"Bioshock" Daddy's Design Origin: Inspired by "Cyber Shock 2"

2025-08-15 23:30:09|Myriagame |source：minecraft skins

"Big Daddy" in "Bichemical Shock" is one of the most iconic enemy designs in the history of the game.These Laplace Guardians, who wield drill bits and diving helmets, have long become synonymous with Irrational Studios' classic shooting games - when the game was released in 2007, their images even covered the box cover.

But it turns out that like many elements of "Bioshock", Daddy's design is directly derived from "Cyber Shock 2".The appearance of the most dangerous enemy in "Bioshock" actually stems from the technical limitations of 3D game production in the 1990s.

This is revealed by Nate Wells recently in the in-depth interview series of Nightdive Studios "Cyber Shock 2".Wells served as the artistic director of Looking Glass studio during the joint development of Cyber Shock 2 with Irrational Games, and now works for Epic.In the interview, he mentioned that the seeds of Dad's visual design were planted as early as the design stage of "Cyber Shock 2" due to the limit on the number of polygons.

“I’m now involved in Fortnite development, and we’re no longer talking about polygon count,” he explained to Nightdive Studios’ Rock Vincent. “I would say that BioShock is perhaps the last game we’ve designed seriously, limited by polygon count.”

Wells explained that the big dad in BioShock consists of 2500 to 3000 polygons, "but if you think about it carefully, the number is still very small."Even so, this is 10 times the number of polygons of character by Looking Glass and Irrational in Cyber Shock 2: "In the days of Cyber Shock 2, a character had only 250 triangles."

Such strict restrictions force developers to come up with various tricks when designing the character model of "Cyber Shock 2".“A lot of characters are based entirely or partly on the Thief’s characters, and even just changed skins,” Wells took the example of Mixed Humans. “We reused those models because they’ve been optimized to the last triangle. The first thing I remember doing is to repaint the textures and fit the exact layout of Thief’s characters so that at least they can get those crew characters ‘free’.”

The origin of "Bioshock" Daddy goes back to the first character designed by Wells for "Cyber Shock 2".“The first character I designed the concept and modeled was the maintenance robot,” he said. “Big Dad is actually an evolutionary version of it, equivalent to an ‘upgraded version’ – shoulder height is even flush with eyes, creating a short, fat and slightly sad appearance.”

Wells said the shape of the maintenance robot is also due to technical limitations: "I drew the concept diagram first, and then I had to model it myself. When drawing it, you have to think about it - you see, most of its body parts are blocks.

“I know it’s going to be made into squares in the end,” he explained. “You can certainly draw a concept full of curves, complex structures, and slim antennas, but why bother? These details will eventually be cut. So I’ll think: ‘What kind of robot can be spelled out with squares and is still cool?’”

Wells believes that considering the technical limitations of the game when designing is better than first doing complex concepts and then being forced to simplify them."It will always be better. Accepting these design limitations, you can eventually get a better model - because the UV is more reasonable, meaning more texture space."

This proves again that in the field of art and design, creativity often originates from exploring in limitations rather than doing what you want.Wells even briefly thought about whether the industry today needs more artistic barriers to break through: "I have to say that sometimes I miss those limitations, and the 'box' I create now is too big."

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