PODCAST 13: SURVIVOR MODE
TRANSCRIPT

Elizabeth: Welcome to Episode 13 of the BioShock podcast. I’m Elizabeth Tobey, community manager at 2K, and today I’m at 2K Marin to talk about one of the new features coming up in BioShock for the PS3: Survivor mode. Before we get started on what Survivor Mode is, how about I let the team introduce themselves.

JP: Hi, I’m JP LeBreton, and I’m one of the designers of the original BioShock, and right now I’m working on BioShock 2.

Jake: I’m Jake Etgeton, programmer on the first game and also the second now.

Elizabeth: How about you just give me a run down of what Survivor mode is.

Jake: It’s a new experience in the BioShock universe. It’s a lot different from the three difficulty modes that we ship with in that you’re really challenged to play in a different way. You have to really try. We’re not going to baby you through as we do in the other modes, and it’s a lot harder.

Elizabeth: What made you guys want to create yet another difficulty for BioShock?

JP: I think the plan was always that the difficulty modes we shipped with were intended to cover the spectrum of most FPS players, where Easy mode was intended to be a tourist mode, where if you didn’t want to deal with really difficult combats or anything and you just wanted to see the really cool world that our guys created, you could make it through. Normal was intended to be the very standard middle-of-the-road difficulty experience where average players are challenged, but you can still beat the game. There’s not a point where we really stop the player and say, “you can’t play the game any more.” Hard mode was intended to be a cut above that, and it was definitely noticeably harder, but I think with Survivor mode, the opportunity was to ratchet up the difficulty to the extent that it was transformative to gameplay. Where now all of the sudden it’s not just that guys are a little bit tougher and all that kind of stuff, it’s hard to the extent that all of the sudden you’re starting to count every bullet, and you’re having to use tools in a fairly ingenious way and use every little dirty trick you can figure out in order to just eke through. That’s why Survivor is a cut beyond hard, because you really are concerned with actual survival rather than just grinding through. If you’re a savvy FPS player, the sorts of things that you want to be tested on, if you’re looking for a real test of your skill.

Jake: Sure, and we do read our forums, and we read all the reviews, and we’re clear that some people found even the hardest mode in BioShock not challenging, even with Vita-Chambers disabled, and we’re going to make sure that we address those people and make sure they have as good an experience as the more casual core gamers.

Elizabeth: As a side note, you can play this mode with and without Vita-Chambers?

Jake: Yes.

JP: Yes, for the true masochists you can disable them. Also for people who just want to enjoy the game differently. Load and save systems tend to be very divisive discussions, if you read gaming forums. Some people really like checkpoints, and people who come from the PC scene prefer save anywhere, so this is something that gives people a little bit more freedom to eat their cake how they would like to eat their cake. So yeah, you can turn Vita-Chambers, and especially combined with survivor difficulty, it’s pretty punishing, but that’s also the pinnacle of achievement.

Jake: And you do get an extra trophy if you play with Vita-Chambers off.

JP: Yes, your achievement will be recognized, so yeah, that’s bragging rights, right there.

Elizabeth: How did you program this game differently to make it really challenging for the player?

Jake: While we were developing BioShock, we went through multiple kinds of difficulty. At one point it was incredibly difficult, and one point it was incredibly easy, and we had a very robust system for tweaking everything in the game. We pretty much just used that from the end of BioShock until shipping the PS3 version, and we were able to adjust almost everything and really balance and tweak it on a high level. We had controls over anything we wanted to, and we’ve been in a very balance-y state of mind. We didn’t really have to go too low-level or adjust any AI pathfinding routines or anything like that; we had all the knobs we needed to make this happen. We also added a new screen when you die, so you don’t have to go back to the main menu when you die as you did on the DLC for X-Box 360. Now, so when you die it’s like most games, you get a screen that says you’re dead, and you can either go back into the main menu or immediately jump back into the action by loading the last save game.

Elizabeth: Digging a little deeper into the programming, a lot of people are probably going to say, “The AI just has more hit points.” Can you talk a little bit more about how it’s more dynamic than just hit points?

