It was expected. Probably he got fed up with modern publishing and Bioshock Infinite didn't do that great either - the 2 Bioshocks were on the verge of greatness, but it slipped from their hand mostly due to publisher interference (like not releasing modding tools and shipping with encrypted and signed content packs) when all of the community was begging for them. Bioshock has the potential to be the pre skyrim skyrim ...
And bioshock infinite was threading on too safe ground. I really hope that his new studio will have bursts of creativity and success and the left out employees find better jobs soon.
> the 2 Bioshocks were on the verge of greatness, but it slipped from their hand mostly due to publisher interference (like not releasing modding tools and shipping with encrypted and signed content packs)
I dunno about that -- what always seemed to me to be holding the Bioshocks back from greatness was that they were designed around a gameplay mechanism (FPS running and gunning) that clashed pretty severely with the type of game the designers seemed to want badly to make, namely an interactive story. The result was a sort of schizophrenia: Irrational would build these incredible environments and characters, and then stick them in the exact type of game where players couldn't linger over and savor them. They were just a blur that would flash past your gunsights as you killed people.
This problem was so evident in the Bioshock games that they led people smarter than I am to eventually coin a term for it: "ludonarrative dissonance" (see http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludona...). Which basically means a game whose story is trying to do one thing while its mechanics are trying to do something completely different, pulling the player in incompatible directions. That -- and Irrational's seeming lack of interest in reconciling the two elements in their work -- always seemed like a bigger factor holding them back from greatness than their relative lack of moddability, at least to me.
Agreed with you and smacktoward. Tevis' analysis gave me a lot to think about after playing the game, but during my play, I was nonplussed regarding the character arcs between Booker and Elizabeth, and the constant, brutal violence.
The first bioshock was not so bad - there was a lot to explore and the mechanics were very potent and true to the world - it really only needed a level editor to allow the community to show what was possible with rapture.
And the dissonance was maybe due to publisher interference the same way the main story line and every single sentece connected to said line in Dishonored are terrible and naive and overly simplistic. And the moment you get to listen, watch and read something that you are not under obligation to do - the quality jumps up next to 0.5 Torments.
Probably there were moment when it was - add more action, too much horror more action, too much talking more auto regen health.
And bioshock infinite was threading on too safe ground. I really hope that his new studio will have bursts of creativity and success and the left out employees find better jobs soon.