How BioShock Infinite will be prescient – interview with Ken Levine
The game's creative director and head writer, Ken Levine, explains the philosophy and politics behind this shooter
Ken Levine: 'BioShock Infinite is a story that’s much more dynamic'
It's a strange sensation, preparing for an interview with Ken Levine. Whereas most interviews with developers in the gaming industry usually revolve around game mechanics and technological innovations, the questions aimed at Irrational's creative director usually involve the story for his new game BioShock Infinite. Levine's last game, you see, used high-end literature as source material and immersed players in a world that posed political, philosophical and social questions, while bombarding the player with bullets and boss battles.
BioShock, was one of the best games in the year it was released. In it players took on the role of the only survivor of a plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean who found himself transported to the undersea city of Rapture. There, they found a society founded on the Objectivist worldview of an industrialist named Andrew Ryan, which had torn itself apart through addiction and madness. BioShock's story was based on Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged, but it drew on her philosophies for a lot of its narrative thrust and built a convincing argument against them. In this commentator's opinion, it's the best story told in gaming in the last decade.
Levine's newest project, BioShock Infinite has already started tongues wagging in the gaming community. It's the story of an ex-Pinkerton detective named Booker DeWitt and his quest to save a mysterious woman named Elizabeth in a floating city called Columbia. Built as a monument to American superior know-how, Columbia is a city at war with itself, with the left-leaning Vox Populi group squaring off against the nationalist Founder faction. DeWitt and Elizabeth are caught between the two in their attempts to escape the city, as well as the attentions of a terrifying beast called Song Bird.
It all sounds impressively tantalising, but as Levine points out, BioShock Infinite's story isn't the only aspect of his game that is bursting with ideas.
How close to conclusion is BioShock Infinite's development cycle?
All we've said so far is that it's coming out next year.
So you can't tell us whether it's been topped and tailed in terms of its plot or its gameplay?
(Laughs) No, no, no! We're deep into it, is what I'll say. Very, very deep into it.
So when did the ideas and the creative sessions for BioShock Infinite start percolating?
Basically around February of 2008. We really struggled for about six months after BioShock to figure out what was next for us as a company. We prototyped a few things and we weren't very happy with a lot of things that we were working on. It was sort of unintuitive to take BioShock and do something really different with it, although that's the most natural thing people think about when they think about a sequel. Once we had the idea for it we became incredibly excited and started running with it.
The first thing we came up with was the time period. Then everything followed that – the city in the sky came soon after and then much, much later came the concept of Columbia and the conception of American exceptionalism.
When we started, a lot of the artists on the game were reading a book called The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which is about the building of the 1893 World Fair in Chicago. They turned me on to that and we became really drawn to that period. I felt that book did a really great job of giving a feel for what was happening in the USA at the time and we drew a lot of inspiration from that.
You said in an interview that BioShock is the story of Andrew Ryan, a man who asks, "is a man not entitled to the sweat from his brow". Is there a similar character or central belief system you would say that dominates BioShock Infinite in the same way?
You know, there are several characters that exert a massive influence on BioShock Infinite. There's Comstock, who is the leader of the Founders, and Daisy Fitzroy, who is the leader of the Vox Populi rebel movement in the city. We haven't said too much about those two characters yet, though, I think primarily, because a lot of that space is filled up by Booker and Elizabeth. [In BioShock] we didn't have a character who had a personality or spoke and he certainly didn't have someone walking with him with a driving narrative.
In Infinite, Booker and Elizabeth are trapped between larger forces. But more than that, they're the catalyst for the growth of the conflict that happens in Columbia. In BioShock, when the player arrives, the party's already over and you're looking at the remnants. In Columbia, it's fairly stable when you arrive. It has a lot of underlying problems that are very easily brought to the surface; you saving Elizabeth from captivity acts as the catalyst that sets everything in motion and causes a lot of the conflict in the city. When the player arrives, the Vox Populi are just a rag-tag band of people and it's your and Elizabeth's actions that put them in a position where they can take on the Founders.
