Bioshock Infinite has been delayed to allow more spit and shine to be added to it. Ken Levine tells all:
When we announced the release date of BioShock Infinite in March, we felt pretty good about the timing.
Since then, we’ve come to realize that some specific tweaks and improvements will make Infinite into something even more extraordinary. Therefore, to give our talented team the time they need, we’ve decided to move the game’s release to February 26, 2013. We wanted to let our loyal (and very patient!) fans know this as soon as possible.
I won’t kid you: BioShock Infinite is a very big game, and we’re doing things that no one has ever done in a first-person shooter. We had a similar experience with the original BioShock, which was delayed several months as our original ship date drew near. Why? Because the Big Daddies weren’t the Big Daddies you’ve since come to know and love. Because Andrew Ryan’s golf club didn’t have exactly the right swing. Because Rapture needed one more coat of grimy Art Deco.
The same principle now applies to BioShock Infinite.
What does this mean for you? It means a bit more waiting, but more importantly, it means an even better BioShock Infinite. The great can be made greater, and we owe it to both ourselves and to you, our fans, to take this opportunity. Irrational Games is one of those rare developers lucky enough to ask the people who sign the checks: “Hey, can we have a few more of those checks?”
We are also going to hold off on showing BioShock Infinite at the big events of the summer, like E3 and GamesCom. That way, the next time you see our game, it will be essentially the product we intend to put in the box. Preparing for these events takes time away from development, time we’re going to use instead to get the best version of Infinite into your hands in February.
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I think we're prepared to wait for a good game to come out - but hey, the reality is you're all probably not even reading this blog as Diablo III just came out.....
OOOOORrrrrrrr I wonder if they evaluated that the end of their game sucked and are changing it in light of the Mass Effect fiasco?
Irrational Games has announced that Bioshock Infinite will arrive for purchase in America on October 16th, 2012. The rest of the world gets their hands on it three days later, the 19th.
Producer Ken Levine had this to say "After Bioshock, we had a vision for a follow up that dwarfed the original in scope and ambition...Bioshock Infinite has been our sole focus for the last four years, and we can't wait for fans to get their hands on it."
I thought the original Bioshock was amazing (would you kindly?!) and the follow up wasn't too bad either - and with a whole new ideology to contend with (some kind of variation of socialism / communism), it's sure to give the Bioshock franchise some new room to breathe!
Here's some paragraphs from an article by Kotaku about Bioshock Infinite's now not so secret '1999' difficult mode:
For the hardcore gamer, 1999 mode could be
the best thing that's ever happened. And for the non-hardcore gamers?
"They're gonna hate this mode,"
said Levine. "That's okay — it's not for them."
Who exactly is 1999 mode for? For one, it's
for the student that approached the creative director and co-founder of
Irrational Games after a speaking engagement at Levine's old college to tell
him he had a bone to pick with him. His complaint? That none of the choices in
BioShock seemed to have any real permanence.
"There's a lot of things people can
tell you about your game, positive and negative, and you can either agree or
disagree," Levine told me. In this case he agreed. While there were
permanent decisions in the game, none of the choices the player could make felt
as if they changed the way the game was played irreversibly. "That would
have been really cool."
Levine loved the idea so much he decided to
"go down that road" with BioShock Infinite, but not before making
sure it was something the fans wanted. The developer held an informal poll to
feel out their audience. Would being required to make permanent decisions
enhance their gameplay experience? When 57 percent responded in the
affirmative, 1999 mode was born.
Adding 1999 mode to BioShock Infinite so
late in the game was a bit of a challenge. The game wasn't designed to demand
specialization from the player. The way resources were doled out had to be
tweaked. The mode required extensive balancing to ensure the enhanced
difficulty didn't cross the line from tough to cheap. "I really had to get
back into the brain I had in the 90's," Levine explained. "It's that
old-school feeling of 'If I fail, I deserved to fail' instead of 'the game made
me fail'".
Levine outlined how the game
might play out for a player that decided to specialize in pistols. They'll be
an amazing shot with a revolver, but the decision will severely affect their
ability to use other weapons. When their back is to the wall and they've only
got one bullet left, they might regret their decision, but it's up to them to
make it work.
And if they should die, they'd better have
the right components to facilitate resurrection. "Players have gotten so
used to dying and getting rezzed that they'll use it as a strategy, running in
taking out a few enemies, dying, and coming right back," Levine said.
"In 1999 mode if you keep charging your resources to come back, be
prepared to load a save game."
1999 mode creates this same sort of
tension, while ensuring that the player is always in the pilot seat. The
decisions, good or bad, are the player's to make. It's a mode that makes them
think differently about how they play the game.
"We're going to hide (1999 mode) in
the menu, probably with some sort of code. To the non-hardcore gamer we're not
going to even reveal that it exists," Levine told me. "The mode will
be very unfamiliar to the non-core gamer."
"This mode is not going to feel like
BioShock'"
To the more hardcore among us, Levine
thinks the new mode will be a welcome return, demanding and challenging.
"This mode is not going to feel like BioShock", he warned. There will
be rage quits. Controllers will be thrown, even among the hardcore.
Ultimately the choice to play BioShock
Infinite in normal or 1999 mode is up to you, the player. If you try the more
difficult setting and can't get the hang of it, then fall back on the regular
game. Or alternate as your mood for a challenge comes and goes.
