24 Oct, 2011
Each game out of Irrational’s doors has been lovingly crafted, and BioShock Infinite won’t be an exception. With inspirations from real-life political upheaval to cult horror flicks of the past, Creative Director of Irrational Games Ken Levine wasn’t afraid to tell where his inspirations for this sky-high city came from.
Starting with the original BioShock, Levine admitted that as a movie buff, he went with a decidedly haunted-house spook fest look of the olden days. Given the pallor of the Little Sisters and the gruesome remnants of the once idyllic underwater city, it’s safe to say that Levine achieved his goal. Now that he’s done all he could with that, Levine said he wanted a different look for Infinite, and not more of the same.
His source of inspiration? Memories of older politicians, those who were alive back in the days of America’s upcoming boom of the ’20s. “I really wanted a different look for this game, you know, and the look I defined to my team was, ‘July 4th, 1912,’” said Levine in an interview with Complex. “Well, not the actual July 4th 1912, but what sort of certain politicians remember July 4th 1912, this sort of Americana, this perfect America, the perfect summer’s day. That’s what I wanted Columbia to feel like…”
Of course, no BioShock game is complete without that added uneasy feeling of something gone terribly wrong. In this case, Levine wanted the surface to look pretty, but upon inspection, players are going to start to wonder just what the hell happened here.
“…you’re sort of feeling what’s festering underneath that, as you explore [Columbia],” said Levine. “And you have this question of what makes this scary, and I started thinking about some of my favorite films that were strong in horror, and I thought of Blue Velvet. That very opening shot of the ear lying in the grass in the sunlight, and that’s very similar. It’s sort of an idealized town, but there’s something sinister growing underneath it.”
And who better to consult on horror than Stephen King. Levine loved the idea of King’s unsettling imagery, of how little girls can unnerve you given the right circumstances. Now that we think about it, anyone else think the Little Sisters look remarkably like the twins from The Shining?
While the underlying horrors of Columbia may not be apparent, one of the biggest themes of the game will be political upheaval. Drawing major inspiration from recent goings on, past rebellions for independence, and other political movements, Levine said that his game didn’t aim to copy anything. It was all action, and reaction. “…it’s interesting working on Infinite, that we’ve started the game thinking about the city, and this sort of nationalistic…patriotic nationalistic religious components of the city,” said Levine, “and a lot of people think, ‘Oh you’re just sort of copying the Tea Party.’
“…the way we were copying the Tea Party is that the Tea Party is another expression of a movement that’s happened over and over again in American and European and every kind of history. And unsurprisingly now, after we showed the other group, the opposing group, the Vox Populi, the much more sort of leftist populous group, shortly afterwards…we see the Occupy Wall Street…that’s a totally separate thing, but the reason that happens is because these movements happen over and over again, quite often they happen as reactions to each other.”
With all of these different reactions happening in regards to liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, one must ask how the relationship and reactions between characters are going to happen in this chaotic backdrop. Relationships will be just as tumultuous as the background, and Levine says that it will be readily apparent in Elizabeth’s relationship with Booker. “…part of the relationship between an adult and a guardian figure, which is Songbird and Elizabeth and her struggle to get away from that adult figure…at some point, what is the natural process? You push away,” said Levine.
“That relationship is so clear, you know between parent and child, and the dynamics of that relationship are very clear, so when you draw on that relationship, you immediately have a language, a visual language in which you’re working in.”
Would any of this be different if BioShock were set in the future? No, said Levine, in a fun digression. BioShock would ultimately be the same, because the central story is about humanism, our reactions to each other, our reactions to the outside world. In Levine’s words, it wouldn’t matter “because there’s still people there.”
“What would BioShock look like in the future?” mused Levine. “BioShock is not really time-period dependent. And I think a lot of people were surprised when the second game was set in a very different time period than the first game. I was kinda struck by how surprised people were, because again we are always trying to do things which are very human, very natural, sort of occurs throughout history. so whether it’s in the future or in the past, it doesn’t really matter because there’s still people there.”
The biggest inspiration, Levine admitted was a book called Red Mars. Detailing the adventures of a group of people set to populate the red planet, Levine said their ultimate downfall was that they brought their problems with them. People are the real problem, in this case. “One of the first books I was inspired by when I started making games was Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson,” said Levine. “It was basically a very hard science fiction book, about a Mars colony, and they’re going to Mars like, ‘This is going to be great! We’re going to get away from all of our problems with humanity, bigotry, the this and that…’ And what they forget is that they bring people with them, and they bring all their other problems with them, because they brought people with them. They thought it was…they thought they were leaving the problems, but they just…they are the problem. I really was inspired by that.
“And so I don’t think the period in history really matters, it’s what kind of story that you’re telling and does that story relate to what kind of experiences we have as people.”
Excited for BioShock Infinite yet? We are. This massive title will be hitting shelves for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2012.
To watch the full interview with Ken Levine, head over here.
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