Remember during the Sony E3 press conference when Irrational Games' Ken Levine appeared on stage, seemingly telling us that "BioShock" would find its way to the upcoming PlayStation Vita? It was, at once, exciting and perhaps a bit confusing news as a fan of the franchise. What kind of game was Levine talking about? Would the handheld "BioShock" be nothing more than a port, rehashing the series' first game?
According to a new interview with Levine, it appears "BioShock Vita" – let's just call it that for now – is actually an entirely new game.
Speaking to IGN, series creator Ken Levine discussed "BioShock Infinite," as well as how Irrational is approaching new hardware. While he was keen to reiterate that the company had no current plans to develop any games for Nintendo's Wii U, Levine was fairly transparent in conveying that the portable "BioShock" is an original concept.
"That's a new game. That is going to be strange and surprising to people, in the same way. I think when we launched Infinite, people said, "Wait, what, what are you doing?" I think we always want to surprise people," Levine told IGN. "If I'm just saying, 'Here's 'BioShock 1 on Vita'... Let's say we potentially do, you don't need us to do that, somebody could make that happen if they wanted that to happen."
So, we'll see an entirely new "BioShock" released on the Vita platform. Levine also went on to clarify that the handheld game isn't a tie-in to "Infinite," and was "being built from the ground up." That said, it also doesn't sound like a port of the first game has been entirely ruled out. Levine seems to insulate that a portable "BioShock 1," would likely be ported outside of Irrational – a common practice when it comes to re-releases.
Levine also implied that "BioShock Vita" would remain a core game, choosing to stay away from the smaller-serving offerings consistently found in portable and iOS games.
"That's not the kind of game I'm going to make. It is a core game," Levine said. "I'm a core gamer. If you're looking at me to make a game like that, you're probably hiring the wrong dude."