Developer Irrational Games said the game was originally set in Rapture.
Irrational founder Ken Levine explained the move to Columbia: “When we started on BioShock Infinite, we realised that one of the reasons that people liked BioShock 1, was because it did take on some topics that other games hadn’t taken on, and I think they felt – especially for a big mass-market game – that it was respecting their intelligence.”
“It was saying, ‘You know what? We think you’re interested in a broader range of things than you might be’, or at least we’re comfortable with putting it out there, crossing our fingers and hoping that you guys are going to come along for the ride. If you talk to people who played BioShock – if you ask people what they liked about it… it’s the sense of the world, and being in that place.”
Design director Bill Gardner said: “That was the obvious place. You can’t have a BioShock game without Rapture. It’s just part of its DNA. The more we started to talk about what was going to happen, the sort of things you’d be doing, quests, the new settings – the more we were like, ‘Oh my god, if we’re bored with this, what is the gamer going to think?’”
“So we started to allow ourselves to talk about different settings, and the more we got into it, the more we realised it’s really about that feeling of discovering a new place. It was terrifying to talk about getting rid of Rapture, but at the same time, it was liberating.”