Can we go in to any further detail on that?
(Laughs) No, but the really important thing here is that BioShock Infinite is a story that's much more dynamic. As you take action you'll see the changes that Booker and Elizabeth bring to the world.
There was a hint of that in the demo at E3. As Elizabeth and Booker were walking around Columbia, the Vox Populi were attacking people, and a couple of them hurled insults at the player. Are you saying that if you attack one of them you can strange the structure of a level somewhat?
Look, there's content on that level and some of that content would change obviously. There's a part where one of the Vox Populi pushes a guy down the stairs. If you put a bullet in him before that happens, that part would change. The guy won't get pushed down the stairs and you'll end up in a fight with some other members of the Vox Populi.
There's also moment where one guy squares up to you and threatens Elizabeth [in the same level] and you put your gun on him and he gives you the finger and walks off. Brilliant voice actor, by the way, who plays that part. It was me!
Really? It didn't sound like you.
Yeah. They modified my voice.
That would be your Hitchcock moment then?
That's right! I always make one small appearance.
Anyway, you never know exactly how things are going to go in the game. There are a lot of characters in the game that you'll have to walk the line with. They might not be attacking you immediately, but you might be getting set up for something really bad.
You won't always know how to react to characters in your environment and I think that's a pretty interesting dynamic that you don't see a lot in shooters. Usually, in shooters, you see someone and you shoot them before they shoot you.
It's a dynamic we had in BioShock to some degree with the Big Daddys and Little Sisters. We wanted a scenario where the player would go "okay, how do I approach this?" There's a bit of education you need for that. When we were working on BioShock, the first people we gave a controller to acted the same way any gamer would act when they first saw a Big Daddy in a game: they started shooting at it. We had to very carefully make clear that wasn't the best way to deal with a Big Daddy; the gameplay was all about setting up for that big fight rather than just going in guns blazing.
We had to educate people a lot, which is counter-intuitive to the real world because, for example, you don't have to educate people in the real world not to shoot their neighbours … generally. You'd hope. But there are some things that are intuitive in games that are counter-intuitive in real life and vice versa.
So do you think a lot of the heavy lifting in BioShock Infinite with regards to that aspect has been done by BioShock?
No. I don't think you can ever assume that. People forget; they're not seeing a Big Daddy in the new game so they won't immediately make that connection. I think for some of the hardcore fans – if they're really tuned in to what we're doing with the previews – maybe that would be true. But as a developer you can never count on that.
American hegemony is a driving theme in BioShock Infinite. Is there much of an overlap with that and the objectivism that informed the world in BioShock?
I don't think I agree with that. Objectivism wasn't necessarily attached to the United States in any particular way except that Ayn Rand happened to live there and it matched, as close as it could at the time, her principles and her philosophy. She was very unhappy with a lot of things, though – the New Deal for example is something she found utterly repulsive.
I think all philosophies, when they're taken to an extreme and are embraced by people who have shut out reality because it contradicts their beliefs, pose a very significant threat. It becomes a case where you're not sure who's running the show here. Is it the philosophy or the world? You see it in a lot of systems. Take the Stalinist system, for example: when reality didn't contort to fit with a worldview, that meant reality had to change. People had to be taken out of pictures and history rewritten to block them out completely.
In some ways BioShock Infinite seems weirdly prescient. The Founders almost sound like the Tea Party politicians in the States with the Vox Populi taking the part of the Occupy movement.
I think as a very amateur student of history, though, you understand that these sorts of movements are very common. There have been dozens and dozens of these kinds of movements over the course of history. I mean, look at the turn of the century. In 1894, anarchists assassinated a French president. The US president McKinley was assassinated in 1901. In 1900 the Italian king was assassinated. Then, of course, you have Archduke Ferdinand assassinated in 1914 and we all know what happened after that.
You have these movements throughout history like the hard left Baader-Meinhof group or extreme nationalist like the John Birch Society or the Know Nothings in the 1800s. You have nationalist verses internationalist as a theme come up over and over again and I'm not surprise, given the current economic climate, that it's happening again now. Hopefully it won't get as extreme as what happens in Infinite. But the roots are there in any sort of crisis where people try to express their anger at a situation.
