Ken Levin spoke about the creation of the plot and the motives that he was guided by when writing a series of Bioshock
The creator of Bioshock Ken Levin shares the process of creating the plot and the motives that he was guided by when writing his beloved fans of the series.
Bioshock is known for its unique plot, in which the topics of class, history and uncontrolled tyranny in a fictional underwater city, full of beauty art deco are intertwined. But how exactly this classic story appeared?
In a recent interview with Colin Moriand Symbols, the creator of Bioshock Ken Levin shared some interesting information about his main motives when creating games. Levin affects topics such as understanding the prospects from the point of view of the villain, along with the allegations that everything should always be in the service of the characters.
Even if you take the most terrible villain, he will be the hero of his own story. I do not take up the matter with the ax. If you are going to write characters, you cannot condemn them. Even if you write the most evil man in the universe, he is the hero of his own history. This does not mean that they are heroes – they simply perceive themselves as a hero of their history. I think that if you do not try to understand where the bad results come from, especially in yourself, then you can get into many bad results. So I like to write stories. I don’t really like writing about villains. I don’t know what a villain is. I know that there are people who eventually commit villainous acts, but I wonder how they came to this. You want to understand whether you can predict where society is going or where people are going, because you know where they were.
Further, Levin talks about how his acquaintance has a business that uses machine learning to predict possible terrorist attacks, and compares the process of constant appeal to the past and establish patterns with its type of narrative. Levin says that he was a big fan of history and used all his hobbies to help direct the plot of Bioshock.
You can predict the future with a high degree of probability, if you look at the past. Therefore, I think that our games have become more believable than some other projects, because I spent a lot of time, thinking about the past and dissecting it. I read a lot on history, and I think that this is also the reason why our games are slightly different. I read a lot of social history and military history. These are all my unusual and strange (Nerd) hobbies gathered together. I’m not trying to say something, I just ask: "What I really know something about" And how can I use it to tell a cool story?. In the end, all history, architecture, art. All this should serve people, characters. The characters are all. And tell steep stories.