The intervening years having tarnished its reputation a little, it can be difficult now to appreciate the kinds of hopes on which Columbia was hoisted into the sky – even for those who had helped to lay the groundwork. “It’s funny to look back now,” 2K Marin alumnus Johnnemann Nordhagen told us in a recent interview. “I feel a little silly about it. But when BioShock came out, it felt like someone taking big, art-game kind of concepts and putting them into commercial products. I wouldn’t necessarily stand by that today, but at the time it was really exciting for me. Someone is making a philosophical statement – and also you can shoot guys.”
This was the context of BioShock Infinite’s 2013 release: an industry newly hopeful that, guided by a handful of triple-A auteurs, it could make the argument for the medium as an artform on a global stage. Thanks to Irrational boss Ken Levine, the world of video games would have its Inception – a singular blockbuster that didn’t just sneak challenging ideas into the mainstream but was sold on the strength of them.
Today, though, Nordhagen isn’t the only one who feels sheepish about that shared desire for games to be recognised by some outside force. And the medium has long overflowed with games that double as philosophical statements and paths into unique perspectives, as our Hype and Play sections attest month after month. Infinite, then, has become a totem of a time when the industry was both sure of itself and more old-fashioned – too stubborn to recognise the significance of the indie manifestos being written under its nose.
Esta historia es de la edición October 2022 de Edge UK.
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Esta historia es de la edición October 2022 de Edge UK.
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Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles
Anyone familiar with the concept of kitbashing is already halfway to understanding what Tomas Sala’s open-world builder is all about.
Children Of The Sun
René Rother’s acrid revenge thriller – an action game with its limbs broken and forcibly rearranged into the shape of a spatial puzzler – is at once a bonafide original and an unlikely throwback. Cast your eyes right and you wouldn’t blink if we told you this was a forgotten Grasshopper Manufacture game from the early PS3 era (we won’t be at all surprised if this finds a spot on Suda51’s end-of-year list).
Post Script
What does Rise Of The Ronin say for PS5 exclusivity?
Rise Of The Ronin
Falling in battle simply switches control to the next person up, and then quick revive fixes everything
Post Script
The pawn and the pandemic
Dragon's Dogma 2
The road from Vernworth to Bakbattahl is scenic but arduous. Ignore the dawdling mobs of goblins, and duck beneath the chanting harpies that circle on the currents overhead, and even moving at a hurried clip it is impossible for a party of four to complete the journey by nightfall.
BLUE MANCHU
How enforced early retirement eventually led Jonathan Chey back to System Shock
THE MAKING 0F.... AMERICAN ARCADIA
How a contrast of perspectives added extra layers to a side-scrolling platform game
COMING IN TO LAND
The creator of Spelunky, plus a super-group of indie developers, have spent the best part of a decade making 50 games. Has the journey been worth it?
VOID SOLS
This abstract indie Soulslike has some bright ideas