User:Masem/Elizabeth

Elizabeth
BioShock character
First game	BioShock Infinite
Created by	Ken Levine

Elizabeth is a character from the 2013 video game BioShock Infinite developed by Irrational Games. She is a non-player character that has been trapped aboard the floating air-city of Columbia in the game's present of 1912. She joins the player-character, Booker DeWitt, as a companion for the rest of the game once she is rescued from imprisonment. She is shown to be intelligence and adept, and has the ability to open tears in the space-time continuum that plague Columbia. Her imprisonment has been watched over by a large bird-like robotic creature called Songbird, which chases down Elizabeth and Booker once she is freed.

Elizabeth was a core game concept of BioShock Infinite, with Irrational's creative director, Ken Levine, wanting to create a near human-like character along the lines of Alyx Vance from the Half-Life series. Extensive work was done on her artificial intelligence to interact with many of the sets around Columbia, and to assist the player in combat by scouring the area for health and ammunition. Levine did not want the task of protecting Elizabeth to become like an escort mission, and tasked his team to make sure Elizabeth could be an active participant in battles.

Elizabeth is voiced by actress Courtnee Draper. Levine took the unorthodox approach of developing the game's story in a recording studio with Draper and Troy Baker, the voice actor for Booker. The three were able to develop more convincing stories and performances through this collaboration.

Description

At the start of BioShock Infinite, taking place in 1912, Elizabeth is a 19 year old woman who is imprisoned aboard the floating city of Columbia. She is being held by her purported father, Zachery Hale Comstock, the founder of Columbia and a highly religious man who considers Elizabeth to be his "Lamb" to lead Columbia to cleanse the world below in the future. Elizabeth is held in a statue resembling the female personification of the United States in luxury quarters, unaware that she has been monitored for all these years. Her time alone has allowed her to become well-read, artistic, and adept at skills like cryptography and lock-picking. She also is able to open tears in the fabric of space-time throughout Columbia to other realities, such as Paris in the 1980s, though does not understand this power, thinking it of some type of wish-fulfillment. Her only clue to her past is a missing finger, upon which she wears a thimble to cover.

Her imprisonment is monitored by the large bird-like robot, Songbird. Elizabeth has come to see Songbird as both friend and warden during her time. Songbird is programmed to feel jealously, like that of an ex-boyfriend, should Elizabeth try to escape.

When Booker arrives in Columbia, he makes his way to the statue and discovers Elizabeth's quarters within the statue, along with an immense device called the Siphon with some unknown purpose. He provides Elizabeth the means to go free, and they escape as Songbird attacks the statue, destroying part of it. Elizabeth enjoys her freedom for the first time, but when Comstock sends forces to stop their escape, she realizes Booker is a dangerous man, though stays by his side as he has promised to take her to Paris once they escape. When they reach an airship, Booker directs it to New York City, where he has been instructed to return Elizabeth, causing her to knock him out and temporarily run away. She soon comes to accept him, and works alongside as they continue to battle the forces of Columbia.

As the duo progresses, Elizabeth finds that her ability to open tears has become more pronounced, and is able to help Booker by bringing into reality elements to aid in battle. She also finds they can step through tears into alternate realities, though the effect this has on others, nosebleed and dementia, frightens Elizabeth. After finally recovering the airship, they are attacked by Songbird once again. The two travel to Comstock's mansion to disable the creature to allow their escape. As they approach the mansion, they learn that Elizabeth is Comstock's illegitimate child whom he needed to create a heir for his vision,.

En route, Songbird corners them, and Elizabeth allows herself to be willing taken by the creature to save Booker's life. Booker eventually arrives at the mansion, but traveling through a tear, encounters a much older Elizabeth, following in Comstock's vision and leading Columbia on an attack on New York City. She provides him with the means to control Songbird and sends him back to the past, telling him to find a way to prevent this future from happening. Back in 1912, Booker saves Elizabeth from Comstock's scientists who were using a smaller version of the Siphon to control Elizabeth's powers. They make for Comstock's private airship and corner him. Comstock asserts that Booker knows about Elizabeth's missing finger, but Booker, angered by this, kills him. Recognizing her full powers are subdued by the larger Siphon in the statue, the two control Songbird to destroy it to try to understand the truth.

