Cult of Rapture

Today we have a new Plasmid ad from Sinclair Solutions to show you: Swarm Master. In addition to the ad, Zak McClendon from 2K Marin also answered some questions about how Swarm Master works in BioShock 2.

Have you changed Swarm since the first game?
Fundamentally, Insect Swarm has changed a bit less than some of the other Plasmids for BioShock 2. After lots of brainstorming, we discovered that there just isn’t much you can improve on about the idea of a swarm of furious bees shooting from your arm to attack your opponents.

So, we focused on making that core idea a bit more effective. The biggest changes are in the artificial intelligence of the swarm itself. In BioShock, the swarm was a bit more tentative – you pretty much needed an enemies in your sights or actively attacking you for Insect Swarm to be really effective. In BioShock 2, the bees are a LOT more aggressive. They’ll seek out hidden enemies, explore a bit more and generally try to get to threats before they get to you.

We found that this really helped players who have a more defensive play style – the ones who like to have buddies like Hacked Security Bots or Hypnotized Splicers do the fighting for them. Insects Swarm is now more effective for that. Naturally, it’s still really usefully in the middle of a big firefight. It’s still one of the best ways to distract a big bruiser like a Bouncer or Brute Splicer!

What does it mean to fully upgrade this Plasmid?
The other big gameplay changes for Insect Swarm come from the Plasmid Upgrades. With Insect Swarm 2, your swarm will split off into a second swarm whenever it attacks a target, making the a single use much more effective at crowd control – something that’s pretty key for defending your Little Sister while she’s gathering. Once you upgrade to Insect Swarm 3, enemies that are killed by a swarm become deadly traps! An enemy that walks near one of these “bee bombs” will trigger another swarm to fly out of the corpse and attack. With Insect Swarm 3, you can get a single use of the Plasmid to keep your swarms working for a pretty extended battle!

Does the Plasmid look any different?
We’ve completely reworked the effects and appearance of the Plasmid, but, as mentioned above, there’s really no improving on angry bees. We did briefly discuss having Insect Swarm 1 be butterflies instead, but no one was sure what they would do.

Want to see Sinclair Solutions official Swarm Master Plasmid ad?



Download it now.