GamesRadar: Yet Rapture was once a thriving, self-contained community. Did you create the city to feel like a living - or once living - place?

HP: Absolutely. We have a huge, grandiose theater that the citizens of Rapture would go to... there are posters for the plays and the shows. There's even a Rapture football team. You never get to see where they play, but you'll see posters for Ryan's Raiders and you can hear advertisements over the PA talking about the "big game." One of the Splicers has even got an old-fashioned leather football helmet on. One of the things we accomplished best was making Rapture feel like it was once a grand place, but that it's not anymore. The paradox is really important.

GamesRadar: How did you get such a bizarre and unbelievable setting to seem real?

HP: The world feels more real if everything you see isn't exactly what you expect. Arcadia is visually a sidetrack from the rest of Rapture. You're walking through a steel-and-glass metropolis and, as soon as you open up the bathysphere door to Arcadia, you're like "What the heck?" Giant boulders, a tunnel of rock and a cemetery with a forest around it. All of a sudden you're in a fantasy-style RPG with trees and leaves and plants and flowers everywhere.