This is the image that made me hate Bioshock Infinite
Because itās the coolest thing Iāve ever seenĀ
Iāve always felt that there was something missing about Elizabeth that made her feelā¦ boring or basic. Itās almost as if they started with an amazing and complicated character who they had to water down and simplify in order to fit her within the confines of a video game. Iām sure thatās partly true, but I believe that the majority of Elizabethās character flaws originate from the fact that they had no goddamn idea what they were doing when they made the third bioshock game.
Just the sheer amount of concept art shows that the production team was just throwing spaghetti at the wall and keeping what they liked. Donāt get me wrong, thatās an incredibly important part of character design! Some characters are drawn two or three times and then theyāre done, while others get drawn and redesigned millions of times, usually because the creator isnāt quite sure what they want out of the character. My problem with Bioshock Infinite is that they do this with literally every aspect of the game, resulting in the jumbled up, incoherent mess that the finished game ended up being.
Consistently throughout pre-production Elizabeth is characterized as a compassionate, innocent girl who hides a terrible power. She is passionate, she is altruistic, she is powerful, she is dangerous, and that is interesting. Sheās been lied to and manipulated her entire life, and is experiencing the entire world for the first time, while trying to do good in a society that she doesnāt completely understand. That is fascinating and creates a character that I want to interact with and one that I can relate to and care about, especially as a young girl myself.
In the early trailers we see Elizabeth use these catastrophic powers to take out whole groups of men, resurrect a horse, and even take out songbird, because she is motivated by her emotions, her thirst for justice, and her feelings for Booker. I cannot comprehend why they cut these amazing powers from the game. It works well with the player, itās an interesting mechanic, it makes elizabeth more vital to the gameplay, and reveals Elizabethās motivations. So Why did this extremely powerful and strong female character get replaced with a companion who only chucks coins at the player and opens portals when the writers want to abandon the plot they are currently developing for another more convoluted one.
Tears are the main contributors to the jumbled up mess that Bioshock Infinite ended up being. At the beginning of the game the writers setup this extremely interesting plot based on criticizing religion and how it can be used to perpetuate racism, classism, and other societal evils, but instead they end up vilifying the leader of the rebellion just as much as they vilify Comstock, and make the player go through a wild goose chase that ends with the entire plot of the game never mattering because they wanted to explore alternate universes and make a last ditch effort to connect Infinite to the other bioshock games. Tears needlessly complicated the plot of the game and made the entire game redundant because apparently nothing you did mattered as long as Booker Dewitt drowns at the end of the game.
What makes me the angriest is that there is a very simple solution to all these problems. Ditch Booker Dewitt and make Elizabeth the protagonist. The game is about Elizabeth and her coming of age, so why am I playing as āNo Memories Mc Dead Wifeā? Get rid of the vigors and make Elizabethās powers the plasmid substitute, and get rid of the tears, or at least use them intelligently. Have the player, as Elizabeth, decide whether or not she wants to help the vox populi, have her decide if she wants to use her powers on people, have her decide what to do with Comstock. Let her have any agency in a game about her, instead of having her be kidnapped by Booker and having the only choice in the game be what necklace she wears. You can even keep the alternate universe plot, as long as the twist at the end doesnāt completely disregard every single decision made by the player and Elizabeth throughout the entire game.Ā
TheĀ āTornado sceneā is the only remaining inkling of the strong and dangerous girl who we saw in the early production, in the actual game
Ken Levine can talk all he wants about how perfect the Elizabeth we got was, but the truth is she was watered down and pushed aside in order to make room for a generic male protagonist. Elizabeth shouldāve been an independent, compassionate, and dangerous character that had to make hard decisions in order to stick to her ideals even as the society around her fell apart due to a overbearing religious government, but instead we got a companion character who is constantly being undermined by Booker Dewitt, and tries to remain innocent and ignorant despite the obvious evils running rampant in her society.
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