Remember BioShock? It’s difficult not to recall the impact made on the first-person genre with the first installment back in 2007. However, it’s been over ten years since we last heard from the award-winning series (Burial at Sea expansion or the re-releases not withstanding), so we’re about due for a new game, surely?
Well, we know one’s in development, and thanks to a post on LinkedIn, it seems work on the next BioShock installment is about to ramp up. Cloud Chamber – the team behind the upcoming game – has opened up several new job positions.
At the time of writing, the job listing shows 25 vacancies, covering a number of disciplines, including art, programming, game design and scripting, production, and writing. In response to one comment under the LinkedIn post, the studio is not accepting speculative resumes/applications. Only the listed positions are what’s available at the moment.
BioShock is making quite the return
The fact that Cloud Chamber – which is a division of 2K Games – is hiring means that BioShock 4 (as many of us are referring to it) must be making some headway on the project. It’s been in development for quite some time, with the fourth entry officially announced back in 2019.
In a similar vein to Silent Hill, BioShock seems to be coming back in a big way. Along with the new game, an upcoming movie adaptation, and even word that 2K may be working on a remake of the original, the series is beginning to make its presence known after years of dormancy.
The last installment we got was 2013’s Infinite, which was received with a pretty significant amount of praise. It also won several awards, including a Golden Joystick for Best Visual Design, and was nominated for more than one Game of the Year award.
It was a bit of a departure from what fans had come to expect from a BioShock game – taking place above the clouds as opposed to underwater – but its visuals and narrative structure were what set it apart from other releases that year. True, some were a bit perplexed over the ending’s interpretive nature, but to me, that just made Infinite that extra bit special.
It feels weird to talk about the first BioShock being so old now, being more than a decade and a half old at this point. It was one of the most impactful FPS games of its generation, sitting up there with the likes of Half-Life and System Shock 2 in terms of what was possible in narrative-heavy shooters. Personally, I’m glad we haven’t seen the end of it.
