BioShock's time period and setting may have been leaked

BioShock 2
(Image credit: 2K Games)

The next BioShock game will reportedly take place in a fictional Antarctic city. 

Though only speculation at this time – so don't take this as gospel just yet – Sacred Symbols' Colin Moriarty reports that the game returns to its 1960s roots, this time in a city called Borealis, which seemingly tallies with what other journalists have been told about the project off-the-record, too. 

While we knew the fourth game – which will apparently be set in an open worldwas in development – this is our first tease about where the next BioShock game will take us.

There's no confirmed name for the game yet – which will be the franchise's fourth installment – but it's been internally codenamed Parkside. Moriarty believes the team at Cloud Chamber "has incredible latitude to get it right" and the game will tie in with previous BioShock games.

"It takes place in a 1960s Antarctic city called Borealis,” Moriarty said (thanks, VGC). "[The game is] codenamed Parkside… I’ve been told that the development team has incredible latitude to get it right. That seems and sounds right to me.

"Internally the game is very secret and apparently, totally locked up. Apparently the inclination there is that they understand full well that this game will be compared to what Ken Levine does. And by the way, [Take-Two] is also publishing Levine’s next game."

ICYMI, we recently had more evidence that the heavily-rumored BioShock RTX remaster from the Nvidia leak was genuine when Redditors noticed that the SteamDB database entries for BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite had all been recently updated. Why? Well, we're still not sure. But it does suggest something is currently going on at publisher 2K, whether it's a fourth installment of the fan-favorite series or another remaster.

Bethesda's Todd Howard recently surprised us all by confirming that Fallout 4 had a "BioShock-style vault" under the waves of Boston Harbor, but it was cut before the game was released.

He made the revelation during a Reddit ask-me-anything thread celebrating 10 years of Skyrim, during which Howard also confirmed that the Fallout TV show is still "moving ahead".

"Unfortunate cut content," Howard responded when a fan questioned him about it. "BioShock style Vault. With massive sentient octopus living outside it."

We spoke to Cloud Chamber studio head Kelly Gilmore about the new BioShock.

Vikki Blake
Weekend Reporter, 12DOVE

Vikki Blake is 12DOVE's Weekend Reporter. Vikki works tirelessly to ensure that you have something to read on the days of the week beginning with 'S', and can also be found contributing to outlets including the BBC, Eurogamer, and GameIndustry.biz. Vikki also runs a weekly games column at NME, and can be frequently found talking about Destiny 2 and Silent Hill on Twitter.