Given that the driving force behind Columbia in BioShock Infinite is American nationalism, how would a faction like the Vox Populi rise up? Wouldn't they have been ultra-nationalists to begin with?
Well, generally, when you have a push towards one extreme, that's going to have an affect on people that aren't part of that extreme. You'll create a situation where there are affluent native-borns who will start saying that they're what you have to be to have a real place in society. Naturally, those people who aren't like that will start getting frustrated.
In Columbia, when you arrive, a lot of those seeds are there. Booker and Elizabeth accelerate the conflict with their actions. I'm not going to go into too much detail about that, though. But take a look at one example in the form of the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany. That started off as a student protest against the Shah of Iran visiting West Berlin where one of the students was killed by the authorities. Then the students reacted, then the government reacted and one reaction provokes another and suddenly everyone's initial positions have become obscured. It almost becomes like a pendulum affect.
Did you plan BioShock Infinite and BioShock to be a way to examine the flaws in belief systems and political movements?
I think we're really fascinated by unintended consequences and good intentions that go haywire. You see that on a small scale in the demo where she tries to use her powers to revive a horse the results are catastrophic. Even the best intentions can have horrible results. I think that's a key theme in the franchise really.
Andrew Ryan had this great idea right? A man's entitled to the sweat from his brow – who would argue with that? But then you take that idea and extend it and you wind up in Rapture. What I tried to do, having read Ayn Rand, was to create Galt's Gulch and stick real people in it. Rand populated Galt's Gulch with perfect people.
Of course they all got on and their philosophy worked perfectly because only one person was setting the rules – her! I wanted to look at a scenario where nature set the rules and people's personalities set the rules and I think in that instance, you'd end up with something that looks more like Rapture. The more utopian you get and the more you follow a particular ideology, which can't bend to reality, the more fragile a social system becomes.
So are your games an indictment of dogmatically held beliefs?
I wouldn't say they're an indictment. I think BioShock and BioShock Infinite are more a reflection of my own ambivalence about people's certainties. I don't feel very certain about a lot of things – particularly in the political spectrum. The older I get the less I know and the less certainty I have. I think these characters such as Booker and Elizabeth and even Jack in the first BioShock are avatars of my own certainty in that they're people who are stuck in the middle of these very rigid elements and they become crushed. They can't really turn to either side and they don't really have a place in those systems.
And yet they have the biggest impact on the worlds they are thrust into.
Well, I think the people who have the biggest impact in societies are people who have the most flexibility.
The very nature of science, for example, is flexibility – it's the data that drives you. I think that's why science has had such an impact socially over the last 200 years – by that I mean the scientific method, which welcomes uncertainty and welcomes the unknown.
The scientific method is a way of structuring uncertainty in a way that makes it more palatable and understandable. You're telling people something quite counter-intuitive. It's okay to not know. It's better not to know than to think you do know and you're wrong. That's why the scientific method is, way more than any particular discovery in science, the most important scientific discovery because it gave the framework on how to pursue questions.
Yesterday, we started giving away keys for the Magicka collection. Well, we have more giveaways in store for you. VE3D has snagged 10 keys for the Cities in Motion collection. Cities in Motion is a mass transportation simulator which tasks you with building a profitable public transportation network for various real world cities.
Thus begins Tidy Traffic Tuesday, during which we shall give away 10 copies of the Cities in Motion collection. To enter the random drawing, post a comment about any plans you have for improving infrastructure in the city of your choice.
For instance, I would tear Little Rock down brick by brick and replace it with a giant Arcology. Then there would be a single freeway leading from the Arcology to my well fortified mansion. Little Rock’s traffic problems would thus be solved forever.
Alternatively, if you aren’t feeling very creative, you can just post that you’d like to be entered into a drawing for the game.
We will give 5 copies away here and 5 copies away via our official Steam group.
