BioShock: Infinite - The Making of the E3 Demo

While we all patiently wait for the next round of new BioShock: Infinite information, we asked Irrational Games creative director Ken Levine to answer a few questions about the Electronic Entertainment Expo demo and give some director's commentary on the demo itself with art director Nate Wells and lead artist Shawn Robertson.

GameSpot: Can you talk about your process of determining between the proper level of what's cinematic and what just feels scripted?

Ken Levine: You could say BioShock games have a notion of being novelistic in the sense that if you look at the plot of the original BioShock and the number of characters and number of [story] threads, it's quite novelistic. You have the kind of scope of stories you're telling or the number of stories you're telling, and the cast of characters is much more like what you'd find in a novel than a movie because movies don't have the time. That doesn't mean we're making a novel. It doesn't mean when we say cinematic that we're in any way making a movie. What we think of as cinematic is designing the game so that it's attuned to creating moments that are visually striking. If you look at the skylines, for instance, they're extremely cinematic, but there isn't a single thing about the skylines that are scripted. When you're making those jumps, you see those little dots on the skyline. Those are telling you that there are jumps to make.

In order to make those jumps feel good, feel cinematic, and feel visually striking, you have to do a lot of work to make that feel right. You make that jump, and we start calculating the arc of the jump that you're making once you decided to make it. Then, how we make that arc and how we make Booker vocalize…at that point, his hands kind of wave around to catch the other skyline. Those are the elements that really enhance the audio visual experiences.The opposite of that spectrum is scripted cutscenes and that's [not] what we're focused on. In the original BioShock, there were a few short scripted cutscenes, but I think that hasn't been our focus. And we're trying, as a franchise, to move away from [them] as much as we possibly can. The challenge is you want to retain a narrative presentation, and BioShock is very narrative. But you want to move that as much as you can to the visual space and to the game space.

GS: How does that apply to Elizabeth's actions in the game? How do you make sure she feels like a well-rounded character that has her own intentions and drive while also making sure that fits in with what the player is doing?

KL: Elizabeth can be broken down into three [categories]. First of all, there's "Elizabeth, the narrative story device." The scene where you're with her in the doorway where she takes Booker's hands around her neck…that's a scripted moment. Everybody will see that in exactly the

"She's finding little bits of business she can do around the world at appropriate times…"

Care for some improv?

If you know how improvisation works, you basically have to say "Yes," to each other. The player's not necessarily going to say "Yes." We have to basically wait until players are in a state where they're prepared to see stuff. It's cool for them to see something that won't get in their way. But you can't ask the player to be that improvisation partner. We think that we have to put the onus on Elizabeth to make sure the time is right, and therefore, we see the level with all of these opportunities for her to do cool stuff. And that's where the process is at right now: building up that database of cool stuff, little bits of business and cool stuff she can do, and things she can say.

The next thing is a hybrid. I'm not really sure if this falls into the second category or the next category, but there are things she just does for you in combat situations. You saw the demo when rockets are coming. She says, "On your left." She draws attention to things. If you're getting low on ammo, she can scour the area and find ammo for you or toss it to you. She can [observe] things about the world, like if new enemies are coming behind you; she can see them and call them out. So, there's a whole range of dynamic combat that she can do for you as a partner. The final stage is the tears or the way you access the tears in this world. Tears can be real game changers in combat. Basically, we seed the world with ways to change the combat environment, and she lets you access those, but it's always the player that drives them. Elizabeth is never going to say, "OK, I'm bringing the turret. I'm not going to bring in reinforcements." That's up to Booker to decide because it needs to be very player driven.

GS: How does that sense of improvisation play into the combat of the game? There's that moment in the demo where Booker is walking by the Vox Populi and he says something like, "Stay low. We'll make it through this." What if the player doesn't want to keep quiet in that execution scene?

KL: In the execution scene, you could do three things. You could start shooting, and it would probably play out in a roughly similar fashion to what you saw because what Booker was

"Tears can be real game changers in combat."

