Milestones?

[Rapture_Tourist]

I like to ask if it's possible to reveal current milestones at Irrational. Apart from Q&As it would be lovely if the team gives us an insight of what they are doing at the moment.

You don't need to go much into detail and spoil the game, but just little hints like:

"We are proud to announce that the game's soundtrack is completely finished right now!"

"We are testing a brand new area of Rapture right now, none of our fans have ever seen. You would be amazed! Apart from this area, 80% of Rapture's enviroments are done so far."

[Redraf]

Agreed. You guys should have a frequently updated status bar :).

[Silent Film]

The recent GameStar article mentions that the 360 version is finished "in most parts", and that the PC version is shaping up. Presumably that means they are just polishing off while concentrating on the PC specific stuff.

Edit: Actually it was you RT who postd that info wasn't it :D

[Rapture_Tourist]

The recent GameStar article mentions that the 360 version is finished "in most parts", and that the PC version is shaping up. Presumably that means they are just polishing off while concentrating on the PC specific stuff.

Edit: Actually it was you RT who postd that info wasn't it :D

Yes, but even if that was true, there is still some space to talk about, I believe.

Gamestar guessed/said the game is finished 80%, but I don't think 20% is just testing ;).

[Raveness]

Cmon guys, they've given us a date. Anything else is just servile masturbation. Telling us how much of the programming or music or art assets are done will just lead to questions upon questions of said completed material that can't and won't be answered.

[Rapture_Tourist]

...will just lead to questions upon questions of said completed material that can't and won't be answered.

Isn't that a part of what discussion boards are made for :)? But you are right...maybe milestones don't make sense when the game is nearly done...

This was just an attempt to get more info out of the team. And you can't say that we know everything about the game or have fixed infos. Even the official website is still under construction.

[Silent Film]

I am content with just a date. Although a general statement like "it's done, just working on the finishing touches" does well to indicate that at least that date will be met, and this is something they've pretty much already said.

Roll on August 21st :D

[Rapture_Tourist]

I am surprised :). Where is your will to discuss, to speculate about possible -yet unknown- things, features, gameplay mechanics?

Of course we could lean back and relax, but heating up theories is just so much more fun in my opinion.

[Raveness]

We don't need to know the in's and out's of the everyday minutia of what is developing at Irrational. It wastes the PM's and the directors' time to tell us, and representing the game's progress via a numerical statistical breakdown just seems wrong to me.

A work of art is not pieces of a whole haphazardly cobbled together. It's not a summation of rendered models and lines of code or AI subroutines. Bioshock, I have no doubt, will become a breathtaking creation of the gaming entertainment medium.

Plus sometimes a progress chart made public can backfire. For example, sometimes a game could be completely finished, and then upon playtesting find it to be utterly uninteresting crap, and have to redo the whole level design, and that affects other things, such as a tailored soundtrack, or side-quests, or characterization.

[Rapture_Tourist]

... and representing the game's progress via a numerical statistical breakdown just seems wrong to me.

I was not talking about milestones like this.

Examples of Milestones/Community Updates by Lionhead Studios:

http://www.lionhead.com/news/community52k6.html
http://www.lionhead.com/news/community32K7.html

[Raveness]

Yep, developer diaries that chronicle their thoughts and accomplishments are a preferred approach. You should have said so in the first place, rather than pointing out examples where the completion of the project is shown percentage wise or via a status bar, which I feel is a gimmick used to placate spoiled fanatics who need their entertainment micromanaged. It's their God given right!

OK I've ranted enough......for the time being ;)