ST GEORGE’S BRITISH INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, ROME, 000817
A Case Study of Dynamic Lighting in Bioshock Infinite: How do technical, cultural and artistic factors influence the use of lighting as a mean to immerse players inside a specific story world within contemporary videogame design? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Claudia Isabella Menin
IB EXTENDED ESSAY VISUAL ARTS Candidate Number: 000817-0046 Word Count: 4162 Supervisor: Mr. Greg Morgan Session: May 2015
Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 Abstract The essay analyses the use of Dynamic Lighting in the videogame Bioshock Infinite to address “How do technical, cultural and artistic factors influence the use of lighting as a mean to immerse players inside a specific story world within contemporary videogame design?” In the medium of videogames, lighting is one of the key factors that contribute to the immersion of a player into the visual environment and its game world. It is one of the key sensory information sources we seek in an environment. Its richness and accuracy often heighten one’s immersion in a game as we associate it with the lighting we see in our real world. Dynamic Lighting is one of the ways in which light can be depicted in videogames to reproduce most faithfully the lighting of the real world with the technology available to us at presently. Lighting can be exploited in different manners to aid the depiction of a game’s world, story and characters. My research includes interviews with the creators of the Bioshock Infinite. I also used professional critical reviews which analysed the game in depth. Lastly I utilised my own knowledge regarding the game which derives from the various hours spent completing it, to formulate a justified and substantial analysis regarding its lighting. Through this research I found that the predominant aspect influencing the lighting in Infinite often is the aesthetic vision and storytelling direction the creators took. These factors influence how lighting is used greatly, as light can be used to emphasize details and create ambiences needed in the game. Advances in hardware and software technology are steadily increasing the creative freedom afforded to game designers and programmers. However, technical restrictions remain the key factors limiting lighting’s immersive potential and continue to pose difficulties for a team to achieve their intended outcome. Word Count: 300
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046
Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………3 A brief overview of lighting in First Person Perspective Videogames…………………………4 Bioshock Infinite: Achieving an ‘Exaggerated Reality’ through Dynamic Lighting………...5 Lighting as a tool to aid the description of characters in the game…………………………….17 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 20 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..22 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 24
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 A Case Study of Dynamic Lighting in Bioshock Infinite: How do technical, cultural and artistic factors influence the use of lighting as a mean to immerse players inside a specific story world within contemporary videogame design?
Introduction Since their origins, with titles such as Pong in 1972, computer based videogames have experienced a sustained and significant advancement as an interactive medium of entertainment. This is particularly true of first person perspective games which seek to create an immersive, three-dimensional environment. In recent years, commercial success and technical evolution, has brought to light the artistic potential videogames hold; whether it concerns depicting existing reality in the most faithful way or to create a new world believable enough for the player to immerse themselves into. As a consequence, both for artistic purposes and the sake of progress, the attention to detail regarding lighting has become more relevant as it is one of the major aesthetic and sensory factors, along with sound, which contribute in the immersion of the player: an effect that most of the high budget titles in the industry strive for. 1 One of the prime examples of videogames which has been able to push up the boundaries, by achieving both great technical advancement and a high artistic curation concerning the field of lighting, is Bioshock Infinite2. I therefore will use Bioshock Infinite in order to represent the current ‘state of art’ in videogame lighting. However, I acknowledge that by the time I complete this project, Infinite is likely to have been superseded by many other titles.
I will particularly focus on considering how and why the game designers and programmers have used a range of techniques and approaches to represent and recreate the story world, atmosphere and script ideated by the creative director, in this case: Ken Levine. In order to evaluate the success of their
1 http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/07/the-psychology-of-immersion-in-video-games/ 07.12.14 16:59 2 A first-person shooter videogame developed by game studio Irrational Games, published by 2K Game and released on March 26, 2013.
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 work I shall refer to my own first hand experiences of the game’s environments, as well as a range of other reviews by professional critics.
A brief overview of lighting in First Person Perspective Video Games
Dynamic lighting and light maps, are two of the major methods of depicting and creating lighting in a game world. In dynamic lighting, light and shadow are rendered in real time, moment by moment, by the use of calculations executed on a large dynamic range. This allows details in the graphics to be preserved, creating a more feasible and realistic lighting that simpler lighting methods cannot achieve. The method is in fact commonly used between the ‘Triple A’ 3 game titles which often tend to focus on achieving realism or photorealism. Unlike dynamic lighting, light maps are flat and premade lighting textures which are made to contain the lighting data of a scene, object or level in a game. They were used often in the past as it was one of the only techniques which the hardware used to develop games could handle, due to its limited functionality. Now it is considered obsolete, at least between the ‘Triple A’ games, if used just on its own, as this method is mostly able to create a stylized and nonphotorealistic illumination. Bioshock Infinite with its overstressed reality had to conceive a hybrid system that combined both baked light maps and dynamic lighting.
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Fig 1. DOOM – an early 3D perspective title released in
1993 that utilized only flat light maps due to the limiting hardware of the time.
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Fig 2. Battlefield 3 – an FPS title released in 2011 that shows the use of dynamic lighting rather than light maps.
3 ‘In the video game industry, AAA (pronounced ‘Triple A’) is a classification term used for games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion.’ Definition from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(game_industry) 4 http://www.wired.com/2013/12/john-carmack-doom/all/ 07.12.14 17:49 5 http://www.thegamingliberty.com/2011/11/dice-to-tone-down-battlefield-3s-tac-light-attachment-2/ 07.12.14 17:46
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046
Bioshock Infinite: Achieving an ‘Exaggerated Reality’ through Dynamic Lighting
An artist working on Infinite best describes its artistic style as an “exaggerated reality”6. An exaggerated and colourful reality in which high saturation and high contrast are the keys in creating bright and intense atmospheres as well as more gloomy and darker interiors. For these reasons, photorealism was not an option the developers took while making the game. Compared to their previous game, Bioshock Infinite’s predecessor Bioshock, at the basis the developers have used the same core methods of lighting: dynamic lighting mixed with the use of light maps and baked in shadow maps. Though, with the advancement of technology, the programmers behind the game have been able to develop and push these two techniques even further in order to satisfy the artistic approach the game took.
