We create lines that lead to content, we create content that feed off lines, the story creates the game and the game the story, so really to bring about fresh design we iterate we go forward, see what that creates and that leads to other ideas. I don't think the Lincoln idea came until after someone put the Lincoln mask in, the gold statues led to the other moment. We had this core of the curio shop, but then the artists go crazy, put this in, and spark off each other. The junk shop was a perfect example of that, it produced so much joy as the duo wandered around the shop. RPS: It's that philosophical consumerism you've got, that's reaching out and sampling a bit of everything that can be made relevant, and restructuring it into a new form. We don't take one source and say "we're going to do an expression of that", we say “here's that central idea, what things are out there that are influencing this and driving it forward?” and we try to take these and blend them in a new and unique way. At the end of the day, we're all junkies of popular culture, of society, history, literature, art. There's so many influences in there that's an influence, there's a classic tale, almost fairytale-like, and at the same time it's a Bioshock game, we try to take all these influences and blend them in a way that makes something unique. Gerritsen: Yeah, there's definitely some of that in there. RPS: It reminds me most of Dashiell Hammett's classic Red Harvest (later adapted into Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars), the Pinkerton detective coming into a town divided by two gangs with one simple task, and his response to the town's corruption causing his responsibilities and the effects of his actions to spiral out of control. We wanted to make you start thinking 'what do I want to do? Who do I want to attack? Why do I want to get involved?' You really need to pick and choose the principles you'll be experiencing. You could play the devil and shoot the first man you see, and that creates a different type of scenario. What do you do? Do you just start shooting people, you could. The Founders are idealistically floating above the world bringing America's glory to the world, whilst in fact they're exporting xenophobia and acting dictatorially the Vox Populi have even higher ideals, of human happiness achieved through equality, whereas at the street level their footsoldiers are going around killing the common man, putting themselves above the people they were below.
And their idealism is a compromised idealism. You're not going to join these factions you just want to do your job. Gerritsen: Yeah, you're a muscle for hire, you'll do whatever it takes, you'll do whatever job is given you, you don't care. There's nothing more cynical than a Pinkerton's Detective. You really have these two idealisms taken to an extreme and you're caught in the middle as a player all you want to do is get this girl, get out get your money and finish your job and you get embroiled in all this. Gerritsen: There's this dichotomy between the xenophobia of the founders and the paternalism of the Vox Populi and they'll save you from the predations of the scary world. RPS: It’s interesting that you mentioned claustrophobia, as you’ve changed your psychoses substantially with this move Bioshock is claustrophobia and paranoia Infinite is more vertigo and xenophobia. The publisher could have made us carry on but to their benefit and ours they allowed us to experiment We really want to step away and do some completely different this time around. You're now above everything, with a precariousness, and there's a sense that the whole world could just be ripped from under your feet at any time. This time around you're in the middle of it, the middle of a frenetic action, you're above the world you no longer have the weight of the world pressing down on you, under the ocean. Bioshock was a very different experience it was a claustrophobic experience, it was a lonely experience, you were exploring a world after a bunch of events had happened and seeing the aftermath. We felt like we had done what we wanted to do. When we finished Bioshock, we could have just settled on the same thing it would have been disappointing to us as a team, it would have been disappointing to just have had the same type of experience.
Gerritsen: They’re intentionally different experiences. RPS: The first thing that struck me, relative to the plodding speed of Bioshock 1 & 2, was the speed, fluidity and freedom of movement here. They then talked Heisenberg, Bader-Meinhoff, pulp fiction, psychoses. Agent Dan stalked the halls of E3 until he caught up with Timothy Gerritsen, Director of Development at Irrational Games and Executive Producer on Bioshock Infinite.
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