Irrational’s Ken Levine talks possible BioShock Infinite sequel

Early previews of BioShock Infinite have praised Irrational Games' ability to create a living, breathing world. If you couldn't tell by the five minute intro released earlier this week, Columbia — a city floating in the sky — is chock full of detail. Needless to say, Columbia — which serves are the primary setting in BioShock Infinite — presents the type of environment that players can spend hours on hours exploring. But could Columbia serve as the setting for a sequel?

I know BioShock Infinite isn't even out yet, but you know how the industry works. You get some hype behind a title and everyone already wants to know about sequels. In Irrational Games' case, the BioShock series has already seen the release of a sequel, but it's something Ken Levine admits was "nearly impossible" to do.

Speaking to fans during a Reddit AMA, Levine explained the mindset behind developing a sequel and, in turn, addressed whether or not BioShock Infinite's Columbia provides enough depth to warrant another game set in the floating city.

"If a large corporation has a property that can make a lot of money, they're going to be interested in making sequels to it," Levine began. "With Take Two, they understood what we wanted to do with Infinite, in other words make a sequel that in many ways felt like it wasn't a sequel."

"I think that's the most common thing we've heard from the press who played it. 'It's just like BioShock, and it's totally different at the same time.' (I'm paraphrasing)."

"We knew BioShock is really a hard game to sequelize," Levine explained. "There's no real standard formula, and if you use a standard forumla, the fans are going to be turned off. So, in other words, we invented a franchise that is nearly impossible to sequelize."

"But we figured it out last time so who knows," he left of. There's a sort of cryptic message here that seems to indicate if Take-Two wants a sequel, they are going to get one. Whether or not it will be based in Columbia still remains a mystery, but from my initial playthrough I can definitely say it offers plenty of intriguing elements.