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An aerial view of the city of Columbia, the location in which the game takes place.
Principal Graphics Programmer Steve Anichini, tells us how the “Direct lighting [of the game] was primarily dynamic”8 whilst the “Indirect lighting was baked in light maps and light volumes”9.
6 http://solid-angle.blogspot.ca/2014/03/bioshock-infinite-lighting.html 06.10.14 18:53 7 http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Columbia 06.10.14 18:58 8 http://solid-angle.blogspot.ca/2014/03/bioshock-infinite-lighting.html 06.10.14 19:46 9 http://solid-angle.blogspot.ca/2014/03/bioshock-infinite-lighting.html 06.10.14 19:57
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 This shows us how they evenly distributed both techniques across the programming of the game’s levels unlike for the predecessor Bioshock in which, due to the limits of the hardware of the time, more of the lighting consisted of baked light maps. Their approach in using both dynamic lighting and light maps equivalently gave the game the possibility to achieve a stylized and personal artistic aesthetic yet exaggerated and accurate enough illumination for the player to perceive it as realistic. This consequentially feeds the player with the idea that the world and the happenings in the game could be feasible in our reality, contributing to the sense of immersion.
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A scene in the game which both exhibits use of dynamic lighting and light maps.
Technical factors influence the making of a game’s lighting greatly as it places a limit on to what extent one could detail and work on the lighting. The studio behind Bioshock Infinite in fact preferred not constricting itself in working by the strict rules of the Unreal Engine 3, the base engine they utilized to bring the game to life, but “radically customised [it]”11 as the core engine did not suit some of the concepts and challenges the game programming dealt with.
10 http://www.technobuffalo.com/reviews/bioshock-infinite-review/ 06.10.14 20:32 11 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-bioshock-infinite-tech-details 06.10.14 20:59
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 Bioshock Infinite differs from the basic first-person shooter in which “…the ground under the player’s feet isn’t going anywhere…”12 due to its setting, has levels in which “The very ground beneath your feet could fall out of the sky at any moment…”13 as said by Chris Kline, the Technical Director at Irrational Games. This means that modelling the lighting for the levels in the game has been a challenge as they were lead to work in a non-conventional manner with an engine that was simply not well adapted to what they intended to do. Consequentially they had to create an alternative and new technology named “Floating Worlds”14 which enabled them to operate on a non-flat and moving ground when it came to both graphics and lighting.
Another subsidiary technique implemented in the game in order to meet both technical and artistic factors of Infinite, is the use of deferred lighting15. Deferred lighting has the advantage of being able to render multiple lights in a setting or scene without having too much impact on the performance of the game. Being able to also handle the dynamic lighting mainly by using a deferred lighting render, was able to create the high contrast and high saturation that the art directors so strived for.16 Different stages of modelling lighting through deferred lighting
1. Depth of Field
2. Baked and Dynamic Shadows
3. Diffuse Lighting
4. Specular Lighting
12 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-bioshock-infinite-tech-details 06.10.14 21:10 13 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-bioshock-infinite-tech-details 06.10.14 21:12 14 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-bioshock-infinite-tech-details 06.10.14 21:26 15 A screen-space shading technique used in 3D computer graphics. It is called deferred because no shading is actually performed in the first pass of the vertex and pixel shaders: instead shading is defferred until a second pass. Definition from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_shading 16 http://solid-angle.blogspot.it/2014/03/bioshock-infinite-lighting.html 05.12.14 22:50
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046
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End product
Ken Levine, Creative Director of the game, often states during his interviews how he wanted to create a game with “a great environment, a great city” 18 in order to communicate “the American exceptionalism” 19 the city in which the game takes place, the city of Columbia, has due to its strong beliefs also concerning religion. He further states how “We [wanted] a very specific visual ad then there was the day I realized what that specific visual was. You know, this sort of sunny ‘JulyFourth’ small town America… Americana visual that you see right at the beginning of the game.”20 Through his words we can understand that he was aiming for a very bright and sunny looking environment, in which things such as the great patriotism as well as the ‘sterility’ of the city had to be communicated to the player. The need of having the city be this way has influenced greatly their use of dynamic and deferred lighting that would consequentially illuminate the whole levels globally giving the city a sense of grandiosity and purity.
17 http://solid-angle.blogspot.ca/2014/03/bioshock-infinite-lighting.html 05.12.14 22:57 18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 09.11.14 17:42 19 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 09.11.14 17:55 20 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 09.11.14 18:03
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046
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The “Americana visual”20 of the setting is mostly evident at the start of the game through the stark use of dynamic lighting.
Coupled with the deferred lighting technique, the programmers developed a “…proprietary per-pixel dynamic relighting scheme…”22 which enabled both characters and dynamic objects in the game to receive a global lighting. This property associated with the lighting technique made it possible for the levels in the game to receive a ‘correct’ and realistic illumination while still being able to obtain the vivid colours and contrast in the game which were essentially brought forward by the deferred lighting technique used.