Freely able to use her powers, Elizabeth shows to Booker that there are multiple realities, all split off from a common point, where Booker was to be baptized to wash away the sins committed during the Wounded Knee Massacre. In one reality, Booker accepted the baptism, and became a born again man - turning into the man known as Comstock. In another, Booker ran away and became a bitter person. Elizabeth shows him that Booker had sold his infant daughter Anna to an agent of Comstock that had crossed to his universe to pay off his debts; Elizabeth reveals she is Anna. When Comstock tried to return to his universe with Anna, Booker had a change of heart and tried to stop them, but was too late, with the effect of Anna's finger being severed by the closing tear.

Booker believes he can stop Comstock, but Elizabeth, aware of all the other realities, states that any attempt he may make would simply create another reality where the same events occur. Instead, the only way to stop this is to affect his choice at the baptism. Taking him back to this point, Elizabeth is joined by several other Elizabeths from other realities who together drown Booker, taking the choice away from him. The Elizabeths from the other realities disappear one by one until only one remains, standing before a door by herself.

Concept and creation

In the early development of Infinite, Elizabeth was designed to be more of a useful companion than a partner within the game; she would be able to perform tasks like picking locks that the player could not, but otherwise lacked a significant emotional bond. The inclusion of Elizabeth also served to better extend Irrational's vision of storytelling first-person shooters and to avoid other tropes used in similar games that have become "long in the tooth" such as receiving information over a radio or from someone on the opposite side of a window; according to Levine, having Elizabeth as a person working aside the player-characters helps to make the game "feel more grounded in humanity".

After showcasing the game at the 2011 E3 Convention, the Irrational team saw players react favorably to Elizabeth, and started to make her the player's partner for the game, expanding her abilities to accommodate this. This approach to Elizabeth was inspired by the character of Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2, a central element and an "emotional driver" to the game's story. Irrational wanted to expand on that concept, demonstrating how such a character would interact with talkative player-character, compared to the silent Gordon Freeman, and creating further emotional ties between the two characters. Levine also considered the characterization of the player-character Monkey and his non-playable companion Trip in the game, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, as inspiration towards the story of Booker and Elizabeth. The plot revolves around changes that Elizabeth, Booker, and their relationship undergo as the player explores deeper into Columbia.

In terms of gameplay, Irrational gave Elizabeth the tear-opening powers that can be used in conjunction with Booker's to achieve more impressive results in combat. Earlier gameplay videos shown Elizabeth possessing powers similar to Vigors which were purposely different from Booker's, but ultimately dropped these elements. Irregardless, the developers wanted to avoid giving Elizabeth any of the same abilities that the player does; they rejected letting her use a gun, for example, as this would take away from the player's role in defeating the enemy. Instead, they gave Elizabeth additional abilities, such as being able to scrounge and toss supplies of ammunition and Salts to Booker, or to decode ciphers hidden around Columbia with codes found by Booker, that helped to connect her more emotionally to the player.

Elizabeth's character, particularly her relationship to her captor, the Songbird, is based on his experience with a former female companion that Levine had; she had told Levine that her previous relationship was abusive, but she would otherwise "make excuses for him [her former friend], all the time" and ultimately returned back to him. Levine had altered this in Infinite, that while creating the abusive relation between Elizabeth and Songbird, Elizabeth desired to escape that, even if death was the only option; at one point in the game's preview material, Elizabeth is shown wrapping Booker's hands around her neck and convincing him to kill her while Songbird attempts to break into the building that have secured themselves into. In response to discussions on Internet forums regarding the size and exposed nature of Elizabeth's breasts, Levine noted that part of their design for Elizabeth and her costume was to be able to recognize her from a distance given the open-space nature of the game and limited resolution. Levine stated that her costume is inspired by that of superheroes, using a simple color scheme that would help her to stand out in the colorful and complex landscapes.

