It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since we first learned that publisher Take-Two had set up a brand new development studio to work on the next entry in the Bioshock franchise, but that’s just how time works these days.
Cloud Chamber had barely begun the ground work on the game at that stage, so it’s no surprise that we haven’t heard much of anything about the game since.
Today, 2K announced the founding of Cloud Chamber, its newest development studio. This team of storytellers has begun work on the next iteration of the acclaimed @BioShock franchise, which will be in development for the next several years.
Learn more: https://t.co/L5hMVADxvY pic.twitter.com/SPvVVZoFCQ
— 2K United Kingdom (@2K_UK) December 9, 2019
If a new rumour is to be believed though, the studio has at least established the game’s setting and work is well underway to getting it out into the world.
Reported by VGC, who claims to have heard similar rumours internally, podcaster Colin Moriarty revealed that he’d learned of the new Bioshock game’s setting and time period – namely a fictional Antarctic City in the 1960s. He claims that the game will be tied to the series’ previous titles narratively and that Cloud Chamber is targeting a 2022 release.
“It takes place in a 1960s Antarctic city called Borealis. [The game is] codenamed ‘Parkside’… I’ve been told that the development team has incredible latitude to get it right. That seems and sounds right to me,” says Moriarty.
“Internally the game is very secret and apparently, totally locked up. Apparently the inclination there is that they understand full well that this game will be compared to what [BioShock creator] Ken Levine does. And by the way, [Take-Two] is also publishing Levine’s next game.”
This comes after Twitter account @oopsleaks began dropping supposed leaks of the next Bioshock’s pitch decks and logo concepts, which you can see below but haven’t been verified or corroborated anywhere and so should be considered nothing more than rumours at this stage:
#Bioshock Isolation (title may change) logo variant
– Set in a new-to-franchise isolated dystopian city
– Unreal Engine 5
– Developed by Irrational Games veterans and people who worked on Watch Dogs: Legion, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Mafia 3, Deus Ex: MD
– Announcement Q1 2022 pic.twitter.com/BwyXKp1LKK— Oops Leaks (@oopsleaks) November 17, 2021
A slide from the new #Bioshock game pitching presentation.
There might be two cities with radically different ideology, one of them located underground right below the other, both sharing a "flipside" border zone with an unleashed "vertical war". pic.twitter.com/Cy6fddJmV1
— Oops Leaks (@oopsleaks) November 27, 2021
With any luck, we may see something to do with the new Bioshock game at The Game Awards next week, Friday Dec 10 at 12PM AEDT.