Development of BioShock Infinite

Irrational's creative lead, Ken Levine was inspired by events at the turn of the 20th century and the expansion of the concept of American Exceptionalism set by the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

His story took these events to create a tale set in 1912 where the player, as former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, is challenged to rescue a young woman, Elizabeth, who has been kept aboard the floating city of Columbia in the middle of a civil war between its founder Father Zachary Comstock and the Vox Populi, the underclass revolting against him.

[11] Similarly, Timothy Gerritsen, director of product development, stated they wanted to keep the feel of the BioShock experience but still consider Infinite to be a new intellectual property; as a means to sever the implied connection to the previous games, the teaser purposely shows a Big Daddy figurine being crushed at the onset.

[12] Further, the introduction of Infinite purposely mimics several elements from BioShock's opening: one example given by writer Drew Holmes is the act of walking through a candle-lined water trough in a Columbia church to be baptized, which visually is similar to swimming through the flaming wreckage of the plane to reach the bathysphere terminus for Rapture.

[18] According to Irrational's Ken Levine, the name "Columbia", in reference to the female figure that personifies the United States, and the idea of American exceptionalism did not come about until six to eight months before the game's reveal.

[19] An early concept was to depict a group of technology geeks against a band of luddites, but Levine found that such conflict exists "only in shades of reality" and wasn't compelling enough.

[8][21] In particular, Levine pointed to one quote of U.S. President William McKinley on the eve of the Philippine–American War, which spoke to the need of America to "uplift and civilize and Christianize" the natives of the Philippines.

[22] Though the accuracy of the quote is disputed, Irrational's lead artist Shawn Robinson noted that BioShock Infinite's goal is "not to teach any history", but felt such historical aspects helped to ground the work's fiction.

By selecting this hypothetical date, the team quickly identified films to draw imagery from, like The Music Man, Meet Me in St. Louis, and Hello, Dolly which exhibited ideal views of Americana at the turn of the 20th century.

With Rapture set in the 1960, the Irrational team had looked to the scientific progress of James D. Watson and Francis Crick towards understanding DNA in 1953, and built the idea of ADAM and gene modification.

Instead, they borrowed assets from a previous project that, according to lead artist Shawn Robertson, Irrational was "literally about to throw away", finding the contrast and abrupt differences from the Columbia setting helped to emphasize the use of tears in the game.

[40] In the early development of Infinite, Elizabeth was designed to be more of a useful companion than a partner within the game; she would be able to perform tasks like picking locks that the player could not, but otherwise lacked a significant emotional bond.

[12] Levine also considered the characterization of the player-character Monkey and his non-playable companion Trip in the game, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, as inspiration towards the story of Booker and Elizabeth.

[46] The developers had spent much time improving these routines to give Elizabeth her own tendencies to look and move around as a real actor instead of a robotic non-player character, as to re-enforce her central role to the player.

[48] According to Levine, the team had to revolutionize their previous work on the BioShock game in order to realize Columbia, including both indoor and outdoor settings that take place thousands of feet above the ground.

[4] The development team found that the implementation of open spaces created new gameplay options for the player, such as deciding between long-ranged attacks or finding a means to move in for short-range or melee combat.

[53] As Infinite contains numerous groups in internal conflict with each other, the player will be given the opportunity to learn how to utilize different non-player character agents to progress in the game.

Unstable nostrums would be cheaper or found lying around the environment, but upon use, would require the player to select one of four random effects to alter their character, an idea inspired by Heroes of Might and Magic according to Levine.

[57] Levine wanted to also capture the flavor of games like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, where turning a corner carelessly could result in the character's death by a single bullet, creating a certain tension while traversing the level.

[59] The original BioShock received some criticism from PlayStation 3 owners, who found the port from the native Windows and Xbox 360 developed by a separate studio, Digital Extremes, to be lackluster.

One programmer, Forrest Dowling, described that while the core idea of Infinite had been fixed, Levine was still tinkering on larger story beats and settings, which would have drastic impacts on various teams as those changes filtered through the process, often eliminating months-worth of work in a short time.

[74] To help with focusing the team's timelines and budget, Irrational Games hired Jordan Thomas, the creative director of 2K Marin that led BioShock 2's development, in January 2012.

[73] Levine had stated that his approach to video game development is comparable to sculpting a statue or writing a script, where one often will self-edit their own work after completing much of it.

[73] With the studio already down some numbers from the previous departures, in addition to many others taking time off following Infinite's release, this forced the remaining developers to focus heavily on completing the downloadable content.

[86] Irrational announced a second delay in December 2012, pushing the title out an additional month to March 26, 2013; Levine stated this was a suggestion from Fergusson after coming onto the project, who believed the few extra weeks would help to assure the quality of the delivered game.

[91] Similarly, in its reveal of the first images of the player protagonist Booker, Electronic Games Monthly used a cover in homage to the Uncanny X-Men comic, Days of Future Past, another story dealing with alternate realities.

From there, the trailer's first half shows in-game scenes of settings around Columbia representative of American Exceptionalism such as an amusement park, a public beach, and an ice-cream parlor, prior to demonstration many of the gameplay elements including the Skyhook and the Heavy Hitters.

[107] Levine stated that for the cover and other parts of the game's promotion including live-action commercials, they had hired Anna "Ormeli" Moleva, a Russian cosplayer that had earlier attracted attention for her recreation of Elizabeth back in September 2011.

A prequel novella, Bioshock Infinite: Mind in Revolt, authored by Levine and Joe Fielder, was made available as an e-book via Amazon.com in February 2013; the work is a reproduction of an in-universe research report entitled "The Psychology of Dissent: Interview with the Anarchist".

[122] The second piece of downloadable content, titled Burial at Sea, is a story-based expansion set in Rapture that links Infinite's story to that of the original BioShock game.