VGA premiere: Irrational Games peels a new layer of BioShock Infinite

Irrational Games, which has established its reputation as one of the most creative game studios in the industry, showed off a new scene from its next major game, BioShock Infinite, at the Spike TV Video Game Awards today.

The company is revealing more details about the game in a trailer, accompanied by a pretty song. It shows the chaos as civil war erupts in the city of the clouds, Columbia. The trailer showed off the first-person shooter combat and the help that the player can receive from companion, Elizabeth, pictured below. The trailer is full of emotion, spectacular combat, and big evil characters.

The game features the ability to swing on a rollercoaster in the sky and fire at enemies below. This game is innovative both in its storytelling and technology, and it is one of the titles that will push the game industry toward high art.

BioShock took the game industry by storm in 2007 when it was released by the 2K Boston (now Irrational Games) division of Take-Two Interactive. The shooter game was set in an underwater utopia-gone-wrong city called Rapture, and it was praised as one of the most original games of its time. The game sold more than 4 million units, generating about $240 million in revenue at retail. Take-Two followed that with BioShock 2, a more derivative sequel that debuted in 2010. I’ve played both games all the way through and thoroughly enjoyed them.

While BioShock 2 was created by a new team called 2K Marin, Ken Levine (pictured), designer of BioShock, moved on to developing something that was more ambitious and creative, leaving behind Rapture and its 1930s style alternate universe for Columbia, another utopian city, which floats in the sky and is the setting for BioShock Infinite. This game (first announced last August) has no release date yet, but it is a big budget title being built by a team of 106 people, said Timothy Gerritsen, director of product development at Irrational Games.

In my opinion, the audience for BioShock Infinite could prove to be bigger than the audience for the original hit, giving Take-Two Interactive a steady revenue booster beyond its staple Grand Theft Auto games.