The e3 video was a modified version of something we built in March for the first Game Informer cover piece. It was really the first bit of playable BioShock ever made.

We enhanced it for E3 and showed pretty much the same thing at Leipzig. It’s now been retired for our new gameplay demonstration which we are slaving away on.

I’m saying this not to make excuses for anything you didn’t like, because the videos out there and should be fair game to comment on and criticize. We put it out there to get people’s comments on it. But for the crew here who are really into deeply discussing the game, I thought some notes might be helpful. Consider this the read me file for the E3 demo.

The look of the world of Rapture really solidified for the first time when we did this demo. Ditto water visual effects. However, the game has progressed substantially on the visual side since then. I think the next gameplay video will demonstrate what I mean.

The animation system is super rough. We’re incorporating Havok’s animation system mixed with IG’s homebrew stuff.

All the voice acting came from an impromptu short session we did before the demo. The Little Sister will have a full suite of dialog, as will all the AIs in the game. Our goal is to have substantially more character dialog per character than even other IG games.

Weapon effects are first pass. We’ve just done a new rev on them. I think they are amazing now. Our goal was to exceed the weapon effects in Black, and I think we’re going to achieve that (even adjusting for next gen)

Engine was entirely unoptimized. We’ve just finished our core optimization pass last week. As I mentioned another time, load times and performance were a key technical goal on BioShock.

Plasmid effects are first pass. They have been entirely replaced.

On screen and machine intefaces have not only been redone completely by a new artist, their functionality and feedback has been completely rethought. You’ll see more of this soon (maybe I’ll even leak a shot or two!)

There are 3 different big daddy’s and a whole bunch of splicers in the game, plus skin, powers/weapons and even attachment variations (masks, hats, etc.).

We’ve hardly begun tune game controller/mouse stuff. It’s just not something we do until later after we’ve done a ton of focus testing on our first pass.

One of the coolest visuals you’re going to see down the road is views of the actual underwater buildings from windows in Rapture. That will be soon.

Regarding my voice: I’m not actually a serial killer, but I will be playing an evil clown vending machine in the game. I know you hope I’m kidding, but I’m not. I’ve also decided to use Jade Raymond from Assassin’s Creed to do all our future PR work because she’s way hotter than me.