14 DAY TRIAL // Ken Levine, the leader of Irrational Games, says that the emotional connection that players develop with Elizabeth over the course of BioShock Infinite was very hard to create without placing an extra burden on players.
The developer talks about his approach to video game creation with Grantland, stating that, “We saw an opportunity to actually build an emotional connection for the player, via this character of Booker, to this AI named Elizabeth. That was a challenge to take on, and an interesting one.”
Traditionally, Artificial Intelligence companions in video games are seen as a problem because they often require protection from gamers and the titles tend to introduce failed states linked to them.
For BioShock Infinite, Levine wanted to create a relationship with Elizabeth and crafted her abilities and her behavior in order to never impede a player’s progress and even help him at critical points.
The Irrational Games leader adds, “We kept pushing on ways she could help you, and the ways that you could empathize with her. That became the mission of the game. Every time we had Elizabeth doing something, it was always under that lens of: Is she a relationship or a burden?”
The interview from Grantland tackles the wider issues of writing for video games and Levine reveals that he has scrapped a number of versions of BioShock Infinite before managing to find the right tone and the best possible relationship between the main characters.
This was probably the cause of the two delays that have pushed the video games from 2012 to 2013.
At one point during development, BioShock Infinite had a multiplayer mode, but Irrational Games abandoned it because it did not fit with the wider themes and features of the experience.
BioShock Infinite can be played on the PlayStation 3 from Sony, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PC.