Gameplayer has a great interview with BioShock 2’s creative director Jordan Thomas that covers the storytelling strengths of one of last year’s best games.

With BioShock, “2K Boston and 2K Australia wanted to build an action-narrative epic that would show respect for the player’s intelligence without forcing them to think exactly like the design team in order to ‘win,’” said Thomas.

“BioShock plays well, I think, to some of the strengths of games as a medium. Most of the first game’s story is unmitigated, meaning you get to live through or discover it directly, in the manner of a forensic anthropologist, as opposed to ‘visiting storyland’ from time to time and then returning to the entirely unrelated game experience.” added Thomas.

“If anything, we’d like to deliver an even more consistently integrated experience with any future games in the series. We hope to maintain a rich narrative atmosphere while allowing for the player to author key aspects of his or her identity with a large degree of expressive freedom. To me, that’s what BioShock is all about.”

Thomas is heading production of BioShock 2 at 2k Marin, which took up the franchise from their sister studios 2k Boston/2k Australia. Some of the original BioShock team is working with Thomas on the sequel, but the first game’s creative director Ken Levine is notably absent from the helm.

The 2k Marin team is still coming up with ideas for where to take the plot in the BioShock sequel. With the world of Rapture already set, Thomas wants to focus on “breaking ground with the game content itself,” and says they are devoting less time toward creative development.

Thomas sees a real market for games that offer an immersive, story-driven experience like BioShock. “The Nintendo generation is starting to triangle-jump into adulthood now, and I think it’s birthed this new demand for more challenging material. This doesn’t necessarily mean the knee-jerk ‘all grim, all the time’ approach; just more subtlety in some of the themes.”

“BioShock” Hits the Big Screen

Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski will be directing a film adaptation of BioShock, producers at Universal Studios recently announced. That movie is expected to flood theaters in 2010.

“Of all the games I’ve played, this is one that I felt has a really strong narrative,” said Verbinski, who has also been talking with BioShock director Ken Levine. It’s good to see that this director might take the original content seriously, or at least play the game.