Excelsior

Excelsior is the tenth and last of the collectible Golden Film Reels, featuring director's commentary with Ken Levine and Shawn Robertson, hosted by Geoff Keighley. The Golden Film Reels are exclusive to the remastered version of BioShock, part of BioShock: The Collection.
==Location==
By the U-Invent machine in the Special Exhibit Entry before the elevator in the Proving Grounds.
==Transcript==
Finding the film reel in-game gives the following warning: SPOILER WARNING: The commentary contains in-depth discussion of plot details, including the ending. First-time players may wish to complete the game before viewing.
The host is Geoff Keighley.
Ken Levine's given credits are: Creative Director: System Shock 2, BioShock, BioShock, BioShock Infinite.
Shawn Robertson's given credits are: Animation Lead / Director: BioShock, BioShock Infinite.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Player watches an instruction film for Incinerate! at a fallen Gatherer's Garden machine in the Eternal Flame Crematorium in the Medical Pavilion; player fights Splicers with the Shotgun in the Dental Services Area in the Medical Pavilion; player uses Telekinesis to throw a grenade back at a Nitro Splicer in Emergency Access in the Medical Pavilion; player shocks a Security Bot with Electro Bolt and shoots it with the Pistol on the ground floor of the Eternal Flame Crematorium in the Medical Pavilion; player encounters the first Little Sister interaction in the Surgery Lounge in the Medical Pavilion; various "Would You Kindly" flashback scenes triggered in Rapture Central Control during the encounter with Andrew Ryan]
KEIGHLEY: The illusion of choice is a thinly veiled dynamic that drives many single player gaming experiences. And while many developers spend a lot of time trying to convince players that choice is real and authentic in their games, the truth more often is that choice is a superficial concept in gaming narrative. BioShock confronted this idea head on. Searing into our minds an innocuous three word phrase with an unforgettable new meaning, "Would You Kindly."
[TITLE SCREEN: IMAGINING BIOSHOCK - EXCELSIOR - HOSTED BY GEOFF KEIGHLEY]
KEIGHLEY: Of course one of the most memorable moments in the game is the "Would You Kindly" phrase and the reveal of, uh, you know how that's been motivating the player throughout the entire game. Uh, it's still to me one of the, you know, most classic kind of narrative moments in games in the past decade. What's interesting about that phrase is that it, it didn't always start like that. Can you tell us sort of about the evolution of sort of the, you know, the conditioning of the player and there was once, "Excelsior" was the phrase once?
LEVINE: Yeah this is, [laughs] I'm trying to recall, um, some of this. So I, we had the idea like 'cause we had the Andrew Ryan scene very early. We knew sort of all the events that would happen. W-, there were phrases before there was "Would You Kindly." The notion existed and what it meant and what it was, but we didn't actually have the phrase "Would You Kindly" until later. So we had a bunch of terms we threw in there. 'Cause and like "Excelsior" was it for one point. That's probably 'cause of my, my Stan Lee fanboyism.
KEIGHLEY: Was that like so throughout the game it would have been like "Excelsior!"?
ROBERTSON: Just randomly say that.
LEVINE: There are, there are some things when you're making games you just sort of throw in as like we need something, we need something here...
ROBERTSON: Sounds cool in the comics there...
KEIGHLEY: "Why don't you head over there Excelsior!"
LEVINE: And then it sits there for a year and then all of a sudden you kind of forget it's not good, right? And then until somebody comes along and says "dude."
KEIGHLEY: Seriously?
ROBERTSON: Yeah, or you meant it to be like a stub-in.
LEVINE: Right.
KEIGHLEY: Yeah.
ROBERTSON: You never meant it to actually gain traction and then you're like, "oh crap."
KEIGHLEY: But that sense of, of some phrase or word being repeated throughout the game that you wouldn't really realize its meaning until later, that was there very early on.
LEVINE: Yes, yeah, yeah, the fact that you would have something that seemed like a non-thing and then came back at you like a freight train later on was always there, was there from pretty early.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Player encounters Andrew Ryan at his office in Rapture Central Control, player follows Ryan's commands, Andrew Ryan: "Sit, would you kindly. Stand, would you kindly. Run. Stop! Turn. A man chooses. A slave obeys."]
ROBERTSON: So that phrase evolved, but talk about that id-, you know, the sort of meta-narrative of, you know, being in a game thinking that you have a sense of choice and making these decisions, but then obviously realizing that the, you know, the player ultimately didn't have choice or was conditioned in a way that they would react to that. Uh, that was, you know, sort of a, sort of a new idea for a game. Where did that come from on your side Ken? I mean was-was there sort of a deeper, sort of, uh, you know, meaning behind it?
LEVINE: No look, I think I-I was always interested in the concept. You know whether it's, you know, Oedipus, not to get too pointy-headed here but, Oedipus sort of thinking he has, "Oh, I'm gonna leave, you know, this city and go to another city 'cause there's been this prophecy about me and I'm gonna avoid my fate and I'm in complete control" then finding out he's not in control at all. To the Manchurian Candidate which is a story I love about, you know, somebody who, who you find out is just a puppet, you know, living a life of a man and Fight Club. You know, I always loved those kind of stories about who am I and what is my agency in this world because look, we struggle. I think everybody struggles with that. You know, how much, how much do we really have control over and how much is, you know, our boss, our parents, or whatever telling us what to do? So, uh, that seemed like a natural thing for a story and because it came from movies, that idea a lot and plays.
KEIGHLEY: Yeah.
LEVINE: I-I don't think it was very, it was a lot of f-, it hadn't been explored in games really. And games are particularly interesting 'cause games...
