Rumors aboutBioShock 4have been circulating since shortly after the release ofBioShock Infinitein 2013. The once-ubiquitous retrofuturistic first-person shooter series has effectively fallen off the face of the earth since then, but alleged leaks and unconfirmed reports have popped up periodically.BioShock 4rumors began just prior to the release ofInfinite’s second DLC,Burial at Sea: Episode Two, when series creator Ken Levine announced that it would be the lastBioShockgame developed by his studio, Irrational Games. Now called Ghost Story Games, it’s currently working on aBioShock-inspired title calledJudas.
Publisher 2K soon took up theBioShockmantle, promising another title coming soon. This iteration ofBioShock4was initially to be developed by in-house studio 2K Marin, but was later outsourced to third-party studio Certain Affinity, then brought back under the 2K umbrella with the help of a new internal developer.It’s hard to separate rumor from fact in the case ofBioShock 4, and 2K’s restraint in revealing information about it doesn’t help. However, by comparing a laundry list of unconfirmed speculations with the cold, hard facts, it’s possible to get a picture of what’s going on.
BioShock 4 Leaks & Rumors
What We Don’t Know About BioShock 4
After five years of radio silence, the issue ofBioShock 4was raised again in 2018. AKotakuarticle that year on the 2K development studio Hangar 13 revealed that some of its employees had been hard at work on a highly secretive project given the working titleParkside. Rumors spread, first internally, and then via the resultingKotakuprofile, thatParksidewas actually a codename forBioShock 4. This was, of course, never confirmed by anyone at 2K or Hangar 13. If this version ofParksidereally wasBioShock 4in disguise, it appears to have since been rebooted.
Later, in 2023, leaks emerged claimingBioShock 4was in development hell. This revealeda new purported title -BioShock: Isolation. It also corroborated earlier leaks from the same source claiming that the sequel had an Antarctic setting. These leaks further claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic and high staff turnover had stalledBioShock 4’s production, but that it was still technically an active project. None of this was ever officially confirmed, but it would seem the leaks got at least one thing right: despite a dearth of news,BioShock 4is still technically in development.
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What followed was another year of silence, untilan image purported to be thefirst screenshot ofBioShock 4leaked onlinein July 2024. The image is generic enough that it certainly could be fromBioShock4, but could equally be from any game with a slightly retrofuturistic slant in which players use guns and elemental powers against enemies. The main focus of the screnshot is on a sort of beacon, set atop an arched, Space Needle-esque pedestal against a cloudy sky.
The player holds a ricochet shotgun, and in the lower left corner, three abilities appear in a small hotbar: one with a magnet for an icon, one with a stopwatch, and one with a lightning bolt. Again, these could certainly be the next evolution ofBioShock’s plasmids, but are generic enough that they could be almost any game’s abilities. The most obvious piece of evidence is the fact thatthe caption “Parkside demo” appears at the bottom of the screenshot. That’s certainly compelling, but could also easily have been edited in.
Confirmed News On BioShock 4
What We Do Know About BioShock 4
In December 2019, following the emergence of theParksiderumors,2K did confirm thatBioShock 4was in development. It would be the responsibility of a new internal studio, Cloud Chamber. SeveralBioShockalumni had signed on, includingBioShockandBioShock Infinite’s art director Scott Sinclair, and series veteran Hogarth de la Plante.
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Little else has been announced by 2K or Cloud Chamber on the matter.As of July 2024, theBioShock 4team apparently began “ramping up” development, according to a spate of job listings that suddenly appeared on theCloud Chamber website. These listings made it abundantly clear that they were for open positions on theBioShockdevelopment team, but were pretty vague on details, making it difficult to infer anything about the actual content ofBioShock 4based on the job listings alone.
When BioShock 4 Might Release
BioShock 4’s Potential Release Date
Frankly,there’s absolutely no way of knowing whenBioShock 4might come out. Nothing in any of the leaks or official confirmations has revealed anything even close to resembling a release window. It’s almost certainly not coming out in 2024, given that it’s October at the time of writing and no announcements have been made. It may not come out in 2025, or even 2026 for that matter. With all the reboots it’s undergone, and development only “ramping up” as recently as July,BioShock4 could easily still be several years away.
In fact,there’s no guarantee thatBioShock4 is even coming out during the current console generation. If the PS6 and next Xbox don’t come out until 2027 or 2028, as they’re rumored to do,BioShock 4could easily be a launch title for one or both of those consoles.
So, despite a ton of rumors and a handful of official confirmations, little more is known about the current state of the nextBioShockthan it was when 2K first announced its intentions to develop one. It could be several years before any further information onBioShock 4is revealed, and its release date is still likely to be far in the future - for now, fans will just have to wait.
Sources:Kotaku,Cloud Chamber
Bioshock 4
BioShock 4 is an upcoming first-person shooter and the next installment in the Bioshock series. Not much is known about the project outside of its connection to developer Cloud Chamber studios.
