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Ken Levine Hasn’t Ruled Out Returning to Rapture

Irrational Games boss and BioShock creator Ken Levine may have left BioShock 2 to 2K Marin, but he hasn’t ruled out a return to Rapture himself in the future -- so long as he has a good enough idea.
"Leaving Rapture was very, very personally difficult for me," Levine explained to CVG during GamesCom last week. "It was my whole life. I don’t have kids, it’s like my child. I feel that connection to Andrew Ryan, Sander Cohen -- a sick group of people to feel a connection to but I do. I just felt that we had said all we needed to say about it... at the time. I mean, never say never. But right now that’s how we feel about it."

So if it’s "never say never," what would it take for Levine to make a return to Rapture? "Yeah. I mean, life’s a long time. But I’d HAVE to have an idea that drove that. I’d have to spring from the idea," he said. But for now, Levine is focused on the cloud city of Columbia in BioShock Infinite, which features its own bizarre cast of characters -- including the Big Daddy-like creature seen in the debut trailer with its heart visible through a glass case. As explained on Irrational’s latest podcast (via VG247), this character is called "Handyman," and it went through quite an evolution to its current state.

"I think with the original Handyman, there were claws," said concept artist Rob Waters. "But in the end, Crabman didn’t end up working out because he couldn’t grab a guy and shove him in a fish tank very gracefully, and he ended up looking a little goofy in-game" (early concept art for this version hasn’t been released, but we’re guessing he looked something like this). In the end, they replaced the claws with large porcelain hands because they decided it’d be more "fundamentally scary," and add "humanity" to the character.

BioShock Infinite is planned for release in 2012.