If it takes two years to make an effects-driven, huge budget Hollywood film, then BioShock Infinite’s five year-plus development cycle tells you that making an equivalent videogame is a far harder undertaking. When we play the first few hours of Irrational’s long-awaited FPS, it becomes clear why that’s the case: this clearly exceeds the standard of contemporary shooters in a way that exposes the lack of maturity in games. And we don’t just mean that in the sense that every shooter has a story targeted at 12 year-olds or silly levels of violence – most of them do, true – but in the way that it shows off what the PS3 can do with storytelling through environmental design, world-building and writing.
It’s a startling piece of work that hits every audience on one level (it’s a shooter, after all, and you can throw fireballs at people), but has a layer of substance that’ll resonate with a more specific type of player. Crosshairs are drawn on certain elements of American history and the great façade of patriotism, that feel like they’re deliberately crafted to make the audience feel uncomfortable. When
we first witness BioShock Infinite exploring racism, for example, and the way it permeates the sinister culture of breakaway floating country Columbia, our initial thoughts are that it’s a brave subject to touch upon in a game – we get the same feeling when we’re walking around a morally dubious museum describing conflicts from America’s past, or watching the many in-game propaganda films that relay Columbia’s disturbing ideologies.
But this kind of subtext shouldn’t be the exception in videogames; it shouldn’t be the rule, either, but big triple-A experiences really could be offering us more narrative meat than they are now. BioShock Infinite is really refreshing in that regard. It’s like the result of years of progress in FPS design that never actually happened – the world of Columbia isn’t just a pretty backdrop, it’s telling you the story, in an even more heightened way than the intricate design of Rapture did in the previous two games.
“At Irrational, we create within a process for evolution that relies heavily on extreme iteration to answer tough challenges,” art director Scott Sinclair explains to us. “A core sample of our levels would reveal equal parts happy accident, narrative direction, historical reference, combat influence,
technical constraints, and painful course correction.”
Iteration was the key behind Columbia’s creation – the themes slotted in naturally around the subject
matter as Irrational developed the concept behind Infinite. “When you make games where the environment is a primary character, there are simply too many variables that need careful consideration to produce stories like this,” Sinclair recalls. “When resting on one’s laurels, this process allows you to back up and recognise that you are too comfortable to create at your peak. The only way we know how to zero in on the correct direction is by examining the exquisite corpse of a first idea as we flush it. Stormy night turned into summer sunshine, European Red Light turned into 4th of July Americana, and the narrative conflict started solidifying from American history.”
This process steered Infinite out of well-trodden fictional territory and into something a little richer. “This was a drastic departure from the cliché fictional struggle of the religious faction vs. the technology faction that we were building everything in the service of. The 15-year-old in me was bummed for a second, but it quickly became apparent that Ken made the correct calls to elevate our shooter.”
That thematic texture aids the tension within the world’s atmosphere, too. Without spoiling the dramatic, brilliant opening that recalls the original BioShock, Infinite introduces its world as a shiny happy utopia, with people praising Columbia’s leader Father Zachary Hale Comstock and morning sunshine dizzying your vision of buildings gliding above clouds. Your character, the Deckard-esque Booker, is after a specific girl, Elizabeth – and his checkered past as a Pinkerton agent is a point of ambiguity that’s delivered to the player through an early flashback.
The world is magnificently realised; we see two environments, a fair with a number of interactive amusements like target ranges, where you’re introduced to the game’s vigors (plasmid equivalents) and a boardwalk that collects shops and other attractions into one scenic locale. There’s far more
besides – but revealing them would dive too much into the story, a surprising, twist-heavy tale as anticipated that literally throws you around the city. After Booker is discovered in Columbia and
outlined by the authorities as a threat, the pace lurches forward, with players meeting and liberating Elizabeth, before the foundations of Columbia’s devious, false idol-worshipping society starts to come undone.
We ask Sinclair what lessons Irrational took away from creating Rapture for the original BioShock in building Columbia. “The no-spin answer would honestly be very little to nothing at all,” he says. “Everything, including process, was brand new. On a much higher level, the primary lesson learned is that story informs everything we create.”
That’s the advantage of having a story that’s continually moving – BioShock Infinite isn’t burdened by the same hours of downtime that we see in every other game. There’s no boring underground trudge, endless wall of spawning enemies in dull locations; every moment feels orchestrated, not to add extra time to Infinite’s lifespan, but to supplement your experience as a player. It all matters, and it all works. When BioShock Infinite is building up to the big action setpieces, you’re treated to fine moments of storytelling and characterisation, revealing more about the world and Elizabeth. The pacing is just continually exciting, and that’s something that feels like the result of having so many years of development, as well as a luxury of Irrational’s immense reputation that few other studios are afforded.
With the vigors in your hands and the skyline rails to traverse, it brings something mechanically new to the FPS, too, and as mentioned last issue this is a superior shooter in the way the previous BioShock was not. Later on, Elizabeth is able to spawn objects around you using ‘tears’ – wish fulfillment-powered rips in reality that can create cover for you or turrets, as well as some damn memorable gameplay moments that expose you to different parts of time and popular culture. Again, we don’t want to spoil it for you. There are a few characters whose intent is undeniably cloudy, as
well as a few choices that hint at multiple strands in the narrative, such is the DNA of the series as we understand it.
BioShock shows the lack of progress in layered narrative from its contemporaries by creating a world that is a living story piece. It’s a crucial part of what Irrational has been working on for so many years. “It is everything,” Sinclair explains. “Without it, the quality of your art amounts to texture resolution and frame rate. We are mostly artists, with traditional media art back grounds. I was
an editorial illustrator for years before I thought it would be cool to play with polygons. For better or worse, the quality of everything we create here is judged on an editorial and fine-art level before
we allow the engine to dictate anything. It makes for a one hell of a hair-raising optimisation phase, but the end result speaks to you many levels above the classification of ‘videogame’.”
Like any piece of entertainment that wants to hit a wide audience but still deliver something smart and specific, BioShock Infinite has relentless detail to draw upon, encompassing themes that you just don’t see in other videogames. While there’s still a huge capacity to muck it up past what we’ve seen, of course – there’s always a strange sense of irony in the parallel between BioShock’s idea of creating a perfect city gone wrong, with the idea of developing a ludicrously ambitious game about that subject – but we’ve rarely experienced such a consistently wonderful interactive experience.
BioShock Infinite is idiosyncratic, a game that dares to divide audiences in a way that won’t just amount to idiots bickering on Twitter about whether certain guns are overpowered or not. It’s about something. This will likely be a politically contentious work, a devouring interpretation of certain parts of American history and hero-worshipping elements of its culture. And you know what? Some of the very best pieces of fiction are in the ballpark of what Infinite is trying to do. Most of them don’t have funfairs floating in the sky or characters that shoot birds and fireballs out of their hands, but hey, you’ll soon find out that’s pretty damn good, too.
“I’m going to Disneyland!” says Sinclair when we ask him to reflect on Infinite’s extended development cycle. “There were some hardships along the way – some friends lost to the sea, and we are a very different studio from what we were four years ago. But we are stronger than ever now. I feel lucky that we were able to weather the scheduling nightmares, and that Take-Two believes in us. I’m still a giant ball of stress, but I’m finally able to put the water bucket down because the fire has subsided. I love this team so much right now. I can’t believe we pulled off what we did with what we were up against.”
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