BioShock Infinite character 'highly altered' after talking with religious team members

BioShock Infinite creator Ken Levine says that he changed the portrayal of a character after speaking with religious team members who had concerns.

38

The name BioShock Infinite had us scratching our heads upon announcement, but it might just be the most appropriate title for the game. The more series creator Ken Levine talks about it, the more it seems to be about everything. It carries some religious themes along with its other big ideas, but Levine says some of those were "highly altered" after he took some time to talk with religious members of the studio.

"It's very important for me to understand a certain aspect of the religiosity of the world," Levine told Official PlayStation Magazine. "That's where I tune in as a non-religious person. ... I had some very valuable conversations. One of the characters in the game was highly altered based upon some very interesting conversations I had with people on the team who came from a very religious background, and I was able to understand they were kind of upset about something."

He says the team doesn't shy away from difficult subjects, but wants to treat them with the proper amount of weight. "I think that we had a similar conversation about Bioshock 1," he said. "It involves infanticide, I don't think there's a larger taboo in the world. There were people who were very nervous about that. We didn't have that because we thought it would be cool. My feeling was if it's not just there to be exploitive, if it's true to the story and you’re telling something that you think is honest, then everything has a place."

Levine says this doesn't mean the story has changed, just refined. "What I said to them was, 'I'm not going to change anything to get your approval, but I think I understand what you're saying and I think I can do something that's going to make the story better, based on what you said.' So I did that, and I'm grateful for them bringing in their perspective. The last thing I wanted to do was change something because it offends somebody, but the thing they pointed out was making it a lesser story."

Editor-In-Chief
From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 21, 2013 8:30 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, BioShock Infinite character 'highly altered' after talking with religious team members.

    BioShock Infinite creator Ken Levine says that he changed the portrayal of a character after speaking with religious team members who had concerns.

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 9:18 AM

      I'm going to take a stab and say he's talking about Father Comstock.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 10:15 AM

        He's talking about one of their "heavy hitters" - the Mecha-Mohammad IIRC.

        • reply
          January 21, 2013 11:47 AM

          Surely the heaviest hitter is the JackHammer-Jew?

          • reply
            January 21, 2013 11:52 AM

            I think the Bodhisattva-Bruiser has them both beat.

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 9:20 AM

      weak

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 10:19 AM

      Well this story would have been a bit more interesting if I knew what the problem the religious people had was, and what he did about it.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 10:24 AM

        ^.This.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 10:25 AM

        Seriously. This screams viral marketing--look at how controversial and edgy we are!

        • reply
          January 21, 2013 10:58 AM

          THIS IS NOT VIRAL MARKETING

          THAT TERM MIGHT BE DUMB BUT PLEASE DO NOT MAKE IT DUMERERRER

          • reply
            January 21, 2013 11:05 AM

            [deleted]

            • reply
              January 21, 2013 11:10 AM

              i will punch your stupid face >:(

              • reply
                January 21, 2013 11:48 AM

                The best viral marketing also has a physical element too!

              • reply
                January 21, 2013 1:13 PM

                I gotta say you are very good at viral marketing!

          • reply
            January 21, 2013 1:45 PM

            Says the person who made pancake in a box go viral.

            • reply
              January 21, 2013 1:50 PM

              it's true. we had an entire whiteboard wall devoted to that endeavor. about 1/3 of it was dedicated to years of earning cred on shacknews so someone would ask me to post a scale image of that box so i could put my dog in it. we made this plan in 2007 which is why i bought the dog.

              i am the master of the long con.

              • reply
                January 21, 2013 1:58 PM

                "I bought the dog and, the dog won."

              • reply
                January 21, 2013 2:04 PM

                lol @ you thinking you have cred on here...

                • reply
                  January 21, 2013 2:05 PM

                  in this subthread it is revealed that you were a means to an end and that end was reddit.

          • reply
            January 21, 2013 1:48 PM

            Oh no, people getting terminology mixed up in a field you work in, this is no different than people calling things "bugs" to programmers when it's clearly not a bug.

            Deal with it.

            • reply
              January 21, 2013 1:54 PM

              you so sassy!

            • reply
              January 21, 2013 3:06 PM

              you want backlash? try telling an entomologist that there's no such thing as bugs, just insects

              • reply
                January 21, 2013 4:36 PM

                or go to a firing range and call everything a 'clip'

                • reply
                  January 21, 2013 7:32 PM

                  make sure your clip is loaded with bullets!

          • reply
            January 21, 2013 4:13 PM

            WE WILL USE THE TERM HOWEVER WE PLEASE

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 10:32 AM

        That would have required journalism

        • reply
          January 21, 2013 10:48 AM

          On Shacknews? Don't be ridiculous.

        • reply
          January 21, 2013 6:41 PM

          A few things.