Unlike most games, Bioshock Infinite has not let the general people’s wants and needs affect too much its artistic style. Their approach of using a dynamic lighting has been more a decision taken in order to suit the aesthetics it wanted to achieve rather than pleasing the mass of gamers. The only expectation it fulfilled is retaining the ‘Bioshock’ feel their previous game had. Keeping the ‘Bioshock’ atmosphere of the previous game was essential when developing Infinite. Yet this does not mean they were striving to create a twin of their previous game but instead, a sister. As Ken Levine says: “[Bioshock Infinite] both feels incredibly similar and incredibly different [to Bioshock] at the same time. I think that opening sums it up […] it is very familiar but also completely absolutely different and that was
21 http://www.sweclockers.com/forum/52-nyhetskommentarer/1199182-snabbtest-grafikprestanda-i-bioshock-infinite/index4.html 05.12.14 00:37 22 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-bioshock-infinite-tech-details 06.10.14 21:58
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 really what the goal of this game was all along” 23. The challenge they faced at the start of the development of the game was understanding what exactly made a game a ‘Bioshock’ game. “We had to sit down and sort of figure out what is a Bioshock game. We didn’t think of just Rapture24, we thought of something else and what they all sort of share is a sense of this rich world to explore”25. Levine and his team came to the conclusion that the sense of being in a world, incredibly detailed and captivating that incites immersion and exploration, was one of the main pillars that constitutes a ‘Bioshock’ game. “It’s really about that feeling of discovering a new place”26 comments Bill Gardner, the Design Director of Infinite.
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A comparison between the dark and claustrophobic setting of Bioshock and the brighter and open setting of Infinite.
Although the studio still wanted to keep that familiarity with Bioshock in Bioshock Infinite, they have done so despite changing the setting of the game completely. Columbia, unlike Rapture, is a city in the sky which means that its environment not only will look more open but also less gloomy and dark. “We wanted to give [the players] a world that was alive and still kicking and not a graveyard, so the player could participate in what happens to that world. Can see its evolution […] in real time”29. Due to them wanting to achieve this effect, they employed the lighting in such a way for it to dynamically change and adapt to objects and things around the world as well as heightening the sense
23 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbsuHrC0c0 09.11.14 18:31 24 Rapture is a fictional city located underwater somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean, 433 km distant from Reykjavik. It is the setting in which the first Bioshock game takes place. 25 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjUb1pn7o5w 09.11.14 18:57 26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 09.11.14 19:21 27 http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=33936651 09.11.14 19:30 28 http://www.coolpctips.com/2013/04/bioshock-infinite-pc-review/ 09.11.14 19:32 29 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 09.11.14 19:35
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 of contrast of the colours in order to underline the rich and vibrant atmosphere of Columbia and its liveliness. This was mostly achieved through the deferred lighting method and the effects associated with dynamic lighting such as the ‘bloom’ effect.
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Example of dynamic lighting’s ‘bloom' effect in the game.
Unlike many other games, one of Bioshock Infinite particularities is its extensive consideration of the artistic and symbolic value of lighting throughout the game. This is most evident during the first few hours of gameplay in which the player is introduced to the city of Columbia31.
At the start of the game, we assist a big transition from the dark eerie-lit environment of the lighthouse to the very bright and warmly lighten atmosphere of the city of Columbia. The high saturation and contrast between the colours of the environment, coupled with the intense dynamic lighting, gives the scene a calm and serene atmosphere, almost heaven-like. The exaggerated and highly saturated blue colour of the sky and the use of bloom lighting technique 32and dynamic light scattering 33, are able to converge all the elements of the level into having a light and paradisiac atmosphere around them. This 30 http://gamechurch.com/et-tu-levine-bioshock-infinites-tortured-relationship-with-religion/ 04.12.14 17:04 31 Columbia is a fictional city in the United States in which most of the game of Bioshock Infinite takes place. Its particularity is it being a city floating in the sky. 32 Bloom Lighting: an effect of dynamic high range lighting in which fringes of light are created and extend through the border of a light source or bright area of an image creating an illusion that there is an overwhelming amount of bright light entering either a camera lens or the eye. 33 Dynamic Light Scattering: similar to Bloom Lighting, it is when light is able to scatter throughout the source and into other objects or the environment where the light source is found.
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 also highlights the “exaggerated reality”34 stylistic approach that the developers took for the visual aesthetics of the game. But as we know, no city inhabited by man is a paradise and that all these clever uses of colours and lighting in the initial portrayal of Columbia are used as a way to deceive the player into believing the supposed perfectness of the city or into questioning that there must be something wrong for the place to seem so heaven-like.
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The lavish exterior of the city of Columbia coupled with the dynamic lighting to portray an “exaggerated reality”33.
Ken Levine mentions how “[he thinks] a lot of people were worried when we started this game that because it looked happy and nice, that the game would feel happy and nice. And I think very quickly people realize that you don’t need darkness to portray darkness”36. Even though Columbia is initially portrayed as this utopia of perfection, we soon realize that the message they wanted to convey is how many times “we have the most disturbing sh*t in the world happening to you in the most beautiful setting possible” 37. The use of such striking and prominent lighting upon first seeing the city is done deliberately especially to emphasise how Columbia is “a deeply oppressive environment that just doesn’t look that way” 38.
34 http://solid-angle.blogspot.ca/2014/03/bioshock-infinite-lighting.html 12.10.14 16:01 35 http://www.leviathyn.com/opinion/2013/04/16/bioshock-infinite-ending-synopsis/ 09.11.14 19:54 36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 09.11.14 20:02 37 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 09.11.14 20:10 38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 09.11.14 20:14
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 The Creative Director’s intentions when it came to designing Columbia, were to portray a “world with the memory of America that people think existed [that] never really actually quite existed”39. Their main goal they wanted to achieve through Columbia was “to capture that feeling of wonder that people must have had at the time” 40 regarding the United States and its rapid growth towards grandiosity. “All this hope and optimism for the future” 41. It is for this reason that the developers decided to make use of the dynamic lighting in an almost overdone way, to capture the city’s grandeur and seemingly perfect atmosphere. Ken Levine adds that their aesthetic approach towards Columbia at the very starting scene is also used as a way to capture the player at the first glance. “To me we either got you in that moment or we didn’t have you at all” 42.
