14 DAY TRIAL // One of the highlights of last year’s BioShock Infinite was the way the player, through main character Booker DeWitt, was able to interact with his companion Elizabeth, and it seems that theater-based techniques were used by Irrational Games to enhance the entire experience.
John Abercrombie, the lead programmer at the studio, explained during a Game Developers Conference event called “Bringing Bioshock Infinite's Elizabeth to Life: An AI Development Postmortem” that his aim was to immerse gamers and create a set of real-world situations.
A scripted AI was judged early on as a poor fit for the world of Columbia and the overall personality of Elizabeth, which means techniques borrowed from theater were used to make the character more life-like, according to The Escapist.
The team at Irrational introduced goals for Elizabeth, a series of target locations that she needed to reach while taking into account how the player himself moved around the environment.
The character also needed to be more than a follower, and that meant introducing a complex algorithm that focused her attention on various areas of the world, based on time of interaction and distance to the object.
Irrational Games wanted Elizabeth to act as a fascinated child who was discovering the world of Columbia for the first time, and that also implied making sure that she had appropriate actions for the moments when the player was occupied exploring.
Abercrombie also offered more information on the way it created combat scenarios in order to make it easier for the companion to disappear from sight, which should allow players to focus on the battles rather than on trying to keep her out of harm’s way.
At the moment, the team at Irrational Games is preparing for the launch of the second episode of the Burial at Sea downloadable content for BioShock Infinite, which is designed to allow gamers to play as Elizabeth in the underwater city of Rapture.
The change of main characters also means that the core mechanics are modified, with stealth and silent kills more important than ever.
After Burial at Sea is complete, the Irrational Games entity will disappear completely, as leader Ken Levine and a trusted core of about 15 developers will create another studio inside publisher 2K Games.
The game creator says that he plans to work on smaller titles that will use innovative ways to deliver both narrative and replayability to gamers.
2K Games will retain the world linked to the BioShock franchise.