BioShock creator Ken Levine has said that developer Irrational Games will be injecting more variety in to BioShock Infinite’s combat system, forcing players to adopt new strategies while dealing with certain enemies instead of relying on bread and butter tactics such as the fan favourite ‘shock & Shotgun’ combo.
Reflecting on the original game, Levine spoke on how players could effectively dispatch the majority of Rapture’s crazed inhabitants with a quick shock of the electrobolt followed by a blast from your trusty boom stick.
"There’s a famous saying: ‘When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’," said Levine, during a chinwag with the PlayStation Blog.
"That’s kind of how it was in the original BioShock. You walked down a tight, restricted corridor with Electrobolt in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and that was an effective way to deal with most of the enemies.”
Not so with Infinite, however, with the airborne metropolis of Columbia proving an entirely different kettle of fish when it comes to combat situations. Instead, players will have to pick the right tool for the job, with Levine insisting there isn’t a “perfect combination” to employ against foes.
"One of the reasons we wanted to really expand the scale of the environment [in BioShock Infinite] and the number of enemies was to create situations where certain tools would have clear strengths and weaknesses based upon what you were up against.
"There is no perfect combination or an ideal set of tools, and there’s going to be a larger variety of weapons and powers. We wanted to show that even familiar weapons like the shotgun are not always the right tool for the job. And the sniper rifle-unlike BioShock’s crossbow-actually has a specific function because of the extreme scale of our environments."
BioShock Infinite is due for release in 2012.