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BioShock 2 is still set to miss this year's Christmas shopping season but that has done nothing to limit the excitement the videogame is generating among players. And GameStop, the retail chain that is already taking pre-orders for the title, is stocking the fires of fandom by revealing that it will offer two exclusive characters that can be used for multiplayer matches

Their names are Blanche the Actress and Zigo the Fisherman, and they are citizens of Rapture that, as the city is being destroyed around them at the end of the first game in the series, are fighting in the corridors for a chance to escape the would be underwater utopia. It's not known at the moment how the two characters differ from one another or whether they will only be available to GameStop pre-orders or whether everyone will get to use them.

BioShock 2 will be telling a single player story focused on a Big Sister intending to remake Rapture in her own image while the player is cast as the prototype for the Big Daddies in a quest to stop her. The developers are promising more visceral combat, with plasmids and weapons usable at the same time, a story bearing the same level of depth and moral choice and new surprising characters as charming as those in the first game.

But the BioShock 2 multiplayer, a first for the series, should be something else, entirely. It's set in the past, as Rapture is being crippled by the sea. Players will create a character, customize it and will have to battle other inhabitants of the city as the corridors around them are being flooded with salt water.