal its lack of consequences as a reflection of its themes again without feeling repetitive. Indeed, the choices presented in Infinite show just how adaptable the series’ format is to mild RPG elements like Assassin’s Creed, and the fact that players took these moments in their stride shows that it isn’t contrary to the BioShock brand.
BioShock 4 could include more dialog options and more consequences that previous games. It might even help the game subvert the expectation set up in Infinite that every BioShock game is a retelling of the same story in some sense. Managing player expectations will be a huge task no matter which route Cloud Chamber chooses to go down – following the lighthouse/man/city formula or breaking away to tell a new story in its own continuity. Handing some degree of control to the players themselves may be able to go some way towards making BioShock 4 less predictable than Infinite’s twist would suggest.
There are many other ways BioShock 4 could improve on the franchise. For example, the game could improve upon the series’ frequently criticized combat, making it less repetitive and powerful enemies less bullet spongey. However, these problems have never held the franchise back too badly before. BioShock 4 needs to look to the Assassin’s Creed series because one of its biggest challenges will be telling a new story and dealing with the player’s understanding of their role in the setting after the revelations of BioShock Infinite. It may be controversial, but adding some RPG elements, like Assassin’s Creed did, might just do the trick.
BioShock 4 is in development.
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