As the game progresses, there is an evident shift of tone and mood brought by the lighting. The illumination slowly transitions from the warm and bright tones seen at the start of the game, to become very obscure, in which shadows dominate more than lights in order to better convey the dark ambiences and events occurring towards the end of Infinite. These reflect greatly also the thematics Bioshock Infinite tackles. “We realized that one of the reasons people like Bioshock was because it did take on some topics that other games hadn’t taken on and I think they felt […] that was respecting their intelligence”43. Some of the themes Infinite takes on are all serious in nature with grim undertones that become more prominent as the game goes on. 44 The lighting is in fact crucial in portraying the different tones and atmospheres of Bioshock Infinite and is also one of the main aesthetic ways in which the developers manipulate the surrounding to achieve a certain mood in each scene or level. Consequentially the developers relied extensively on lighting in order to create the darker and eerier settings in an “antiseptic environment”45 such as Columbia’s.
39 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNrBxNqaA4E 09.11.14 21:44 40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNrBxNqaA4E 09.11.14 21:50 41 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNrBxNqaA4E 09.11.14 21:57 42 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNrBxNqaA4E 09.11.14 22:03 43 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 05.12.14 00:26 44 A few central themes in Bioshock Infinite are racism, extremism, fundamentalism, fatalism, free will, religion, redemption and forgiveness. It also tackles other various political and social problems. 45 http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/111/1112232p2.html 12.10.14 17:08
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The shift in tone and mood of the game is also visible through the environment and its lighting as the game progresses.
Dynamic lighting is often able to fade out in the level’s environment, giving the surroundings a realistic globally illuminated feel. For example dynamic lighting’s bloom lighting effect is able to make the environment more appealing to the eye by slightly blending the colours between the light and the objects it illuminates, toning down some of the high saturation and making the 3D models in the surroundings work more harmoniously between each other. As Levine mentions, “[the] Teach Team […] [had to make] a deferred lighting render which allowed all things to be lit consistently in the world so things looked [coherent and sunny]”48.
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The lighting, not only giving the game a globally illuminated feel, also aid’s the game’s perspective by heightening the effect of the depth of field.
46 https://mattbrett.com/blog/videogames/2013/bioshock-infinite/ 04.12.14 18:01 47 http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/04/03/bioshock-infinite-review-part-two-a-closer-look-at-gameplay-and-storytelling-pc/ 04.12.14 18:04 48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phILErwvjIw 04.12.14 18:05 49 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/04/23/bioshock-infinite-performance/1 04.12.14 18:32
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046
Most of the aesthetic effects created by the lighting, reflect the stylistic approach the game has regarding its visuals, as the often colourized light with its contrast towards the objects in the level or the empowerment of them, brings out the exaggerated nature of reality Bioshock Infinite desires to depict. The colour of the lighting is in fact a crucial factor in the game, to which much attention was put into in order to make levels and scenes appear more uniform. Following the colour theory, the lighting is kept in a similar range of colours or it is only attributed two to three main colours in a scene or level. This helps the scene look more stylized as well as very artistic by bringing cohesion between the elements in the environment and the overall ambience of the game.
Throughout the game, the main light source is always made evident, illuminating objects correctly and logically while still balancing out the light and the shadow coming from the difference sources. With a clear light source kept in mind, the whole environment can appear as being richer and fuller, perfectly adapting to the artistic direction of the game: “We really wanted to make the world much broader”50.
The illumination in the game has also been able to aid the sense of perspective and depth of field of the environment (majorly due to the deferred lighting method utilized) by making objects in the distance fade into the lighting substantially and more homogenously than those in the foreground. This has been achieved mostly through the dispersive nature of the lighting the game has modeled through the dynamic lighting basis. Ken Levine in fact state on how using deferred lighting has aided them in making the spaces seem broader creating the illusion of having “a much more bigger and expansive city” 51 and where everything “[is] much more about light” 52 compared to the predecessor Bioshock. The emphasis on the lighting as a way to build the world of Infinite is also evident through the initial concept art in the game which displays a marked presence of different sources of light in order to
50 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbsuHrC0c0 09.11.14 22:48 51 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phILErwvjIw 04.12.14 18:49 52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phILErwvjIw 04.12.14 19:02
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 bring out the different aspects of Columbia; whether it is the heaven-like and patriotic atmosphere of the city or the more grim and skewed aspects of it.
Fig. 2 Concept art of a street in Columbia53
Fig.1 Concept art of the city of Columbia
One of the aspects the developers focused on the most was “selling the world [of Bioshock Infinite] in the details, in the small details rather than telling you what the world is” 54. This ‘philosophy’ the developers follow is reflected thoroughly throughout the whole world in which Infinite is set in. It can be seen through the interactions the NPCs 55 have with the player, the little details of the buildings, the way in which Columbia gradually and constantly changes. This is especially true in regards of the lighting, which many times is used symbolically or modelled to satisfy a certain mood required in the levels. Their approach of world building, focusing on the details in order to “show [the player] at every moment what the world is” 56, justifies the developer’s choice in using extensively deferred lighting. As it is able to render multiple light rays at once from different sources, the deferred lighting technique gives space for a lot of detail to be put in the lighting of a certain object or whole scene, enriching the environment further and giving it more depth. Ken Levine believes that it is important to show through “pixels and sounds” 57 what the world is because “It doesn’t have any meaning if I tell you [the story] […] You are trying to get an emotion, you are trying to get a feeling but you can’t just dictate that to the player” 58.
