It has been a long time since players got to walk the streets of Rapture or Columbia but maybe the wait is almost over. Earlier today, Kotaku released an expose detailing the development of the third-person action game, Mafia III. In it, news editor Jason Schreier learned of the unannounced next BioShock game that is reportedly in development. According to the piece, the Mafia III developer – Hanger 13 – had a large portion of its staff broken up.

Some of these staff members were “moved to the top-secret studio next door to work on an unannounced new BioShock game.” This is the first time we have heard any news regarding this series and its possible return. Given both the Mafia and BioShock series was published by 2K Games, we’re not too surprised that one is in the works. BioShock is one of the most influential games of the modern era, spawning two sequels, a plethora of merchandise, and even two novels.

Among other details I learned while reporting this story: Right next to Hangar 13, a top-secret 2K studio is now working on a top-secret new BioShock game. — Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) April 13, 2018

2K Games was apparently /very/ secret about the next installment in the BioShock series. Code-named Parkside, the developers didn’t even tell their neighbors – Hanger 13 – about what they were working on.

“If anyone from Hangar 13 tried to strike up a conversation with them, they’d say, ‘Oh, we can’t really talk about it,’” said one person familiar with the studio. “It was all very tight-lipped.”

However, fans shouldn’t expect the original mind behind BioShock, Ken Levine, to head up the project. Currently, he and other former members of Irrational Games founded a new studio called Ghost Story Games. There are no details at all outside of knowing that a new BioShock game is on the horizon. With E3 less than two months away, it would certainly be a big surprise to see the world of Rapture make a return. Sadly, this probably won’t happen given one of the people that Schreier stated: ““The issue is that Parkside’s not ready for lots of people.”

One has to wonder where the new team plans to go with the next entry in the BioShock series. Infinite filled in a lot of the gaps in the first game, while the second saw the end of the famed underwater city. While BioShock Infinite’s ending clearly set up the series to virtually explore any location or time period, the player will still know how it connects.

What we would like to see is this new, announced BioShock take the series back in time to the beginning of the city’s civil war. This portion was briefly touched upon in Infinite’s first DLC, Burial at Sea: Episode One, but never explored outside of a few locations. The civil war was detailed in the novel BioShock: Rapture by John Shirley, but it told it through the eyes of Bill McDonagh. It’s a great story, but there is still a ton of room to be explored that would let us return to this nightmarish city.

At the time of writing this, there has been no official announcement or statement regarding a possible new entry in the BioShock series.

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