BioShock Infinite: Creating a Monster

Irrational's BioShock Infinite is one of the most promising games scheduled for release in 2012. Combining incredibly detailed visuals with interesting gameplay mechanics, the glimpses we've seen so far have been especially impressive, earning Infinite IGN's Best Overall Game award at E3 2011.

Though Infinite is paired with the BioShock name, this isn't a direct sequel. It leaves behind the underwater city of Rapture. The action takes place in the floating city of Columbia, features a brand new cast of adversaries, and even a talking protagonist. Named Booker, the player character's goal is to bring a magically gifted woman named Elizabeth back to ground level. Trouble is, she's perpetually pursued by a giant bird creature called Songbird that makes accomplishing the goal no easy task.

We've seen bits and pieces of Songbird, but what is he, exactly? Why is he so obsessed with Elizabeth? Is he a villain? Is Songbird even a he? Irrational Games' co-founder and creative director Ken Levine provides answers.

IGN: When first laying the groundwork for Infinite, was the Songbird/Elizabeth dynamic in there from the beginning and how did that idea come about?

Ken Levine: No. We're very open to evolution. We have no idea what we're doing at the beginning and figure it out as we go along. With Infinite, the first thing we had was this city in the sky concept and we really evolved from there. Elizabeth and Booker didn't really appear until probably over a year into the project. We were very iterative. I know it was a function of the fact that we sort of blew up our own ability to do the silent cipher main character after what we did in BioShock, we really couldn't go back there, we had painted ourselves into a bit of a corner. We decided let's go the opposite direction, let's have you be an actual character this time.

What if you were with somebody? That was another thing in BioShock that we had never really had. You're always sort of alone in the world and we always like putting ourselves into an uncomfortable spot, trying to do things we hadn't done before. Once we [had] this character, Elizabeth, we really had to figure out who was she and what her role in the world was. These things happen in very small steps for us, very small bits of evolution. We didn't want to just have a character walking around with you. We wanted a character who you connected to in a meaningful way. After saying that I realized how hard that is and how difficult that is to do in a video game.

Instead of saying well what are cool things she can say, we say how is a player going to get behind this character and root for her? How is the player going to connect to her and feel an empathy with her? And that's where the story of this woman who has been essentially trapped her whole life came around. That kind of story is a very natural story because I think we all go through that as a child, you know? We all go through this period of feeling, at least I did I know, feeling like we're locked up, feeling like we have potential to do things and we can't. That there is a figure in our life who is both there for us to provide for us in some way but also in some way we feel is keeping us back. I think we all have that experience with your parents of breaking free of them. I think there is an ambivalence in that relationship, whether we wanted to or it just sort of evolved, that ambivalence formed the basis of [Songbird and Elizabeth's] relationship.


IGN: In terms of how that's evolved, Elizabeth is young in the [concept art]. It looks like Songbird is also young and so it appears like to at least some degree they've both been growing up alongside each other. In other words, there is a sort of upward path to Songbird. He's not always this gigantic monster creature, he was once you know younger and smaller and maybe just as innocent as Elizabeth appears to be in this art.

Ken Levine: You know the, I won't say specifically whether that's true or not. I think you can look at that picture a couple ways. I mean you can look at that picture as an objective viewpoint. I think you can also look at it as a subjective viewpoint from her eyes. If you follow my meaning.

IGN: So that's just her perception of it?

Ken Levine: Maybe, maybe. That's not a scene from the game, but when we imagined what it was like for her growing up that's the image we naturally were drawn to.

IGN: It seems like the relationship itself, Songbird is just kind of passively watching, and Elizabeth seems content as well. It's not necessarily this adversarial relationship.

Ken Levine: Yeah, I think that is reflective of themes that I was talking about which is when we're younger we are protected and as we get older that becomes a more fractious relationship.

IGN: You mentioned you couldn't go back to the silent protagonist in this case. Can you explain more why you couldn't do that? It's just you didn't want to do the same thing or was there more to that?

Ken Levine: You know when we had that scene where you encounter Andrew Ryan [in BioShock] and he tells you you've been this cipher, I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't played it but, you know, that you've been following orders blindly the whole time and by extension the player has been a cipher and following orders the whole time, how do you go back? How do you go back and say okay, well you're that kind of character again after you already had that discussion with the gamer? And how do you make something fresh and new without saying well forget all that, you know? Our response to it was, let's really place you firmly in the world this time. Let's give you a story, let's give you a character to develop a personal story. You're not so much a tourist this time as you were in the first game. You thought you were an accidental tourist, you weren't in the first game. This time, nobody would mistake you for a tourist. You're very active your story is very active, Elizabeth's story is very active.

IGN: Within the setting Songbird is also a known quantity there. The residents of Columbia know what that bird is. He's been around for a while there I suppose? Has he always been there or did he just show up at one point? Or can you say?

Ken Levine: I don't want to go into like a ton of detail. I'll say that the public's perception of him is, did you see that poster with the anarchist with a bomb and the Songbird that we have out?


Basically he's a bit of a boogeyman in Columbia. It's what parents tell their kids to scare them and make sure they eat their vegetables at night. They see him flying around, [but] it's not like he's walking down the street and doing interviews. He's a sort of presence in their world and the man on the street is not exactly sure what his evolution is and where he came from but they're aware of his presence and there's a sense that if you're not necessarily toeing the party line of the founders that he might be something that you might encounter him in a way you might not want to.

IGN: Do you consider Songbird to be a villain? Is he meant to be a villain?

Ken Levine: I try not to think like that. Were you to ask me whether Andrew Ryan was a villain I'd give you the same answer. A friend once said to me that everybody is the hero of their own story. When I was working on Bio 1, I watched this documentary about Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. And the whole documentary, it was just Kenneth Branagh reading from his diary, reading from Goebbels' diaries with film and still images from Goebbels' life over it, that's the entire movie. You would think this guy was the most put upon, noble individual in the universe that everybody was out to get and nobody understood, if you didn't know what he did. In his view he's this noble figure, this complete scum bag was this noble figure. I think there's nobody if you ask them would say "oh I'm the bad guy here". I don't want to think that way because that inhibits you from writing characters with an internal monologue that makes them noble.