14 DAY TRIAL // Ken Levine, the leader of the Irrational Games development team, says that, at one point, main character Elizabeth was in danger of being eliminated from the new BioShock because no one really understood exactly how to use her effectively.
The developer tells Polygon that “Do you know how many times people wanted to just cut her? Over and over again. Because we didn’t know what to do with her at first.”
Elizabeth currently has supernatural powers and she is the main reason that protagonist Booker DeWitt visits the floating island of Columbia.
It’s unclear whether the version of Elizabeth that Irrational Games was willing to eliminate from BioShock Infinite had the same abilities and motivations.
Cutting important characters seems to be a constant potential problem for the team led by Ken Levine.
He adds, “I would be in reviews and ask ‘Where is Elizabeth?’ and they would say, ‘Oh, she’s in a closet,’ The same with Big Daddy. I actually had to insist that there were three Big Daddies in every level. Nobody knew how they worked or what to do with them.”
Elizabeth is a difficult character because she needs to stay close to the player and help him, while also expressing her own ideas and offering details that push the story along.
Ken Levine says that his team finally understood how to make the character relevant by focusing on her core characteristics.
BioShock Infinite will take players to Columbia and will challenge them to deal with complex themes, ranging from fanaticism, to racism, and the impact of violence.
Elizabeth will be able to open inter-dimensional tears in the game, moving the player briefly to universes that seem to be close to our own but with a number of crucial differences.
BioShock Infinite launches on the PC and current-gen consoles in late April.