53 http://kotaku.com/the-beautiful-concept-art-of-bioshock-infinite-470777951 04.12.14 19:20 54 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjUb1pn7o5w 09.11.14 23:36 55 NPC – Non-playable character 56 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjUb1pn7o5w 09.11.14 23:48 57 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjUb1pn7o5w 09.11.14 23:52 58 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjUb1pn7o5w 10.11.14 00:00
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046
Lighting as a tool to aid the description of characters in the game
“We make sure that the story stays centric around the characters from the beginning to the very end”59. The intentions of the designers regarding the story were of huge impact when it came to the aesthetics of the game. This is especially evident through their use of lighting throughout Bioshock Infinite, as it is also used as a tool to show the nature of some of the characters in the game. An example of this is seen right before Booker60 receives the baptism from ‘The Church of Comstock’ in which all the followers of the prophet are illuminated by a dual lighting of both warm and cold hues showing the duality of the nature of the citizens of Columbia as well as the city itself.
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A dual lighting of warm and cool tones being shed on the followers of the prophet.
Lighting in Infinite also works as an indirect way of filling in the description of a character in the story. Lady Comstock62, a character that we are shown and know little about throughout the game, is one who is very subject to this. In the ‘First Lady’s Memorial’, a memorial dedicated to her, the lights found are a mix of warm mauve, pink and yellow, all modeled to be dynamic and flare lights which illuminate 59 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbsuHrC0c0 04.12.14 20:33 60 The main character in the game which the player plays as. 61 http://ontologicalgeek.com/bioshock-infinite-and-baptism/ 04.12.14 21:57 62 Wife of the main antagonist in the game, Comstock. She would be deceased by the time the events in the game take place.
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 the location fully. These are all colours that are considered to be feminine and the lighting in this particular scene, delivers a message of who and what Lady Comstock is supposed to be. The tones chosen for the lighting also communicate serenity and placidity, qualities that can be attributed to the First Lady as she is supposed to fulfill the figure of a mother and of someone who comforts the people of Columbia. Lady Comstock was mainly added to the story of Infinite with the intention of displaying “the notion of forgiveness”63 associated with Comstock64 in order to show “why Comstock would be meaningful to [the characters]” 65, “why would somebody follow this guy” 66. Lady Comstock was used as an outlet to display the ‘good’ one could find across Comstock’s religion, which is redemption and forgiveness. “And forgiveness is the theme of the whole game in many ways, about redemption and forgiveness” 67, explains Levine. It is for this reason that a warm and subtle lighting is given to things associated with Lady Comstock; in order to make the player subconsciously associate her generally with the image of a good person who has found the ‘light’ through the forgiveness of Comstock.
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Light rays with delicate tones of mauve, pink and yellow were used to illuminate the places concerning Lady Comstock.
Two characters’ whose roles are complemented as well by the particular use of lighting associated with them are the Lutece twins70. Out of all the main characters introduced in the game, they are the
63 http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/1/4576374/ken-levine-discusses-the-meaning-in-bioshock-infinite 04.12.14 22:02 64 The main antagonists in the game. He is referred often as the ‘prophet’ for being the one who founded Columbia and has formed a whole religion around his own persona. 65 http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/1/4576374/ken-levine-discusses-the-meaning-in-bioshock-infinite 04.12.14 22:07 66 http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/1/4576374/ken-levine-discusses-the-meaning-in-bioshock-infinite 04.12.14 22:09 67 http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/1/4576374/ken-levine-discusses-the-meaning-in-bioshock-infinite 04.12.14 22:13 68 http://imgur.com/gallery/uTYQf 04.12.14 22:34 69 http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/04/03/bioshock-infinite-review-part-two-a-closer-look-at-gameplay-and-storytelling-pc/ 04.12.14 22:37 70 Two quantum physicists whose scientific discoveries were able to make the city of Columbia remain fixed in the sky.
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 only ones that are subject to a more balanced lighting in Bioshock Infinite, revealing enough about their nature but also concealing them. The Luteces often appear in places with a diffused lighting or are lit in the shadows, giving them a balance between what we see of them and what we do not. The play of light concerning the twins make our minds perceive a neutral nature regarding the two’s actions and motivation unlike most of the other characters which instead are usually placed more towards a side of the spectrum of the good and the evil. The speculation that Ken Levine based the twins loosely on characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Shakespeare’s Hamlet or from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, reinforces the ambiguity of their position in the story.71 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s stance in Hamlet is ambiguous as they cannot either be defined to be good or evil yet their role as instigators of tension in the plot remains. Just as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern assumed this role, so do the Luteces and thus, with them being the instigators of the events in Infinite, they are portrayed as impartial in the situation. This can also be observed by the kinds of environments we find them in, which mainly display a palette of browns such as Chamoisee and Chestnut brown; colours that are perceived as neutral and impartial. The great balance found between the light and shadow shed on them also raises an important question on whether or not they occupy a position of centrality in the story despite the little screen time they are given.
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The Lutece twins are always shown in a neutral and balanced light in Bioshock Infinite, in which a palette of browns dominates.
71 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-05-bioshock-infinite-americas-fairground 04.12.14 22:40 72 http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Rosalind_Lutece 05.12.14 00:42 73 http://www.lukeyishandsome.com/2013/07/the-mindblowing-ending-of-bioshock.html 05.12.14 00:46
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 Conclusion I approached this research essay from the multiple perspectives of a keen student of literature, a filmmaker, a visual artist and also a videogame player. I believe that this has enabled me to fully appreciate how subtle nuances of mood, atmosphere and narrative conveyed through visual means. Whilst I have consulted a wide range of reference material, I have sometimes struggled to find adequate quotes and sources that specifically focus on lighting as a key element within the creation of immersive gaming world. Many reviewers often praised Bioshock Infinite for factors such as its distinctive art style, breathtaking story and artificial intelligence of the characters within the game. Many reviews though lacked in mentioning the lighting as an important factor which bound the visuals together.
