BioShock 4 Could Bring A Big Change To The Series
More BioShock 4 news is always a great thing — especially since very little has been released about the game since it was announced in 2019. The studio behind the next BioShock entry, Cloud Chamber, may have given fans some insight about the upcoming game with a few new job listings.
The first listing of note was for a Senior Writer, and the post asked for "someone who can weave impactful, character-driven stories in an open world setting." This open world setting would be a first for the series, signifying that the scope of BioShock 4 may be even greater than the preceding entries. While previous BioShock games were certainly bursting with plenty of detail (who can forget the easter eggs littering the world in BioShock Infinite?), none of them have been quite "open world."
The new game was described as a "AAA narratively-driven FPS project" in the job posting for a Senior Technical Audio Designer. Considering that the past BioShock games have all been narrative-driven, it makes sense that the upcoming game would be as well.
The addition of an open-world BioShock game could open up a lot of potential for the series. Open world games are becoming more and more popular, with even a major RPG series like Pokemon jumping on the bandwagon with the upcoming Pokemon: Arceus.
These job listings are just the latest hints toward the scale of the next BioShock game. Twitter user @MauroNL3, a video game industry analyst, tweeted in December about a job posting from Cloud Chamber that further described this world design. MauroNL3 mentioned that a listing for a Lead System Designers position referred to the game as an "emergent sandbox world."
That's not the only major change that could be coming to the series, either. According to MauroNL, the job posting for a Senior Voice Designer discussed a dialogue system, which hinted at the idea that the main character of BioShock 4 will be able to pick more intricate responses through the game. While it's not an entirely new concept — BioShock Infinite let you pick a few — the series has never really focused on extensive dialogue trees before.
One thing to keep in mind going forward is that nothing official has been announced regarding BioShock 4's scale or gameplay mechanics. The job postings only prove that there's a lot of work left to be done for the highly anticipated sequel, which means that some elements of the game could change at any time. Still, it's exciting to think that the new game could introduce epic concepts cut from previous BioShock entries.