Ken Levine from developer Irrational Games spoke about Elizabeth, on of the leading roles in the game, and about the MP mode which didn't make it into the final product.
Irrational Games’s Ken Levine said that Elizabeth's role in the game was deepened as development on the game progressed. The Elizabeth shown at E3 already had a “strongly developed” personality, and over time the team decided she should be a character which could not only be useful to the player, but a partner as well.
“By the time we showed Elizabeth at E3 her personality was strongly developed, but the gameplay mechanics of her abilities evolved over time, and as with any gameplay mechanic, you tweak it, play it, see if it’s fun. ‘We started to see that people really liked her a lot and we all kind of started to fall in love with her ourselves, so we wanted to deepen her role in the game and make sure she was woven into every aspect of the gameplay.”, Levine said.
“So all these other features started evolving like her being able to pick locks. At first the lock picking was just a one off then we started thinking of all the different ways she could be helpful to you and it sort of evolved from there, showing that she could do more – and that her purpose wasn’t just ‘being along for the ride’. She would be a partner to you instead.”
Levine also talked about the missing multiplayer mode in the game. The multiplayer mode was one of the “experiments” created by Irrational Games but it didn’t make it into the final product.
Levine said the multiplayer was cut in the end due to a lack of resources and time. “So, like everything, you try certain things, and [with] the multiplayer, we got to a point where we said: ‘okay, this is the you-know-what or get off the pot moment’. We decided to get off the pot because it wasn’t there yet.”
“That makes it sound like I’m dissing on what the guys did. No. Actually, I think they did some really extraordinary stuff, but we felt we didn’t have the resources and time to finish the experiment to the level we wanted to. And we weren’t going to ship something that was not consistent with the overall package.”
Levine didn't explain what the multiplayer portion included, but said: “You never know, though, ideas created for it may be incorporated in another capacity instead. There was some really cool stuff there, but it just wasn’t ready for what we were doing.”
