“Hey, I just had a weird tingling in my pituitary gland – did you just accept a mission? If you did, say nothing. “How’s it going buddy in times like these you need a guy like me man of action okay see you there.” Working with Shawn and John was one of the most satisfying collaborations in my career and I'm proud of what we achieved.“Who are you thanks for saving me you look ill you have malaria you should see Reuben at Mike’s bar but let’s leave separately it’ll be faster bye.” Bubbles" for the Big Daddies too, but I don't remember doing it! I scripted prototypes in an effort to help drive and inform our iteration, such as an idea for having Big Daddies temporarily become invincible for short periods of time when in combat to drive players to find creative ways to retreat and lick their wounds. ![]() I built a "combat deck" test level and spent many, many hours fighting different combinations of enemies and fine-tuning their behaviors.I pushed for Big Daddies to become swift and agile when aggressive (instead of remaining slow and lumbering tanks).I made Nitro Splicers retreat at ridiculous speed while dropping grenade chaff.I was primarily responsible for tuning all core AI behaviors including awareness and vision, combat behaviors, movement, and general tuning for good combat feel and pace. I collaborated with AI code lead John Abercrombie and animation lead Shawn Robertson in driving all AI iteration. Just over a year out from ship I inherited design responsibility for the AI system which included all Splicer archetypes, Big Daddies, and the AI ecology system. Shortly after making this reworked vertical slice I flew to Boston to work in-house at Irrational Boston for the remainder of the project. My remixed vertical slice served as a rallying point for the level design team and a great example of what the Boston team wanted the game to be. I reconfigured the quest structure and created more instances of player-driven secondary goals and rewards for exploration (such as tracking down Plasmids or caches of Adam).I placed loot in interesting ways that encouraged exploration and married them to instances of visual storytelling.I created gameplay moments that married existing gameplay features (such as turrets) with smart level design (such as a traversal puzzle that involved bypassing a flamethrower turret protected by a mesh wall).I created new examples of visual storytelling.I created new scripted moments that fit the tone of the game such as jump scares and Splicers going about their business (searching for Adam, etc).I sliced the space up into chunks and reconfigured them into a new layout that followed the hub-and-spoke paradigm that the Shock series is known for.So I took the existing vertical slice and reconfigured it: I wanted to make something closer to the final intended play experience, and I wanted to achieve this goal with minimal need for new work and in as short a time as possible. The demo was strong but some of the more ethereal aspects such as tone and moment-to-moment pacing weren't quite coming together. All core systems were represented and functioning in at least prototype form including combat, the AI ecology, quest structure, player abilities, and so on. This was a single level aimed to be representative of the overall play experience. When I first joined the project the Boston team had just completed work on their first vertical slice gameplay demo. I wanted to blur the line between systemic and scripted moments so that it all feels the same to the player. ![]() As much as possible I pushed for scripted moments to feel organic and natural. Moments such as a splicer wandering into the bar with a security camera in tow, or a Big Daddy showing up as you go to leave the bar feel like unscripted, systemic moments. the vertical element of a balcony overlooking the bar area).Įlements of the space were even retooled and re-used in BioShock 2, and there is a Fighting McDonagh's multiplayer map.
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