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Bringing to a close the BioShock 2 "Artist Series" over at the Cult of Rapture website is the image seen above, dubbed "Subject Delta." Painted by Julie Bell and Boris Vallejo, the piece epitomizes the little we know about the upcoming game, with Splicers looking more gruesome than ever and a flood of ocean water just moments from washing everything away. Oh, and dear Little Sister, please stop staring right through us. That's just creepy.

Check out the wallpaper-sized version, right here.

Good news, Japan! D3 Publisher is localizing Bioshock 2 for you and, this time around, you won't have to wait that long to get your ADAM-soaked hands on it. Andriasang reports D3 Publisher will release the 2K Marin, et al.–developed sequel sometime in early 2010 -- presumably close to the February 9 US release date. We just hope the new Japanese ad campaign dials back the completely frightening a bit.

Sometimes an idea is just so good, you can hardly believe you came up with it. That must be how Harrison Krix felt after creating the elaborate and awesome Big Daddy costume you see above -- not since BioShock released have we been so eager to heap praise on something. Well, Mr. Krix, we hope you suffocate on our affection, because taking your costume to the Georgia Aquarium for some underwater snapshots has to be the best idea ever.

If you're scratching your head, wondering just where you've seen these two before, let us help you: right here on our website. Krix's girlfriend (holding another of his creations in the pic above, the ADAM syringe) is quite the cosplayer, which initially got Krix into the game of making things from games. Take notes, gents! That's how you woo the ladies.

[Via Geekologie]

Considering the dichotomy of the moral decisions (see: good or evil) offered to the silent hero of the original BioShock, many have wondered how the upcoming undersea adventure, BioShock 2, would take his actions in the first installment into account. Without a save game import feature (ala Mass Effect 2), how could the sequel register the player's decisions in the original? The answer was recently revealed by Bioshock 2's creative director, Jordan Thomas: Ambiguity, my dear Watson.

Speaking to MTV, Thomas explained that, "the things that he did are being fiercely debated by the splicers, because we wanted to support any of the choices the player could have made in the first game." He later added, "It's become kind of a religious question; what he did at the end of BioShock 1." This plot device is probably for the best -- if the splicers in Bioshock 2 knew about our actions in the first game, all they'd debate about is why we spent ten hours wandering aimlessly around the city, desperately hunting for audio cassettes.

The citizens of BioShock 2's undersea dystopia, Rapture, love them some ADAM -- especially when it's been freshly harvested by a Little Sister. It's with this in mind that Digital Extremes tweaked the tried-and-true Capture the Flag multiplayer contest to place one team in charge of abducting one of these adolescent creepsters while the other must lay their lives on the line to protect her.

As the above first look at the mode explains, the "attacking" side's goal is to return the girl to a Little Sister vent. The defenders -- well they defend, of course ... but one of them gets to be a Big Daddy. We'll have our hands-on impressions of BioShock 2's single and multiplayer modes tomorrow, so look for more details then.

If you diligently avoided last week's GameTrailers TV due to all the BioShock 2 spoilers, the trailer you see above can help provide you with some water-soaked gameplay -- sans all the direct information. We feel it's safe to tell you that 2K Games gave this clip the title "Siren Alley" because of an area in Rapture of the same name, a place that we never got to see the in the first game.

Even if you don't watch the video above, you should take one thing from it: The "worldwide embargo" gets lifted this Thursday and a flood of information on the game is sure to follow. If you're really trying to remain spoiler-free on BioShock 2, now may be a good time to go dark.

Like all good things in life, there's a steep price to pay for watching last night's Bioshock 2–centric episode of GameTrailers TV (posted after the jump). That price is your everlasting soul.

Okay, all it actually costs you is exposure to a few spoilers for the game -- but isn't that just as bad? Remember that sense of wonder the first time you stepped foot into the murky waters of Rapture? Aren't you afraid you'll ruin whatever semblance of that emotion that might still appear in the sequel by filling your ... you're already watching it, aren't you? You're a fiend, you know that? A fiend.

Ever since Andrew Ryan decided to go out for that pack of smokes (our mom says he's coming back; just you wait!), there's been nobody to tend to the leaky pipes and roving packs of splicers in Rapture. Well, according to GameTrailers TV's Geoff Keighley, someone's finally decided to step in and assume the leadership role for BioShock 2, and we'll find out who on Thursday's episode.

In another tweet, Keighley promised plenty of "new single player info and footage" and even teased that the episode will also reveal new characters -- something we already knew was planned for the sequel. You can catch the special BioShock 2 episode this Thursday night, October 22 at 12:30 a.m. ET on Spike.

In a lengthy post-mortem with Gamasutra this week, Rocksteady Studios creative director Sefton Hill spoke his mind on a mess of topics regarding this summer's surprise hit, Batman: Arkham Asylum. "There are too many games out there that deliver lots of average content," Hill said when asked about the relative "tightness" of Batman in comparison with other games. Personal inspiration for the game's design came from places like Zelda and Metroid, two game series he's been a fan of "for years," as well as Silicon Knights' Eternal Darkness. And though Arkham's audio logs and "environment as a character" motif hearken back to 2007's BioShock, Hill claimed he's never played it. "It's on my list of games to get back into ... I can't say for me that was a big direct influence."

Truth be told, we're just scratching the surface of Gamasutra's thorough dissection of Batman -- a game we loved with all of our jaded, rancorous hearts -- so do yourself a favor and stroll through the entire five pages. Call it an afternoon treat! You deserve it, dearest Joystiq reader.

Finally, two years after the original release of BioShock, Mac owners get a chance to see what all of the fuss has been about. Andrew Ryan opens the doors of Rapture again on October 7, inviting Mac gamers (yes, they exist ... somewhere) to spend $49.99's worth of ADAM (£34.99 in the UK, €39.95 throughout Europe) for entry into the aquatic kingdom full of genetic abominations and pipe-powered electronics. With a description like that, who could say no?

The port is being handled by London-based dev Feral Interactive. We spoke with Brad Gibson, director of Marketing/PR at Feral, who told us the port "does not use Cider," the current go-to portability technology to get Windows games running on Intel-based Macs. We've put some more questions in to Feral to see if BioShock is the first native Unreal Engine 3 game on the Mac platform.

DICE founder Fredrik Liljegren has his sights set on free-to-play games, as he's revealed (via Gamasutra) his new studio, Antic Entertainment. He's joined by Digital Extremes alum Mark Mikulec and Jeff Evans at the London, Ontario-based studio, which features talent from a variety of titles such as Dark Sector, BioShock and DICE's Battlefield series.

In fact, the team's already got a title underway called Junk: Battles (Seriously? You named your game Junk?), an RTS hybrid designed to work in most major web browsers, where users create a ship and battle other users, gaining stats and ship parts as they progress. While the game is in its earliest stages, feel free to battle through all of the junk (sorry!) at its site here.

We did a little background check on Garry Schyman, the guy EA has picked to write the score for Dante's Inferno. Yes, as the publisher brags, he did the music for BioShock. But it may be his earlier material that caught the eye ear of Visceral Games. We are, of course, referring to his work on the late-'80s sing-a-long sitcom Rags to Riches. Check it out and you'll know why he was tapped to create a soundtrack for Hell.

Schyman, whose Inferno score has already been recorded at London's famous Abbey Road Studios, was also the composer for the likes of Destroy All Humans! and -- most recently -- Resistance: Retribution. You'll be able to buy (but not copy!) his latest soundtrack in January.