PlayStation Network
Noticias de PSN Por qué nos encanta Disney Universe
videoDisney Universe
Iain Riches, de Disney Interactive Studios, y los miembros del equipo de desarrollo de Eurocom explican a eu.playstation.com las razones por las que les gusta tanto Disney Universe para PlayStation 3.
Iain Riches, productor senior de Disney Interactive Studios:
"Me gusta formar equipo con familiares y amigos. La posibilidad de jugar en una misma pantalla facilita las labores de coordinación y resulta muy divertido. ¿Mi traje favorito? Es una pregunta difícil, ya que hay muchos disfraces magníficos. Si tuviera que elegir uno sería el de Robin Hood, un zorro muy chulo. ¿Qué me dices? ¿Que todavía no has desbloqueado ese traje? ¡Ya estás tardando en ponerte a jugar!".
Peter Hopkins, productor de Eurocom "Disney Universe es un juego apto para todo tipo de usuarios y, además, me permite recorrer los distintos escenarios vestido de Jack Sparrow. Uno de los aspectos más positivos del título es la posibilidad de jugar con amigos, ya que resulta imposible no morirse de la risa ante las divertidas situaciones que se producen; también me divierte consultar las clasificaciones para conocer qué jugadores acaparan lo más alto del podio"."Me gustan muchos de los disfraces, pero mis preferidos son los de Sully, Burn-E y Balú. Me encanta agarrar a otros jugadores y enemigos para lanzarlos fuera del nivel. ¡Es genial!".
Tom O'Neill, diseñador de Eurocom"Cada nivel ofrece a los jugadores la posibilidad de ayudar o molestar a los demás; es el juego ideal para tomarle el pelo a los amigos. Coloca la trampa, atráelos hacia ella... ¡y atrápalos! Pero ten cuidado en el modo campaña individual, ya que otros personajes podrán utilizar el mismo truco contigo".
"Mi personaje favorito es el Sombrerero Loco; es un personaje con el que tengo mucho en común".
Rob Steptoe, artista de Eurocom
Gianmichele Mariani, animador principal de Eurocom"Mi función preferida es, sin lugar a dudas, la posibilidad de utilizar potenciadores para perseguir y atacar a mis amigos. Soy el enemigo perfecto".
Barry Clark, diseñador de Eurocom"Lo que más me gusta de Disney Universe es el nivel de competitividad al que se llega cuando se juega con otras personas; nunca sabrás quién es el ganador hasta que se llegue al podio final. Resulta muy emocionante ver la suma de las puntuaciones hasta que se determina un ganador. Con esto no quiero decir que trabajar en equipo no sea divertido, pero no hay nada mejor que robar una victoria en el último segundo".
Fu Keung Ip, animador de Eurocom"¡Lo mejor de todo es el modo multijugador! Las partidas se convierten en una batalla cuando se suman a ellas dos o tres amigos. Es muy gratificante robarles las monedas a los demás o arrojarles fuera de la zona de juego, aunque también puede ser muy frustrante si te sucede a ti. Lo pasamos en grande intentando completar parte de un nivel donde todo el mundo estaba haciendo travesuras".
Kelvin Moore, diseñador de Eurocom"Lo que más me gusta de Disney Universe son los enemigos, que siempre se traen algo entre manos. No puedo evitar reírme cada vez que salen corriendo con la siguiente pieza de mi puzle o cuando ponen en práctica trucos sucios. Mi personaje favorito es Mike de Monsters Inc. Es una criatura genial y muy divertida, y me encanta recorrer con él los diversos escenarios".
Edward Fuller, diseñador de Eurocom"Mi personaje favorito es el Gato de Chesire. Su traviesa sonrisa se adapta a la perfección a mi estilo, ya que me encanta cooperar con mis amigos y hacerles creer que se encuentran a salvo para, a continuación, darle la vuelta a la tortilla y empujarlos en las cornisas o tenderles trampas en el entorno".