GS: Can you talk a little bit about the process of establishing the visual character of the Vox Populi? Are players being invited to see a mirror between a Vox Populi uprising and something along the lines of a Bolshevik Revolution?

KL: It's interesting because when we first showed The Founders, the opposing group, a lot of people just said, "Well, this is just about the Tea Party." My position was always, no, it's not about the Tea Party. It's about these kinds of movements--these nationalist movements on one side and these leftist uprisings on the other side. They go back forever. The Bolshevik Revolution was version 970 out of 1,500 that happened over the course of history. I think that was one of the larger ones, and certainly there are visual elements you take from that period because the visual style of the Bolshevik Revolution was five years after the game was set. The revolution took place in 1917, and the game takes place in 1912.

To be honest, because of the art style of the period, you're going to have a lot of similarities. But it's interesting. You watch what's happening on Wall Street, and you're seeing the opposite of the Tea Party. You're seeing a more left side of the spectrum movement…a more student kind of movement, which is much more similar to the movements you're seeing with the Vox Populi. We're never trying to be any current political situation or early political situation exactly, but we'll draw from all of the interesting ones that have happened along the way. There have been dozens, and dozens, and dozens of these movements in history.

GS: For the skyline system, you talked a little bit about the player feedback and the cues you give to the players so they know where they can go and what they can take. Was this always built into the skyline system? How much has it changed since you first implemented it?

KL:Anytime you do something where there isn't a lot of traditional, institutional, or even company knowledge about…we'd never done a skyline before and there's not been anything really quite like it in games. I'd be lying to you if I said we woke up one day and knew exactly how to make the skylines work. We've been working on that for a very long time. There were many long nights of steady soul searching about that system, and I think we really got it together in a way that we were very happy with not long before E3. I've talked about making it visually work…making it cinematic in terms of feeling exciting and rewarding.

We had a guy who came on, and he really just got the visceral feel of it down in the last few weeks before the pre-E3 event. Anytime you try to do something a little different, it's always scary as hell. I wish I could say it's just [members] of the team wake up one morning and know how to do these things, but we don't. It's hard work, and like anybody else, we struggle through it. And hopefully, you finally figure it out and go to the next problem with that system. Then you figure that out. The goal is by the time you've shipped, you have it all figured out, and I'm absolutely confident we will. It's one of the hardest things we've done in the game.

GS: One of the most fascinating things to me about the skyline is how it contrasts with the original BioShock, in which the player progression and navigation was so much about digging deeper into the city. With the skyline, you're always going higher and higher but can fall back to Earth. How does something like that affect the sense of navigation or exploration knowing that it's so much more vertical?

KL: A lot of people joked when we first announced the game that instead of looking out

"We decided early on that if we're going to the sky, we had to really embrace that."

An early concept for Infinite.

I really wanted to embrace that. We scratched our heads for a long time. We said, "Oh, we want flying. We want paragliding. We want this. We want that." I felt that had all been done before, and I wanted something that was quite vertical but you could also fight with…something that gave you some degree of control but not complete control. I certainly went back to, in my head, the thing that thrilled me most in terms of vertical experiences I've had, which were roller coasters. There's the idea of these roller coasters that you fight on and that was exciting for me. Then it was like, OK, we have to actually make that happen. And as I said, that was a lot of work. But I think it was really important to us that we embraced being in the sky.

GS: One of the things you mention in the demo is the example of the Washington Crossing the Delaware painting. The art team spent so much time on this thinking it was going to be this big visual point that the player is going to take a long time looking at, but in actuality, it's something the player passes over almost instantly. Can you think of any examples where the opposite is true? Where you don't think something is going to be a big deal, but players end up being fascinated by it?

KL: The closest things I can think of are those little bits of business where Elizabeth picks things up in the store; things like the Lincoln mask. I like those moments, and I think

"In the first demo, I didn't think we got her across very well, in the way that I wanted to."