JP: Sure, we have what the AIs can damage, what they can see, how long they see you, how long they track you, how much damage your bullets damage do, how much damage environment damage does, how much damage Big Daddies’ damage to Splicers is, how much Splicers damage is to Big Daddies. We have control over almost every degree, and we’ve really looked at that and made sure that throughout the entire experience, it feels right.

Elizabeth: Let’s switch over and talk about strategy. In BioShock, you can make your way through rapture in several different ways: with guns, with plasmids, any way you want. How exactly do you recommend that people get through this mode? And I know that this is going to be a question that many people are going to debate, but give me some tips and strategy.

Jake: JP is definitely the master of BioShock when it comes to creative solutions, so…

JP: Yeah, I think every developer reaches a point on their game where they’ve internalized pretty much everything about it. They know all the ins and outs, all the dirty little tricks. All of that said, I think a lot of the highest yield stuff that you’ll see when you’re playing Survivor Mode, is stuff that is high-yield in terms of resources you have to expend. One of the biggest examples of that are all the ecology plasmids like Target Dummy and Enrage and Security Bull’s-Eye, because that stuff, not only does it neutralize one enemy, it turns another enemy and it’s going to wear down, if not kill outright, another enemy. In the case of Target Dummy, you’re distracting someone. Those things were made relatively cheap early in development, or early to mid  development just because we were afraid that people wouldn’t really see the value in them, so what that means is that they are a fairly cheap way for clever players to get a lot of bang for a little bit of buck. So, definitely manipulating the environment and the ecology to make it just not about raw numbers, because especially playing Survivor Mode, the first Big Daddy you face at the very end of the Medical Pavilion, even if…no matter how good you’ve been good at saving ammo and stuff, if you just empty all of your bullets into him and then dump damage into him, you’re going to run out of resources before his hit points are even two-thirds depleted, so that’s the first and maybe the most brutal version of the lesson that Survival mode teaches which is just: “Use everything you can.” Get that turret to fight him. Get a bunch of splicers to come after him. Lead him down a hallway and into some water if you can find it. I’m trying to remember all the tools that are available to you in Medical. Stuff like that. Getting something for nothing or something for very little, EVE or ammo or money, is definitely the top level strategy.

Jake: And we’ve actually adjusted the game so that those sorts of strategies, like using a barrel or befriending a Big Daddy to send him on a target is actually stronger relative to your bullets than it was in other difficulty modes, so those things are actually more powerful than they were before.

Elizabeth: I know a lot of seasoned players are probably going to be revisiting BioShock to try this mode, and it sounds like you’re going to have to relearn a couple lessons you think you had down pat in regular BioShock. Other than the first Big Daddy, do you have any other particular areas that you think are tricky, that you may want to use as examples to give tips and tricks on how you’re going to have to relearn playing the game?

JP: I think actually, yeah. Most of the areas that I’ve run across are early in the game, because there’s a point mid to late game, if you’ve played through on Normal difficulty and you’re an experienced FPS player, where the player gets very powerful. And that was for the most part intentional. We wanted you to have a bunch of cool tools and be able to experiment freely, but in Survivor mode especially, before you get to that mid to late game point – I’m talking specifically about like Medical and Fontaine Fisheries, places like that – that stuff is rough, because you’ve got very few tools, and so you end up like, every single one of those tools becomes really relevant. Like, even if you didn’t use the shotgun that much, or something like enrage or target dummy, even if you didn’t use that much in other play-throughs, in Survivor mode, you’re going to have to get acquainted with every single thing it’s possible to have by the time you get to FF just because it’s a tough dent in the power curve.

Jake: One of the areas that’s been adjusted dramatically because of this is the camera. The camera is now much harder to use, but much more important. You can get hit any time when you’re having that camera and one or two hits can kill you, so it’s pretty important for you to get a little crafty about where you take your shots and how you take them, but that research is absolutely critical to the rest of the game. If you don’t research at all, anything, you’re going to have a really hard time, so it’s in your best interest to take photos of everything possible in the safest way possible.

