Irrational Games spoke about different aspects of the upcoming game.
Ken Levine from Irrational Games spoke about Elizabeth's companion AI in the game.
“We knew that was going to be incredibly challenging, but the more we thought about it, either the more excited or the more terrified we got. There’s not a lot of great AI companions. I really think Alyx was the last one. It’s okay. People are generally okay with it – Skyrim is a great game, but their expectations are fairly low. We knew if we were going to have the player have a voice like we wanted to because we had done so many cyphers, we wanted somebody for him to interact with.”
Levine also talked about the problems: “One thing AIs generally don’t do is react to what’s around them. They don’t observe what’s around them. They have no interest in what’s around them. So we spent a lot of time making Elizabeth notice the world and react to the world and engage with the world. That was heightened by the fact she’s been locked up. But even so, people are always looking at stuff. When you walk down the street you don’t walk down the street like a robot, which is generally what companion AIs do.”
“So we had to seed the world with things she was interested in and things she could interact with. We had to seed her with various emotional states that are primarily an overlay on the animation she does. And she has sounds to go along with all of those things. Making her present in the world was one of the most difficult things and one of the most important things.”
Elizabeth’s power to open “tears” into other realities is useful in combat as it also is an important part of the overall story, according to Levine. “They’re actually central to the plot of the game.” And they are also different from one another. Read below.
“I’ve always felt that the game systems and your narrative have to be interwoven. You didn’t just find magic powers in Rapture. They were very tied in to what happened with the city. They were very tied in to the vision of the city, these people trying to perfect themselves and the hubris of that. But that’s tied into the splicers and your powers and everything that happened to you and who you were.
“Elizabeth’s story and the tears and why she was in that tower and what her powers mean are central to the game.”
“We really had trouble explaining, even to the press, exactly what the tears were until we did that thing at E3 with the Revenge of the Jedi thing,” he said, referring to a section from the E3 2011 demo in which Elizabeth opens a portal into what seems to be the 1980′s. Obviously it evolved into a slightly different form in the actual game, now that you’re playing the actual game. But it very quickly explained a lot to people, in a very clear way, what was going on. Some of these things are just useful for conveying information, and some of them are useful as part of a larger mystery.”
Ken Levine claims that the ending of the game is unlike anything you've seen. Get the news here:
“The plot actually gets more interesting as it goes on. The end of the game, I can’t tell whether people will like it or not like it. I can say it’s something we’re incredibly proud of. It’s like nothing you’ve actually experienced in a video game before. It’s unique and quite particular to this world, these characters and this franchise.”
Responding to the weak third act of the original BioShock game, Levine talked about the matter while comparing it to Infinite: “You had a situation there where you had this amazing character and once he’s gone the story loses some of its steam. That is something we took to heart in this game.”
