25 Jun, 2011
BioShock Infinite simply won’t be just another BioShock title. With a drastically different setting in the skies above the world, and set in an environment where people still live, it already is everything that the past settings in Rapture were never meant to be.
“They’re intentionally different experiences. When we finished Bioshock, we could have just settled on the same thing,” said Timothy Gerritsen, executive producer of BioShock Infinite. In an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Gerritsen sat down to discuss the decisions that led to such a dramatic change with Infinite, and what else we’ll be seeing in the skies.
Previous titles made the hair stand on the back of our necks through isolation and claustrophobia, but this time, you’re facing off against a multitude of people and a city that could probably end up falling out of the sky at any moment. Fear in its different forms is certainly a theme that has been carried throughout the BioShock series. Columbia will be no different. “Bioshock was a very different experience; it was a claustrophobic experience, it was a lonely experience, you were exploring a world after a bunch of events had happened and seeing the aftermath,” said Gerritsen. “This time around you’re in the middle of it, the middle of a frenetic action, you’re above the world; you no longer have the weight of the world pressing down on you, under the ocean. You’re now above everything, with a precariousness, and there’s a sense that the whole world could just be ripped from under your feet at any time.”
With a city as diverse and populated with life as Columbia, you can’t expect things to go easily. Whereas the Splicers who wanted you dead, Rapture’s inhabitants made it pretty easy to know when to steer clear. The story is entirely different in Columbia. “Yeah, you’re a muscle for hire, you’ll do whatever it takes, you’ll do whatever job is given you, you don’t care,” said Gerritsen. “You’re not going to join these factions [between the founders and the Vox Populi]; you just want to do your job.
“[Their] idealism is a compromised idealism,” Gerritsen continued. “The Founders are idealistically floating above the world bringing America’s glory to the world, whilst in fact they’re exporting xenophobia and acting dictatorially; the Vox Populi have even higher ideals, of human happiness achieved through equality, whereas at the street level their footsoldiers are going around killing the common man, putting themselves above the people they were below.” As we’ve seen in the first BioShock, Irrational Games enjoys toying with social and political commentary. Once again, Columbia is no different in this respect, and this is a huge draw in the BioShock universe for many players. This time around, we see the fracturing of ideals and how things that can promise to be good on paper end up becoming bad in practice.
As Booker DeWitt, a Pinkerton Agent, your role is to rescue Elizabeth and get out of there alive to get your paycheck. It sounds simple, but that’s not even the half of it. You have the choice to either ignore the differing factors, or meddle in their affairs, but keep in mind that what you do will have far-reaching effects.
“What do you do? Do you just start shooting people, you could,” said Gerritsen. “You could play the devil and shoot the first man you see, and that creates a different type of scenario.” In the past, we have seen an increasing number of games attempt to incorporate a morality system into gameplay to make players stop and consider their actions. Unfortunately very few of these games have made the choices impact the game itself. Sure, some games like Fable illustrate the choices through the character’s physical changes, but little else is impacted during the course of gameplay. Fallout 3 attempted this as well, but ultimately in the end you were rewarded with a quick film reel that recapped your decisions. Will BioShock Infinite change that? It might, according to Gerritsen. “We wanted to make you start thinking ‘what do I want to do? Who do I want to attack? Why do I want to get involved?’ You really need to pick and choose the principles you’ll be experiencing.”
And no setting that strives to make you care about it would be complete without minute details, and such detail only reflects the love and care that the development team has put into the final product. While players may at first skim over much of the detail, it certainly lends to replay value. Much like watching a movie multiple times, playing a game multiple times will uncover different details each time you play. It’s nice to know that developers encourage players to do whatever they want in such a rich environment. “Keep in mind, when you play it, you play it the way you want to,” said Gerritsen. “If you want to stand in the street, lovingly looking, so that Elizabeth says, ‘Time’s a ticking, let’s get going’; you can do that.”
In a city above the skies, with such richness and differences from previous BioShock titles, it’s no wonder that Infinite has already won numerous awards for its strong showing. Can’t wait to sail the skies? You’re going to have to wait. BioShock Infinite will take us to the heavens in 2012 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Read the full interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun here.
For more information on BioShock Infinite, visit the official website.
Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
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