BioShock Infinite, the upcoming first-person shooter video game developed by Irrational Games, is not a direct sequel to the first two entries in the series, but will maintain many of the franchise's turns and twist.
In a recent interview with CVG, the creative director and co-founder of Irrational Games, Ken Levine spoke about how BioShock Infinite's floating city of Columbia is different than the submerged city of Rapture.
"I think zealotry plays a part in both cities, really. They're both monocultures built on zealots," Levine told CVG. "It's not like if you have a Bible in Rapture it makes you unpopular - you literally can't have that! That's why there's the whole smuggling subplot in the game; it's commenting on the fact that an environment driven by reason can itself become closed off and impervious to outside influence as it calcifies."
Although Rapture is a secular society and Columbia was built by a "revelatory society," Levine says that all-knowing figureheads govern both cities.
"Columbia is interesting because it is itself an environment born out of a revelatory society," Levine explained. "They believe there are religious truths beyond what they've read in the Bible - in their society, Comstock is a prophet and things are being revealed to him all the time."
He added," so there's a similarity there that the truth is revealed to a figurehead in the same way that Ryan talks about having his epiphany back in Rapture. Both of them are recipients of some version of the truth."
Levine also talks about the character of Zachary Hale Comstock, the leader of The Founders, the ultra-nationalist party that established the floating city of Columbia. Comstock is known as a prophet and is believed to have the ability to predict the future of Columbia.
Levine told CVG that Comstock was the hardest character to write in the game, because it was hard for him to relate with the zealous figurehead.
"It's very important to me when I'm working on a character that I can connect to them in some way and I don't really have a religious background," Levine said. "With Objectivism, I can be really coy about my beliefs, but I can certainly tune into the first message in Rapture's lighthouse - you know, no Gods, no Kings, only men? I like that and I can agree with that because I'm a bit of an individualist."
He said that religion isn't really his thing, but he knew that the character would not work unless he understood him.
"I can't really talk about how I got there with Comstock, but once I got there, he went from being the hardest part of the game to write to the easiest thing to write," Levine said. "I had to understand what was appealing about religion and to be honest, some of that came out of some conversations I had with some deeply religious people on the team."
You can read the full interview at CVG here. BioShock: infinite will release on March 26, 2013 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms. You can learn more about the game here and watch the game's official trailer below...
