The Evolution of BioShock’s Art

Games Radar interviewed senior artist Hoagy De La Plante about the evolution of BioShock’s art style. Also included is an amount of concept art, most of which appears to be from the artbook 2K games releases.

GamesRadar: Describe BioShock in its earliest stages. What differences would surprise fans the most?

Hoagy De La Plante, Senior Artist on BioShock: Initially, the Little Sister was just a tiny slug that wandered around the environment – you could gun them down if you wanted to. One version of the Big Daddy was this monster with amputated legs, riding around strapped into an antique wheelchair with cannons hooked on. That never made it past the concept stages for obvious reasons.

Despite the obvious analogies, Fallout is not mentioned as an inspiration.

GamesRadar: What other games inspired the BioShock art team?

HP: The original plan was to make a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. From a gameplay perspective, we certainly analyzed a lot of other titles. Half-Life 2 – we were very analytical about how they delivered the story to you in that game. Walking around City 17, you understand what is going on because of the ambient atmosphere, what you see and hear while you’re there. That was pretty inspiring. Personally, Shadow of the Colossus. It was willing to break molds and try things I hadn’t seen before… the idea that a game could be taken seriously – dramatically seriously.

But our actual inspiration came more from films and novels. I wish more games would use novels and films and paintings and music as inspirations rather than other videogames. That would help the industry get out of its creative rut.

GamesRadar: Give us some examples of those films and novels.

HP: Certainly the novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. The Randian theory -idealistic and flawed – was important to the game. Artistically, Blade Runner. There’s something about ambient detail in Blade Runner… but probably everyone who works on a videogame says Blade Runner is their inspiration, so that’s a little cheap.

Some of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky Stalker and Solaris. He does a really good job of mise en scène. Certainly the grandeur of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining; the symmetry of his shots was important for us to set up some of our rooms in BioShock. When you come into a room and you want it to feel important, you want there to be some kind of symmetry and I think Kubrick does that as well as any film director ever has. We talked about The Shining a lot. Ken also talked about the Cronenberg version of The Fly – the idea of a person losing their humanity because of some idealistic desire.