          First, Ken Levine won't reveal the specific story element he reworked because he doesn't want to spoil anything relate to the story. Second: due to my first point, Levine should have kept his yap shut until AFTER the game's release, at which time he could hold spoiler discussions and dig into the nitty gritty of topics such as this one.

          Third: should Shack have passed on thr story? Maybe; it's empty of any meaning and detail without more specifics. But that's not Shack's fault. Shack was just reporting on something BioShock-related. Most game sites will do and have been doing the same thing.

          • reply
            January 21, 2013 7:28 PM

            Answer to your third point: absolutely yes. The article is nothing other than a copy paste of another publication's article, which is itself just an advertisement for a magazine. The shacknews piece adds nothing to it and on fact has less information than the original article.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 10:51 AM

        "religious people changed your video game. Get angry"

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 11:13 AM

        If you choose Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior at the beginning, when you die you respawn in heaven.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 12:28 PM

        Given that it was a person on his staff, mentioning anything more may have been considered a breech of company privacy/anti-harassment policy.

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 11:03 AM

      I really wish/hope this game had some sort of commentary track. There must be so many interesting decisions in development that I would love to learn about.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 11:08 AM

        Do you know who developed it? A commentary track for this game would run 10 times longer than the actual game.

        • reply
          January 21, 2013 11:11 AM

          if it's anything like bioshock's pre-release videos it will lie about feature and act like the game is genius

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 11:50 AM

      [deleted]

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 1:49 PM

        Yeah; I'm in full-on media blackout on this title, just waiting for reviews to be released.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 2:12 PM

        I'm at a point where I believe that they're purposefully making controversy as a means of getting free attention towards the actual game.

        • reply
          January 21, 2013 2:13 PM

          Which speaks to 2K's marketing spend, apparently.

        • reply
          January 21, 2013 2:13 PM

          Viral marketing, see above.

          • reply
            January 22, 2013 4:29 AM

            Lol didn't read that :/.

        • reply
          January 21, 2013 3:12 PM

          If the purposeful controversies make one think about real-world things that may be part of the intent as well.

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 12:16 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 1:35 PM

      Caving from pressure within is only marginally better than caving from external pressure. You still caved. GGs.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 1:57 PM

        "Something cleaves too close to my own beliefs. Should I take a look at my own life within that context? Nope, just complain till it gets squashed." Granted we don't know all the details, but what a terrible precedent to set.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 3:44 PM

        I doubt that Levine 'caved' at all, given how he handled similar situations in Bioshock 1.

        'I'm not going to change anything to get your approval, but I think I understand what you're saying and I think I can do something that's going to make the story better, based on what you said.'

        If he had said 'well shit, I'll cut that out entirely' - that would be caving. But it sounds more like he met the critics of the original idea and from their discussions - the idea evolved into something more refined. I wouldn't be surprised if the result of these changes is actually better than his original design.

        • reply
          January 21, 2013 5:35 PM

          I've noticed that media can often treat religious issues in a very superficial and stupid way which often seems to come across as being the work of an ignorant atheist.

          Anything which makes religious characters or themes more realistic and not based on caricatures should improve a story. Otherwise you are just creating religious 'straw men' which prevents you from making decent criticisms or comments on the many negative (and some positive) aspects of religious belief and their followers. For example, if you were to have characters based on the Westborough Baptist Church and use that to criticise Christianity then that would be an absurd and ridiculous thing since they don't in any way represent the mainstream of that faith. Likewise characterising all Muslims as wannabe suicide bombers. On the other hand a nuanced criticism of, say the child abuse issues some church institutions have had or the lack of respect for women and sexual minorities in some widely practised faith communities would be done well providing the characters representing those views were not 'straw men' charicatures.

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 1:43 PM

      Will this have TF2 hats? That's all I care about.

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 1:44 PM

      Oh good, I was afraid we were going to make it more than a day without some gaming controversy from happening..

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 2:47 PM

      This does not bode well.

      • reply
        January 21, 2013 3:09 PM

        "The last thing I wanted to do was change something because it offends somebody, but the thing they pointed out was making it a lesser story."

        Doesn't seem like that big of deal. Not even sure why he went public with it.

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 3:00 PM

      Nuance. Something often lost in the way articles are read on the internet.

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 4:50 PM

      Vague Ken Levine is vague.

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 5:54 PM

      Please, keep being interested in our game!11!%?

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 8:32 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      January 21, 2013 8:39 PM

      I'm wondering if this is related to the departure of a those Irrational employees a few months back. Was it ever revealed why they left?

    • reply
      January 24, 2013 10:28 AM

      Okay. This article tells us a whole lot of nothing, really. "I changed something in a game after considering religion" seems fairly innocuous.

    • reply
      April 11, 2013 5:31 AM

      Looking to get this game for free, Download from -> Mygame9.com || Looking to get this game for free, Download from -> Mygame9.com

Hello, Meet Lola