Hazte con un ejemplar de Disney Universe hoy mismo, y adéntrate en un increíble mundo de travesuras y diversión en PlayStation 3.
Contenido integro de este artículo, fotografías y videos extraídos íntegramente de la Web: http://es.playstation.com/
Rockstar estrena el primer making of de 'Max Payne 3' sobre el movimiento y los disparos
El primer vídeo de Diseño y Tecnología se centra en la creación de un personaje fluido y el uso del tiempo bala
Rockstar está dispuesta a sacar todo el partido posible a nuestras consolas y ordenadores con 'Max Payne 3'. La tercera entrega de la franquicia da un importante salto cualitativo con unos gráficos de impresión y un nuevo sistema de movimiento.
Para mostrarnos qué nos vamos a encontrar en el juego, Rockstar lanzará varios vídeos de gameplay explicándonos las mejoras que han incluido. El primero de ellos se centra en el aspecto gráfico y sobre todo en el componente de shooter de acción.
Muévete y dispara
Nos explicarán como Max Payne puede moverse de forma mucho más fluida mientras dispara por todas partes, llegando a poder hacer fácilmente barridos de 360 grados. Además nos enseñan cómo funciona el tiempo bala y el estilo cinemático de todo el juego.
Todo el poderío del Rockstar Advanced Game Engine se muestra en este primer vídeo de Diseño y Tecnología. Pero no será el único, y hasta marzo de 2012 tenemos mucho tiempo para descubrir más novedades de 'Max Payne 3'.
'Max Payne 3'
Contenido integro de este artículo, fotografías y videos extraídos íntegramente de la Web: http://www.zonared.com
World of Warcraft offers new in-game item, new TV spot for seventh anniversary
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria
World of Warcraft is about to celebrate its seventh anniversary on November 23 next week (which means that some of its players have been alive for less time than the game's servers have been up), and to celebrate, Blizzard is giving everyone who logs in between this Sunday and December 3 a Feat of Strength achievement (which means it's only available during this time) and a "celebration package" item.
The item will fire off a virtual fireworks display, and gives players a spiffy new tabard, as well as a 7% experience point and reputation bonus when used.
The company will also introduce a brand new "What's your game?" celebrity TV commercial this weekend during the Bears/Chargers game on CBS. The star of the new commercial is set to be a surprise, so you can start guessing right now in the comments below. We have no idea who it might be, but considering all of the stars so far (William Shatner, Mr. T, Ozzy Osbourne, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Verne Troyer), a girl might be nice?
Disponibles por tiempo limitado los siete primeros minutos de 'Tekken: Blood Vengeance'
La cuenta de YouTube de la saga incluirá de forma gratuita el comienzo de la película rodada con CG hasta que salga 'Tekken Hybrid' a la venta el 25 de noviembre.
El universo de la saga 'Tekken' traspasa las fronteras de los mandos de la consola. El juego distribuido en España por Namco Bandai cuenta ya con distintos tipos de merchandising, incluidas películas. El próximo gran estreno será 'Tekken: Blood Vengeance'.
La película, rodada con la tecnología CG, se presentará junto con el clásico 'Tekken Tag Tournament' remasterizado, el prólogo de 'Tekken Tag Tournament 2' y la película en 3D en el pack 'Tekken Hybrid', que saldrá a la venta el 25 de noviembre.
Pero si no podemos esperar a ese día y el tráiler nos sabe a poco, en la cuenta de YouTube de 'Tekken' podremos ver hasta el día del lanzamiento del juego los siete primeros minutos de la película protagonizada por Ling Xiaoyu y Alisa.
Conspiración y corrupción
En ella veremos cómo la corrupción sigue siendo algo normal en la Mishima Zaibatsu, pero las Xiaoyu y Alisa podrían descubrir la forma de acabar con la familia Mishima para siempre. El vídeo se encuentra en inglés subtitulado al español.
For a Limｔed time !】 The opening of the TEKKEN Blood Vengeance
Contenido integro de este artículo, fotografías y videos extraídos íntegramente de la Web: http://www.zonared.com
