It’s been a long time since we first heard rumors that the BioShock series would be revived. The initial rumblings date back to April 2018, when a report by Jason Schreier revealed that the top-secret project had started at a new 2K studio based in the San Francisco Bay.
That wasn’t even the first attempt, anyway, as it was later revealed (again by Schreier) that a BioShock revival had been in development at Certain Affinity from 2015 to late 2016 under the codename Parkside.
Anyway, 2K officially confirmed in December 2019 that a new installment was in development at Cloud Chamber, a Novato-based studio that featured some of the developers of the previous titles.
By then, though, according to information from leaker OopsLeaks, the game had already been rebooted once. Between 2017 and 2019, the development team that would later become Cloud Chamber was following a twin cities concept. A slide from a leaked internal presentation explained:
City 1 – A free and wealthy society led by a successful entrepreneur
Flipside zone – Border between the two cities, the hottest point of conflict
City 2 – An isolated underground city, separate from the upper world, led by a dictator waging a vertical war
From 2019 onward, the setting changed to a city based in Antarctica. However, according to today’s leak from OopsLeaks, there was yet another reboot last Summer.
The setting of the new BioShock is reportedly staying the same, but the story has received a ‘drastic rewriting’. The leaker also openly talks about ‘development hell’ caused by a disorganized work structure and high staff turnover, with lots of employees reportedly having close to no prior experience.
Most of all, the narrative team was described as incapable of delivering a worthy plot, which is why the storyline has received the latest reboot.
On the flip side, it sounds like the development may finally be on the right track, as job openings are currently few and far between. Still, given the relatively recent plot overhaul, it may be a while before the long-awaited new BioShock game can be released.
Indeed, judging from Take-Two’s Q4 2023 earnings, it’s possible the game might target the fiscal year 2026 (April 2025 – March 2026) for launch, given that the publisher is forecasting its biggest year yet in terms of net bookings thanks to a large lineup of ‘groundbreaking games’.
At least Ken Levine’s new game, Judas, is likely closer to release, though it also had its fair share of delays and problems.
As a reminder, 2K partnered with Netflix last year to adapt BioShock to the movie format.
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