BioShock Infinite might be titled after his last hit, but director Ken Levine says the highly anticipated third game in the series isn’t like any videogame he’s ever written.
What sets Infinite apart from Levine’s previous work, he says, are its two main characters. Booker and Elizabeth, introduced in the game’s thrill-ride E3 Expo demo, stick together as a pair for much of the game, constantly talking to each other as unbelievable things go on around them.
That back-and-forth requires a more human touch than Levine’s previous game narratives. The original BioShock thrilled gamers with a gripping story about genetic horrors in an underwater city called Rapture, but the madness unfolded entirely in monologues delivered to the mute player, whether issuing from the mouths of other characters or found in “audio diaries” scattered around the destroyed world.
At a panel last Saturday at Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Levine introduced his secret weapons for BioShock Infinite, set in the xenophobia-riddled air city of Columbia. He is working alongside veteran voice actors Troy Baker and Courtnee Draper to bring a heightened level of collaboration to the process. The three go into the studio together, talk about scenes, improvise new lines, challenge each other to find the perfect read — and scrap what doesn’t feel right.
“When I work with (graphic) artists, they would do cool stuff and I’d be inspired to go write something,” Levine said in an interview prior to his panel. “Now I have actors, as well, to do that with…. I’ll write a new line based off the emotion that they brought honestly to the portrayal.”
It’s a big change for the veteran game designer, who’s worked with actors over the phone for other projects. “It’s always, like, here’s the script,” he says of previous games. “These guys are actually out spending time with me, and we’re working together as a team.”
The Genius and the Novice
Levine, Draper and Baker are still deep in the recording process for BioShock Infinite, which 2K Games plans to release sometime in 2012 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
The days of voice actors showing up and reading their lines off a script are over, says videogame veteran Baker, whose major game roles include Snow in Final Fantasy XIII and Two-Face in the upcoming Batman: Arkham City.
“The bar has been raised,” Baker says. “Gamers expect a higher performance. You’ve got games now … that are bringing in writers [and] actual talent directors and they know they have to deliver a dramatic and cinematic performance.”
‘Troy and I talk in very gamey-gamey terms.’
“I’ve never worked on something with such a dynamic creative process,” says Draper, whose TV credits include Ghost Whisperer and CSI: Miami. “There isn’t always a willingness for someone to bring something new and have a director or writer take that and rework it.”
Levine calls Baker and Draper “the genius and the novice.” While both are veteran actors, Baker has performed in many games and Draper in almost none. Levine sees these two extremes as a potent mix.
“A lot of times, Troy and I will turn to each other and talk in very gamey-gamey terms,” Levine says. “The advantage of having Courtney not having a ton of that is that she doesn’t bring any preconceptions about what a ‘game performance’ is.”
The floating city of Columbia, an American utopia that has collapsed into xenophobia, provides the backdrop for BioShock Infinite.
Image courtesy Irrational GamesAt the PAX panel, Levine showed several videos taken during the voiceover sessions for the BioShock Infinite demo. The most striking moment showed Draper struggling to nail a key scene: Elizabeth uses her unexplained power to open a massive “tear” between two dimensions, placing the pair in mortal danger.
Having Baker in the studio proved to be the thing that did the trick: Improvising some lines as Booker, the actor started “berating” his partner to get her to the right emotional state.
“The moment that was most inspiring to me was where Troy was shouting at Courtnee,” Levine said. “And that was because Courtnee and I both asked him to do that. He was very brave and collaborative to do that.
“There was a moment where I was ready to stop the scene. [But] these two as actors, because they were in the room with me, Troy actually said, ‘No no no, she’s got it.’ And that was an amazing moment for me, because that was one actor understanding another actor’s process and I completely missed it. I was not seeing her getting there.
“Troy as an actor understood that … she was right on that verge of getting that. You can’t get that happening unless you’re spending time together and you’re building up trust together. Usually in voice acting, you aren’t even in the same room,” Levine said.
‘It Spoils Us’
BioShock Infinite is an action game, so Levine knows he can’t overload players with storyline sequences.
“Once I’ve locked the player into place, I can’t write a page of dialog,” he says. “That’s the challenge — not so much writing the lines, but the economy we have to work with.” With only seconds to spare before the player loses interest, Booker and Elizabeth must pack a lot of emotion into small chunks of dialog. This presents a problem, Levine says, when one is trying to get voice actors to truly emote.
“The reason [the tear] was such a hard scene is that in a movie, you’d be able to write a lot of dialog to get [an actor] to that point,” he says. “We don’t have that fucking kind of time.”
“Three lines,” interjects Draper.
‘I’ll write a line and they’ll try to say it and be like, “Dude, this sounds ridiculous.”‘
With the player’s attention span at a premium, Levine is hardly fastidious about keeping his scenes exactly the way he wrote them.
“If you’re lucky enough to have collaborators like this, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to let go,” said Levine. “I’ll write a line and they’ll try to say it and be like, ‘Dude, this sounds ridiculous.’ We have to keep refining it, finding something that’s emotionally truthful.”
Baker called the deeply collaborative nature of the BioShock Infinite recordings an actor’s dream gig.
“There are times when it’s like, ‘We need to sit and camp on this line and this specific scene because we know we don’t have it ironed out yet,'” he said. “And it spoils us, because then you go back into the status quo gigs, and it’s like, ‘This isn’t as fun.'”
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