Irrational Games’ forthcoming shooter sequel BioShock Infinite gets a clutch of new screenshots, which you can see here…
As we've already seen in the launch trailer released a few days ago, BioShock Infinite leaves the undersea kingdom of Rapture far behind, and will take players to an unexpectedly new environment.
While brief, this first glimpse of lead designer Ken Levine demonstrated that this third entry would take BioShock in a brave new direction - up, to a floating city in the clouds called Columbia.
In a recent interview with CVG, Levine explained that BioShock had to take the player to a new environment to create the same aura of mystery that surrounded the first game.
"For us, BioShock was never about the setting, it was about a couple of gameplay principles - the idea of being in an environment that's strange and weird, ridiculously over the top, but still grounded in a human experience and humanity," Levine said.
And while Columbia looks like a friendly enough place at first glance, with its glittering towers and blue skies a stark contrast to the murky blackness of Rapture, there are hints everywhere of a strange, oppressive dystopia.
The new screenshots shown here give a further glimpse of BioShock Infinite's Edwardian aesthetic, and the posters, which pastiche WWII propaganda campaigns, hint at a city isolated by its racist paranoia.
Maddeningly, BioShock Infinite isn't due for release until 2012, though from what we've seen so far, it should be worth the wait.