The programming of the artificial intelligence for Elizabeth was considered a major technical challenge for Irrational, as they desired to give her as much near-human behavior in contrast to most other games where such companions are either highly scripted or given relatively simplistic pragmas to follow, and had little previous examples from other games to build on; Levine cited Half-Life 2's Alyx as the last "great AI companion". Irrational had previously developed AI routines for the Big Daddies and Little Sisters in BioShock that would allow them to roam and interact with the environment if otherwise left alone by the player; these routines were the basis of building out improved behavior for Elizabeth. The developers had spent much time improving these routines to give Elizabeth her own tendencies to look and move around as a real actor instead of a robotic non-player character, as to re-enforce her central role to the player. To this, Levine explained that they looked to the banter between the main characters in the Uncharted series by Naughty Dog. Levine praised the work that Naughty Dog had done, and felt he would be able to create the same with a more somber period piece. Some of Elizabeth's responses will be driven by a player's action (such as the aforementioned horse recovery scene), but other times, Elizabeth's actions will be on her own in response to the environment. Much of Columbia was seeded "room by room" with elements that Elizabeth will be interested in, comment on, and react to. However, as for the player not missing these elements, such actions would only be performed based on a number of factors, including whether the player was near and looking at Elizabeth, and the current tension of the game. This apparent curiosity serendipitously worked with Elizabeth's story, who after having been locked up for twelve years would be eager to see new things. Elizabeth's AI also monitors and tracks the player's behavior over time, such that the AI will attempt to predict when the player is moving and keep Elizabeth out of the line of fire. Programming Elizabeth's AI was a significant challenge to the Irrational team, and at several points during development the suggestion of cutting her from the game was brought up. Levine countered these suggestions, insisting on keeping her in the game. To manage this, a multidisciplinary subgroup called the "Liz Squad" reviewed the levels designed by others to assure that the presence of Elizabeth was accounted for across the game and to avoid situations where the level would delegate the character to simply hiding in a closet. Levine stated that the game was delay from an original March 2012 release date primarily to make sure that Elizabeth achieved the "emotional goal" they had set out in creating her.

Elizabeth's voice is provided by actress Courtnee Draper, who had not worked in the video game field prior, and worked alongside actor Troy Baker, who provides the voice for Booker. Draper and Baker's participation in the development process was atypical for most video games; instead of just coming in to record their lines, Levine considered them as collaborators on the story development process. The three spent a significant amount of time in the recording studio, improvising scenes and working on repeated recordings to try to find the right tone to present scripted dialog; such changes were then reflected appropriately in the game's story and dialog. Levine favorably contrasted Baker and Draper as "the genius and the novice" respectively; Baker had several previous roles in video game voice-overs, while Draper had none; the different levels of experience between the two helped to tighten the performances, the combination a "potent mix" according to Levine. Levine explained one case where Draper was struggling to give a convincing tearful performance when Elizabeth is having difficulty using her powers. Both Draper and Levine believed it would be helpful to have Baker provide Booker's loud, berating dialog alongside Draper to help Draper find the right emotional response to deliver for the scene. In addition to providing lines, Draper sang a version of the song "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" with backing guitar provided by Baker that was featured in one of the game's trailers and was included as a mood-setting scene within the game and on the game's soundtrack. While Levine had intended to use Draper for the vocals, Baker's role was happenstance; as Levine was working with Draper in the recording of the song, Baker offered up his abilities on the guitar, and the group spent several hours to exact the appropriate tone of the song. Given the opportunity for a broadcast trailer, Levine wanted to create a mood piece, and centered the trailer around desolation of the workers in the factories of Columbia in the Finkton district, providing the basis for the creation of the Vox Populi.

Elizabeth's movements were created through motion capture, with Heather Gordon as the performer. For publicity and marketing, Irrational hired Anna "Ormeli" Moleva, a Russian cosplayer that had earlier attracted attention for her recreation of Elizabeth back in September 2011 from the game's original preview videos.