BioShock Technical Information

Engine
BioShock was originally going to run on an enhanced version of the Vengeance engine, the highly modified version of Unreal Engine 2.5 technology used by previous Irrational titles, Tribes: Vengeance, SWAT 4, and SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate. In an interview at E3 in May 2006, Levine revealed that "we've moved to Unreal Engine 3.0, we've done a lot of modifications on top of it," particularly to the way the engine handles water effects, which he claims will be very impressive, "We've hired a water programmer and water artist, just for this game, and they're kicking ass and you've never seen water like this."

BioShock will utilize the DirectX 10 feature set when available, but it will also run on older DirectX 9 hardware.

Official requirements
Announced on BioShock's official site and at E3 2007, the official system requirements for BioShock are as follows.