Claude Monet said:
“For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life – the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.�74
What Monet, often considered the master of light, suggests, is that lighting is often what attributes to a subject its particular nature and life of its own. With the absence of light things would appear bland and homogeneous. Lighting is often what attributes to a piece, world or subject its own character and helps in heightening the depth of its atmosphere as well as impact. In this way, by manipulating light, the artists and engineers behind Infinite were able to attain certain moods and emotional responses to different environment, by the players.
Having played a great number of first person shooter videogames, I've always been particularly struck
74 http://www.theartstory.org/artist-monet-claude.htm 05.12.14 00:50
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 by the unique way in which Bioshock Infinite differs from the clichéd dark corridors and bleak wartorn landscapes that provide the backdrop to most contemporary videogame designs. This has taken considerable technical development and a large investment in time, detail and effort. The highly complex, open, dynamic lighting environment with its multiple light sources and almost impressionistic atmosphere makes Infinite a landmark in videogame design.
Beyond sheer technical accomplishment, this game particularly marks the increasing creative freedom of programmers, designers and writers to fully realise any immersive environment that they wish to depict. In the case of Bioshock Infinite this was a superficially bright, charming and cheerful world that concealed malevolent depths; a notion best summarised in the words of Ken Levine: “you don’t need darkness to portray darkness”75.
Word Count: 4162
75 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s 09.11.14 20:02
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046
Bibliography Books Levine, Ken. The Art of Bioshock Infinite. Dark Horse Comics, 2013. Games Irrational Games. BioShock Infinite. 2K Games, 2013. Irrational Games. BioShock. 2K Games, 2007. Websites Madigan, Jamie. "The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games." The Psychology of Video Games. July 27, 2010. Accessed December 7, 2014. http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/07/the-psychology-of-immersion-in-videogames/. Anichini, Steve. "Solid Angle." BioShock Infinite Lighting. March 3, 2014. Accessed October 6, 2014. http://solidangle.blogspot.ca/2014/03/bioshock-infinite-lighting.html. Leadbetter, Richard. "BioShock Infinite Revolutionises UE3." Eurogamer.net. November 3, 2010. Accessed October 6, 2014. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-bioshock-infinite-tech-details. Clayman, David. "Building the World of BioShock Infinite." IGN. August 19, 2010. Accessed October 12, 2014. http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/111/1112232p2.html. Crecente, Brian. "BioShock Infinite's Creator on Forced Baptisms, Meaningful Violence and "The End"" Polygon. August 1, 2013. Accessed December 4, 2014. http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/1/4576374/ken-levine-discusses-themeaning-in-bioshock-infinite. Donlan, Christian. "BioShock Infinite: America's Fairground." Eurogamer.net. April 5, 2013. Accessed December 4, 2014. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-05-bioshock-infinite-americas-fairground. "The Art Story.org - Your Guide to Modern Art." Claude Monet Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works. Accessed December 5, 2014. http://www.theartstory.org/artist-monet-claude.htm. Images Anichini, Steve. "Solid Angle." BioShock Infinite Lighting. March 3, 2014. Accessed October 6, 2014. http://solidangle.blogspot.ca/2014/03/bioshock-infinite-lighting.html. Kohler, Chris. "Q&A: Doom's Creator Looks Back on 20 Years of Demonic Mayhem | WIRED." Wired.com. December 8, 13. Accessed December 7, 2014. http://www.wired.com/2013/12/john-carmack-doom/all/. Murphy, Joseph. "DICE to Tone down Battlefield 3′s Tac Light Attachment." The Gaming Liberty. November 14, 2011. Accessed December 10, 2014. http://www.thegamingliberty.com/2011/11/dice-to-tone-down-battlefield-3s-taclight-attachment-2/. Butler, Harry. "Bioshock Infinite Performance Analysis." Bit-tech. April 23, 2013. Accessed December 4, 2014. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/04/23/bioshock-infinite-performance/1. Peele, Britton. "Et Tu, Levine?: Bioshock Infinite's Tortured Relationship With Religion - Gamechurch.com." Gamechurch.com. Accessed December 4, 2014. http://gamechurch.com/et-tu-levine-bioshock-infinites-torturedrelationship-with-religion/. Hwang, Albert. "BioShock Infinite and Baptism." The Ontological Geek. June 20, 2014. Accessed December 4, 2014. http://ontologicalgeek.com/bioshock-infinite-and-baptism/.
