http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3774...k_boston2k_.php

An interesting read, this. Highlights the problems facing the development cycle of BioShock and how some of them were overcome. Ken Levine had previously said in interviews that he had not written the story until the last moment, if it happened as he said where everyone was bugging him to do it all the while, then he's an arse and would have made several hours more work for those stuck in the crunch.

Some key points if you didn't want to read 4 pages:

* BioShock originally had a 2 year development cycle
The game runs on an Unreal Engine, which they had used in the past. So there was very little from-the-ground programming that needed to be done at the start of the project, shaving at least a year off the development cycle. Lots of base ideas were already taken from System Shock 2.

* At one point they removed complicated physics from the game
Because the physics engine they were using was such a pain in the arse, they thought of scrapping it and replacing it with a far simpler system. They soon realised their mistake and fixed the older engine.

* Big Daddies weren't a necessity
At one point in the game, Big Daddies weren't the big nemesis you had to overcome if you wanted new upgrades. Instead, the player could just interact with the Little Sisters directly and cut out the sometimes arduous battle with the Big Daddy. Later on, they decided that it just seemed better to add that extra challenge in.

* Atlas/Fontaine's VA got canned, new one called in
After some play tests, it seems that the 'narrator' at the start of the game was very off-putting to a lot of players. 2K then recast Atlas/Fontaine's voice and so we end up with what we have now. Wonder what his voice was like originally then.

* The E3 2006 demo has very little to do with the final game
A CGI movie had nothing to do with the final game? Get out of here.

There's probably a few more key points I missed, and it's a good read if you're into this thing. But don't expect samples or in-development pictures. It's just words.