JP: Yeah, and basically all those damage bonuses that you get from things like upgrading your weapons and researching Splicers and AIs up to a certain level, those damage bonuses are worth their weight in gold, because it all of the sudden means that the coefficient by which your resources are getting exhausted is that much lower.

Elizabeth: For those who already own the game on PC or 360. Is there any way you recommend they train with their game for this challenge?

Jake: Personally, I think fighting the Big Daddies is something that in normal game flow, you can kind of run and gun your way through, just shoot them a few times and use a couple bots or something like that, but in Survivor, one hit can completely knock you out of the game. The Big Daddies have always been tweaked so you can avoid their Daddy Dash, you can use cover to your advantage and things like that, and you can practice that on the main game. Try to take as little damage as possible from those guys, because in Survivor Mode, one to two hits and you’re gone, so..

JP: Yeah. Big Daddies can just end you in Survival mode. One thing that I did, was I played through using only the ecology plasmids, so I didn’t actually let myself deal any direct damage. It’s very much a self-imposed guideline where the only weapon I had was the wrench – you can actually avoid picking up the pistol and stuff. I definitely don’t recommend doing that in Survivor mode, but the interesting playstyle that forced on me in Hard difficulty was that I had to get creative and stuff, so when Survivor mode first came online, and I jumped in and started playing, I was like, “Oh, ok, I’m going to have to use all my goofy little ecology tricks,” and yeah, that’s actually, if you’re that kind of player, it’s definitely a fun way to see the game again, and it definitely teaches you some skills about how to manipulate elements in the environment.

Jake: And start working on the combinations, because a lot of times those are the most powerful things you can do, because you want to hit all the damage at once if possible. We found a tester who found a great little combination that’ll take down almost any Big Daddy in one hit. If you take a lot of barrels and TK them all together, put a prox mine right on the barrel, put a target dummy near that, and then enrage the Big Daddy, hide, wait for the Big Daddy to attack the target dummy, and there’s a big explosion and no more Big Daddy. Pretty much anything like that, like if you combine Cyclone Trap with a prox mine on the ceiling, things you might not normally think of to do in the main game, because you don’t have to, you really need to do that in SM.

JP: Yeah, definitely. And yeah, later in the game, setting up a little area of trap bolts and then aggroing the Big Daddy and having him dash through that so that it saps most of him. And stuff like that. I think there’s also a fun challenge if BioShock were more of a hot seat like “pass the controller to your buddies” sort of game: taking a Big Daddy from full health to zero health as quickly as possible, is something I wish we could have had a little mini-game mode for because it’s such a good test of all of the game’s verbs. You know, there’s a ton of stuff you have to pull out in order to do that quickly and effectively.

Elizabeth: Last question: What’s the most difficult area for you right now, if you can tell us without spoiling anything?

Jake: The beginning of the game is by far the most difficult, because you don’t have your skills, you don’t have your toolset, and you don’t have your health. A lot of times your best bet is to hide and run away, and get through Medical and Fisheries, and get into the later areas, and then come back and take those guys out that you pretty much were completely afraid of the first time.

JP: Yeah, we actually support, if you’ve ever gone over the game world with a fine-toothed comb, you can travel back to Medical or any other level in the game, up to a certain very late point of no return, you can travel back, so it’s a valid decision to leave Big Daddies alone if you’re not equipped to face them, and come back later. Definitely, the early levels, very hard. And there’s kind of a point late in the game, where the enemies have just ramped up noticeably, and I remember hitting kind of a dent there too, and that was where Security Bots became my best friend in the whole world, because they’d leveled up too, and all of the sudden they were a huge asset because you can get a lot of mileage out of them if you’ve hacked them or hacked a security camera.

Jake: Yeah, anything you can use like hacking or befriending a Big Daddy, anything that keeps you out of the action, is by far your best bet.

Elizabeth: I think you’ve given everyone a lot to think about. Thank you guys for being here, and I think this wraps up our episode for today.