Those who’ve watched the E3 2011 gameplay video for Irrational Games’ BioShock Infinite will remember the horrifying robot thing called the Songbird, which has an abusive passive-aggressive relationship with the psychic Elizabeth.
According to series creator Ken Levine, the Songbird was a product of him going back to the drawing board to creating a new monster that had a distinctly different feel than the original BioShock’s Big Daddies.
”Basically he’s a bit of a boogeyman in Columbia,” Levine described of the monstrous, wailing creation. ”It’s what parents tell their kids to scare them and make sure they eat their vegetables at night.”
Levin wants gamers to be afraid of meeting up with Songbird, stating, ”They’re aware of his presence and there’s a sense that if you’re not necessarily toeing the party line of the founders that he might be something that you might encounter him in a way you might not want to.”
The Songbird acts very much like a jealous lover, and will stop at nothing to keep Elizabeth with it - always. Levine is careful to make sure that Songbird has nuanes to its character.
”When (people see) Songbird and Elizabeth they understand there is some subtlety in that relationship, there’s some complexity to that relationship. It doesn’t necessarily require words. The goal is to get across that relationship without them sitting down and having coffee and discussing it.” Levine then added, ”A friend once said to me that everybody is the hero of their own story. I think there’s nobody if you ask them would say ‘oh I’m the bad guy here’. I don’t want to think that way because that inhibits you from writing characters with an internal monologue that makes them noble.”
BioShock Infinite will be launching sometime in 2012 for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