But if you're the kind of game that bails
at the first sign of failure you may want to keep your distance. As Ken Levine
said, "This is not for you. Don't worry about it.
"This is for the hardcore. They're the
only ones that will understand why it's cool."
Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite, one of Irrational Games’ most important character designs and far more interesting than the internet’s laziest conversation about her.
BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth, and the Internet’s Least Useful Debate
According to Ken Levine, whose team at Irrational Games developed BioShock Infinite, some fans spent far too much time talking about Elizabeth’s body and not nearly enough time talking about Elizabeth as a character.
Levine spoke to OXM about the reaction to Elizabeth’s design and said:
“In terms of her body type, I think certainly people on the Internet have spent way more time thinking about Elizabeth's chest than I have. It's something I've barely thought about.”
The old internet being the old internet, that quote immediately became part of the joke. “Barely” is doing a lot of work there, and yes, one can imagine concept artists, animators, modelers, art directors, and marketing people all having opinions on how a central female character should look. Character design is never accidental. Not in a game this expensive. Not in a game this stylised. Not in a game where every costume, face, gesture, and colour choice is part of the storytelling.
But Levine’s larger point is still the better one. Focusing on Elizabeth’s body misses what actually made her one of the most memorable video game characters of that generation.
Elizabeth Was Designed to Be Read as a Person, Not a Pin-Up
Levine also said:
“It's disappointing when appearance becomes a focus for conversation, because that was never my intent and it's sort of a disincentive. I'd much rather talk about what she's going through as a person, but whatever. They have the right to shout out whatever they want.”
She opens tears in reality. She supplies resources in combat. She reacts to Columbia with curiosity, fear, intelligence, and moral shock. She begins as a captive and becomes the character who sees the shape of the whole nightmare more clearly than anyone else.
That makes the shallow body-size conversation feel especially small. Elizabeth is built to carry wonder, trauma, agency, and revelation. Reducing her to anatomy is not just crude. It is boring.
Why Her Eyes Mattered
Levine pointed to Elizabeth’s eyes as the more important design choice:
“To me, the most important thing with Elizabeth was just honestly her eyes because, you know, they're somewhat exaggerated and the reason for that is because there's so much expression you can do there, with her eyes, and you see her often at a great distance.”
That is a much more interesting design note. Elizabeth’s eyes are exaggerated because BioShock Infinite needs her to communicate quickly, often without dialogue, and often while moving through busy environments. Columbia is visually loud: flags, crowds, propaganda, skyrails, religious iconography, carnival colours, violence, architecture, and light. Elizabeth has to remain readable inside all of that noise.
Her face, gestures, and gaze are part of how the game keeps the player emotionally tethered. When she reacts to Columbia, we read the world through her. When she recoils, we understand the horror. When she is delighted, the floating city briefly feels magical. When she hardens, the game changes temperature.
The eyes matter because BioShock Infinite is not just asking the player to escort Elizabeth. It is asking the player to watch her become aware of the prison she has been living inside.
The Larger Problem with Female Character Design in Games
The Elizabeth debate also sits inside a wider pattern in gaming. For years, major female characters were discussed as bodies first and characters second. Cortana from Halo, Miranda from Mass Effect, Bayonetta, Lara Croft, Final Fantasy heroines, fighting game characters, and countless RPG companions all got dragged through the same conversation.
Some of those characters are deliberately sexualised. Some are more complicated than that. Some are both. Bayonetta, for example, is built around flamboyant self-performance and exaggerated control of her own image. Miranda’s design in Mass Effect 2 is tied to genetic engineering, perfection, objectification, and the way Cerberus turns people into assets. Cortana’s visual design raises different questions because she is an artificial intelligence presented through a humanised female form.
The problem is not that appearance is irrelevant. Appearance is part of design. Costume, silhouette, body language, colour, proportion, animation, and camera framing all shape how players read a character. The problem is when appearance becomes the only conversation, especially when the character has more interesting work to do.
Game design note: A character’s body is part of visual storytelling, but it should not become a trap that prevents the audience from seeing performance, writing, agency, animation, and narrative role.
Elizabeth Is the Emotional Engine of BioShock Infinite
What makes Elizabeth work is not her figure. It is her function. She changes how the player moves through Columbia. She turns the game from a shooter about a man with a debt into a story about captivity, choice, exploitation, inherited violence, and the horror of being turned into a symbol by people who never cared about the person underneath.
Booker sees her first as a job. Comstock sees her as prophecy. Columbia sees her as a holy figure. The player slowly sees her as the one person in the story whose understanding keeps expanding until she can no longer fit inside the role everyone else built for her.
That is a good character arc. It deserves better than a forum thread measuring her design against the usual internet nonsense.
The Better Conversation
The better conversation is not whether Elizabeth’s design was “too much” or “not enough.” The better conversation is how the design serves the game. Her large expressive eyes make her readable. Her costume gives her a period-fantasy silhouette that suits Columbia’s strange alternate-history world. Her animation makes her feel alert and present. Her changing behaviour tells us where she is emotionally, long before the ending explains the full scale of who she is.
That is the part Levine was trying to point toward. Elizabeth is interesting because of what she is going through, not because of what the internet decided to stare at.