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 "Columbia." BioShock Wiki. Accessed October 6, 2014. http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Columbia. Davidson, Joey. "BioShock Infinite Review." TechnoBuffalo. April 3, 2013. Accessed October 6, 2014. http://www.technobuffalo.com/reviews/bioshock-infinite-review/. "Bioshock Infinite Screenshots." Imgur. Accessed December 4, 2014. http://imgur.com/gallery/uTYQf. Kain, Erik. "'BioShock Infinite' Review - Part Two: A Closer Look At Gameplay And Storytelling (PC)." Forbes. April 3, 2013. Accessed December 4, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/04/03/bioshock-infinite-review-parttwo-a-closer-look-at-gameplay-and-storytelling-pc/. "2012 High-Res PC Screenshot Thread of Don't Use Imgur." NeoGAF. Accessed November 9, 2014. http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=33936651. Gondane, Rahul. "BioShock Infinite PC Review - Gameplay, Graphics and Rating." CoolPcTips. April 3, 2013. Accessed November 9, 2014. http://www.coolpctips.com/2013/04/bioshock-infinite-pc-review/. A., Blake. "Explaining The Ending Of BioShock Infinite." Leviathyn. April 16, 2013. Accessed November 9, 2014. http://www.leviathyn.com/opinion/2013/04/16/bioshock-infinite-ending-synopsis/. Brett, Matt. "BioShock Infinite Review - Matt Brett." Matt Brett RSS. April 23, 2013. Accessed December 4, 2014. https://mattbrett.com/blog/videogames/2013/bioshock-infinite/. "Rosalind Lutece." BioShock Wiki. Accessed December 5, 2014. http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Rosalind_Lutece. "The Mindblowing Ending of Bioshock Infinite." Lukeyishandsome.com. July 10, 2013. Accessed December 5, 2014. http://www.lukeyishandsome.com/2013/07/the-mindblowing-ending-of-bioshock.html. "Snabbtest: Grafikprestanda I Bioshock Infinite." SweClockers.com RSS. Accessed December 5, 2014. http://www.sweclockers.com/forum/52-nyhetskommentarer/1199182-snabbtest-grafikprestanda-i-bioshockinfinite/index4.html. "Bioshock Infinite 2013 Screenshot." Imageshack. Accessed December 16, 2014. http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img593/4349/bioshockinfinite2013032w.png. Videos/Interviews GameSpot. "BioShock Infinite: Clouds and Strife: Building the World." YouTube. January 31, 2013. Accessed November 9, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpV166ko-_s. OutsideBox. "Bioshock Infinite - Ken Levine Interview and Gameplay - Ending, Racism and Quantum Mechanics." YouTube. December 13, 2012. Accessed November 9, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbsuHrC0c0. GameSpot. "The Soul of Bioshock Infinite - An Interview with Ken Levine." YouTube. December 7, 2012. Accessed November 9, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjUb1pn7o5w. Rev3Games. "BIOSHOCK INFINITE: Ken Levine Discusses Columbia, Elizabeth, and Religion - Part 1." YouTube. December 13, 2012. Accessed November 9, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNrBxNqaA4E. The Inquirer. "Bioshock Infinite Ken Levine Interview." YouTube. March 28, 2013. Accessed December 4, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phILErwvjIw. IGN. "BioShock Infinite - Elizabeth Interview." YouTube. March 19, 2013. Accessed December 4, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y61gMBoJ5j4.
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046
Appendix For research purposes, I consulted various interviews that were given to the Creative Director of Bioshock Infinite in order to shed light to the vision they wanted to give the game and how they achieved such. Here there will be the following transcripts of parts of the interviews I watched and from where I subsequently got the quotations I used throughout my piece of research. It is to note that these are not transcripts of the whole interviews per se but rather of pieces of the interviews I would’ve utilized later on; parts of it that were useful for my research.
Bioshock Infinite - Ken Levine Interview and Gameplay - Ending, Racism and Quantum Mechanics Published on December 13, 2012 by outsidexbox Q: In terms of the intro of the game its very reminiscent of the original Bioshock […] was that a purposeful decision? Do you want to reignite, even though it’s in a new setting, reignite that feeling of a Bioshock game in the players from the start? Ken Levine: […] The game both feels incredibly similar and incredibly different at the same time. I think that opening sums it up […] it is very familiar but also completely absolutely different and that was really what the goal of this game was all along. Ken Levine: […] This is what people who create stuff need to do, tell a story and I think the theme is very comfortable with the content of a game […] Ken Levine: […] We make sure that the story is, it stays centric around the characters from the beginning to the very end […] Ken Levine: […] We wanted the city to be alive rather than a graveyard, we wanted you to be a character this time, we wanted you to be engaged with […] Ken Levine: […] There’s probably a very half hour or so before you get into combat in this game but its also one of the most densely packed experiences you’ve ever had in a videogame in terms of the amount of content that you are experiencing, that kind of interaction outside the gun fights you are in… there are dozen of kinds of interactions you are going to have and that was really important for us because I think in games, in first person games tend to often just be about shooting and nothing else. Look I love shooters, they are great but we really wanted to make the world much broader […] Bioshock Infinite – Elizabeth Interview Published on March 19, 2013 by IGN Ken Levine: […] What’s the purpose of Irrational Games, what is its mission, I think its mission is to bring the player closer to be a participant in the narrative rather than an observer of the narrative and with infinite we wanted to remove a lot of the barriers we have between the player and the narrative and that was, you know, instead of a game taking place in effectively a grave yard you know where everybody’s dead and where all interactions with people were from behind either over a radio or behind a glass window we really wanted to bring you into a space with living characters and having them react to you not only in a narrative script standpoint but also in terms of a systemic standpoint to some degree […] Bioshock Infinite: Clouds and Strife: Building the World Published on January 31, 2013 by GameSpot Ken Levine: […] I think when we started on Bioshock infinite, we realized that one of the reasons people like Bioshock was because it did take on some topics that other games hadn’t taken on and I
