Bioshock infinite big daddy

Bioshock infinite big daddy - The trailer opens with a submerged Big Daddy, so we think: "What? BioShock 3." And then the trailer gets all, "You've been Punk'd!" When Irrational Games revealed Bioshock Infinite (formally Project Icarus) through their incredible announcement trailer, Bioshock fans from around the world were left with a lot of questions, and we recently got the answer to one of the large looming questions; “was that a Big Daddy”? Here’s what we heard, what we hope, and what we extrapolated from the 40 minute show.



Irrational has given a name to the giant enemy seen in the recent BioShock: Infinite reveal: he’s called Handyman. Ken Levine, Irrational Games’ creative director and founding member, gave us a few answers in episode 7 of Irrational Behavior, their own internal podcast. Yes, his name is Alpha, and he will clobber your rigatoni.

“I think with the original Handyman, there were claws,” said concept artist Rob Waters.

“He looked like he was gonna come hug you instead of do any damage to you”, stated Ken “he was from an Italian kids’ menu”, but we never really got a good glimpse at him. The team decided early on for a full view of Alpha, or “handyman” as they playfully call him, but they knew it would seem ridiculous and over the top.

Explaining the reason for working the monster’s hands into something more human, lead artist Shawn Robertson said the claws were simply implausible. The opera singer (who I originally thought was Andrew Ryan) was supposed to have two mouths, and the music they had picked was changed from Pagliacci to Grand Old Flag to give it a more Americana feel. Ken [Levine, creative designer] said that he was from an Italian kids’ menu.”

Levine’s problem was a gameplay thing,” said art director Nate Wells. “Here’s a classic case of a trailer causing one choice to be made which then has repercussions in the game. It actually turns out to be a really good thing.

After a few choices for the model the decision was made to go with the worlds fair version because it looked like a city (to help dupe us into thinking it was Rapture) and because it had a date on it. Lots of different models were used for the backdrop of the World’s Fair in the background of the aquarium to make it look like a cityscape.

In addition, the team said hands are more “fundamentally scary” than claws, and that using the porcelain hands you saw in the trailer adds a “humanity” to the character. They also were going to have Alpha cry in the trailer but decided to cut it after many, many attempts. Ken said “There’s something about men crying that’s uncomfortable”.

Alpha’s hands? Yeah, they were originally crab claws
The designers mused how you were going to fight it out with some sort of crab-like Frankenstein at first, but then they realized that crab claws are for grabbing, not throwing you into a tank and then punching you.

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