Five years after 2K’s official confirmation that Cloud Chamber Games was working on the next installment of BioShock, the game’s announcement remains a mystery, but it seems we’ve had our first (rather brief) look at the game through unofficial channels. MP1st claims to have obtained a screenshot of BioShock 4, which it says it received from an anonymous 2K visual effects artist.
The bottom of the image mentions the “Parkside” name, which according to previous reports is the codename for the game’s development. Apparently, the image is from a 2021 game demo that was presented in an internal pitch reel and shows the player wielding a weapon called the Ricochet Shotgun.
The user interface in the screenshot suggests that the player can carry a total of three weapons, with symbols in the bottom left apparently representing abilities, presumably on cooldown, rather than the Plasma and Vigor meters seen in previous BioShock titles. The hourglass and stopwatch symbols on the user interface also seem to indicate that the player will have access to time-based abilities.
Of course, it’s worth keeping in mind that if this image is indeed from an early version of the game dating back around three years, it’s very likely that many things have changed since then. Previous reports have suggested that BioShock 4 (or whatever it ends up being called) will be set in a 1960s Antarctic city called Borealis. Earlier this month, Cloud Chamber Games stated that the title’s development was “ramping up”, with the studio looking to hire for various positions.
Stay tuned for more information.