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 think they felt that there was a… especially for a big mass market game, that was respecting their intelligence that was saying you know what we think you are interested in a broad range of things or at least that you are comfortable that we are putting it out there and crossing our fingers and hoping that you guys are going to come along for the ride and I think if you go back to… if we talk to people that have played Bioshock you ask them what they liked about it, it’s the sense of the world and being in that place […] Bill Gardner (design director): When we originally sitting down and talking about what we were going to build, we immediately went Rapture ok we’re going back to rapture and that was the obvious place you know. You can’t have a Bioshock game with out Rapture… it’s just part of the DNA. And the more we started talking about what was going to happen and the sort of things you’ll be doing […] the more we were like “oh my god…if we are bored with this what is the gamer going to think?” so you know we started to allow ourselves to talk about different settings and the more we got into it the more we realize that it’s really about that feeling of discovering a new place […] Ken Levine: […] We knew we had to create you know with this game a great environment, a great city and that wasn’t trivial. It took us a long time to figure out what that city was and more importantly how we communicate what it was you know the religion, the American exceptionalism and that is all… we are about to a very specific visual and then there was the day I realized what that specific visual was you know this sort of sunny July fourth you know small town America…Americana visual that you see right in the beginning of the game […] but then there was… we didn’t want to tell the story of a non entity again... I think to do another story with a non entity immediately would be expecting certain things out of it and they couldn’t just accept it as “oh its first person shooter where you’re a non entity” they would know its a Bioshock game, they would expect something... I mean rapture we sort of started thinking of it as a grave yard right, a grave yard with all this time capsule information that you can discover and its another case where we felt we have done that and wanted to challenge ourselves and now we wanted to give them a world that was alive and still kicking and not a graveyard so the player could participate in what happens to that world, can see its evolution rather than just observe it as a historian, observe it as a journalist, you know observe it real time. Ken Levine: What aspect of American history we are interested in… In this game we started just with this period because it was a good visual and it’s a period that also that nobody has really touched you know and I… Probably something came from my idea... I was really obsessed with the film ‘There will be Blood’ ... its still America its still a world that... Not quite what we think of it... I think we were drawn to that you know a lot of the guys in the team were reading a book called the Devil in the White City, which is about the 1893 world’s fair […] Shawn Robertson (lead artist): We don’t like to looks at other people’s representations of the period because then you’re just furthering yourself form the actual source material. We have a group full of artist looking at ‘beach 1912’ what is a beach like in 1912 […] Overall for the source material we have lots of strange photos from the time […] Ken Levine: I think a lot of people were worried when we started this game that because it looked happy and nice that the game would feel happy and nice and I think very quickly people realized that you don’t need darkness to portray darkness like right from the beginning lets say... We have the most disturbing shit in the world happening to you in the most beautiful setting possible. And there is that moment were you realize you bit into the worm in the apple where you know all of a sudden the beauty of this place seems crashing down […] that was one of the challenges we gave to ourselves too and its is.. it is a deeply oppressive environment that just doesn’t look that way. The Soul of Bioshock Infinite - An Interview with Ken Levine Published on Dec 7, 2012 by GameSpot Ken Levine: We had to sit down and sort of figure out what is a Bioshock game. We didn’t think of just rapture, we thought of something else and what they all sort of share is a sense of this rich world to
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Menin Claudia Isabella Candidate Number: 000817-0046 explore. This incredibly detailed world that you can just explore every nuke and cranny and find a space that feels genuine and consistent. It is the same people working on it and we pursue…we have the same interests. We are sort of interested in utopian structures and how technology and society sort of fit together and how they impact one another and so these sort of come back as a thematic structure that exists between the game. […] The other thing we tried to work with is selling the world in the details, in the small details rather than telling you what the world is. Just showing you at every moment what the world is. […] It doesn’t have any meaning if I tell you [the story][…] sometimes designers come in and say “ this is what the player is going to feel here” and I say “ well don’t tell me how the player is going to feel” All we have are pixels and sounds right? That’s it. And maybe some vibrations on the [joystick] That’s all we have so tell me what your pixels and sounds are going to be like and how the stick’s going to vibrate and I’ll tell you what I feel” and they have to pitch it from that angle rather than form the inside of the head. You are trying to get an emotion, you are trying to get a feeling but you can’t just dictate that to the player. BIOSHOCK INFINITE: Ken Levine Discusses Columbia, Elizabeth, and Religion - Part 1 Published on Dec 13, 2012 Rev3Games Ken Levine: […] I remember we were struggling with it back in the beginning. I went for a run one day and it was super sunny. It was like in June. It was one of those brilliantly blue sunny perfect days. And I remember looking at the sun, the colour of the light and looking at the mailbox’s reflection of light on this black mailbox and how it looked and thinking like you know its just one of those perfect moments… I wish I could just put it in a bottle and I’m like “oh my god, that is what Columbia is.” It is this sky colour, it is this world with the memory of America that people think existed and never really actually quite existed. When you first go out of that garden area and you see the street, the real street of Columbia for the first time, the skyline going by, the zeppelin, the building coming in for docking, that is both…familiar like it looks like the music man then you look at the people in the streets, these people enjoying lemonade or whatever then a guy selling hot dogs and the news boy but the it gets… this ridiculous over the top setting and its both those things and we were trying to capture that feeling of wonder that people must have had at that time, of all this hope and optimism for the future. To a modern audience if you just have a street scene from back then it wouldn’t have that effect but with these buildings coming in and landing and the car going by the skylines it just was to me that we either got you in that moment or we didn’t have you at all. Either we get you or we’ll never going to have you after that moment I think, this buying into this city […] Bioshock Infinite Ken Levine interview for The Inquirer Published on Mar 28, 2013 by theinquirer Ken Levine: […] With Infinite we wanted to make a much more bigger and expansive city and it was much more about light […] so we had to go from a sort of a modified version of the Unreal Engine 2.5 which we had put some Unreal Engine 3 stuff into, to a fill version of Unreal Engine 3 and then our Tech Team lead by Steve Anichini and Steve Almore made a deferred lighting render which allowed all things to be lit consistently in the world so things looked, things in sunlight… like the characters were lit consistently with the world and all things were lit consistently with the world and that was a big piece of technology they took on […]
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