KEIGHLEY: You feel like you, you are interacting with choice yeah.
LEVINE: Agency, yeah. And you're really being, you know, most games, especially at the time, you're really just being railroaded down a corridor. It's very easy to underestimate gamers and I think probably I did a little my own underestimation there that they would, it would be a little too pointy-headed for people. But people seemed to really engage, 'cause probably 'cause because it spoke to an experience they had. A struggle as a gamer they've always had which is like "I want to control but how much control do I really have in this game?"
KEIGHLEY: Uh-huh, true and Shawn, I mean, it was also something that, you know, was a great surprise when you played through the game, I'm sure even for people on the team. Did everyone know that when Ken was sort of doing it or did, it was revealed as people played through it?
ROBERTSON: I think, I mean, at-at some point the-the entire team knew. Uh, it wasn't, um, it was something that was talked about, uh, with a smaller group before, you know, it was bought to the entire team. Early on when you, when you heard the idea and you, you just kinda clicks, [snaps] right. You're like, okay, like I totally get this. So like it's...
LEVINE: Did people get it? I seem to remember these few people looking at me like ah, I was like a luna-lunatic. 'Cause it seems as though it was not forever...
ROBERTSON: It's not maybe not the specifics and maybe it-it's the Excelsior or you're maybe talking about the Excelsior time...
LEVINE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
ROBERTSON: ...but the idea that you don't really have choice and exactly like you said. You, you played through how many video games and everybody's game is gonna end the same way. You're gonna kill these people, you're gonna pass through these checkpoints and, you think you have a choice, but, ultimately, the only real choice is stop playing the game. So, the, the idea that we're kind of like taking that on resonated. Now the actual, like is it "Excelsior", or is it the Latin phrase "Over God", or if it's "Would You Kindly"...
LEVINE: See, here's how I remember it. And I could, no I could be, I could be wrong.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
LEVINE: I can remember being so surprised by the outside reaction because I remember the internal reaction being completely nobody connected or engaged to it. I mean, we worked on it.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
LEVINE: And so I was kinda surprised by the outside reaction because I kinda thought it was like, you know, as I said, it's a bit academic, right?
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
LEVINE: And if I look at it, it could also be a function of...
ROBERTSON: We're playing it close to the vest.
LEVINE: I could be, I could be misremembering it. Or it could also be a function of nobody making the game had the experience of playing it through and getting to that moment.
ROBERTSON: Yeah so I mean you're...yeah.
KEIGHLEY: So I mean it was like revealed to them in advance of really playing it so it wasn't that surprise.
LEVINE: They had seen it in all its really half-assed st-, you know development stages.
ROBERTSON: Well and, and out of order.
LEVINE: Yeah out of order and all that.
ROBERTSON: And it's not really something you can playtest over an afternoon 'cause it takes a little while to get to that point.
KEIGHLEY: You lack, you need to lack the knowledge about what the game is...
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
KEIGHLEY: ...to be able to sort of to have that, um, experience all the way through. Uh, I know you guys have talked about, uh you know, the idea of Atlas, the you know, the voice actor changing and it was, I guess, very important that the, you nailed that actor right? And you, you trusted that actor until there was sort of the re-, the Fontaine reveal and sort of understanding that.
LEVINE: Yes trust was everything there, right. And so, there was something about either the actor or the writing or the accent that just m-, people immediately said this guy's no good.
ROBERTSON: Right.
LEVINE: When the, the first Atlas we had.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Player steps out in the Bathysphere Station as Atlas talks on the radio in Welcome to Rapture, the shutters over the windows slide down to reveal a view of the city]
LEVINE: Because you have to trust this guy and if, if you know there's no trust there's no you know, there's no punch in the gut. I think we really focused on making him have personal stakes in the story as well, that he had his family trapped. You know of course it was all fiction, right. But his fam-, he had, he had, he had skin in the game. He w-, you know, he sort of spoke to you as friend and especially cause the whole world was so hostile to you. I think it took a while to get that exactly right.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Player takes the elevator to the upper floors of the Atrium in Welcome to Rapture as Atlas talks on the radio, Alas: "Listen, I've got a family. I need to get them out of here. But the Splicers have cut me off from them. If you can reach them in Neptune's Bounty then maybe, just maybe. I know you must feel like the unluckiest man in the world right now but you're the only hope I'll ever see my wife and child again."]
KEIGHLEY: Shawn, what do you hope is the kind of lasting legacy of BioShock? You know, 10 years and it's a lot of things you guys were doing, uh you know or have sort of been become common now right? With you know, with upgrades and moral choices in games and what not.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
KEIGHLEY: But it was really pioneering work, um, a decade ago. When you reflect on it, what do you, what do you hope people remember the game for sort of pushing forward?
ROBERTSON: For me, it's, it's telling a story with the medium and how we used everything available to us to tell that story.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Player looks at a corpse of a Rosie slumped under debris in the Rapture Metro station in Neptune's Bounty; player follows a Bouncer and Little Sister pair heading towards the Eternal Flame Crematorium in the Medical Pavilion]
ROBERTSON: Um, we used the environment to set up the back story of Rapture and really create a sense of space which I think is vitally important to getting the players to trust that you know, to sit down and kind of like just be in the space and, and let these things happen. You know, even uh, even the radio logs, um, the rudimentary animation that we had at the time. I mean we really sat down with the tools that we had and at our disposal and tried to tell a meaningful story. Maybe not meaningful, but something that would be memorable to people that they could away and like you said earlier, have that water cooler moment where they're excited enough to, to talk about it after they've put the controller down. So for me, I-I think the legacy is that, um, it was a story well told.
LEVINE: For me it was a sense of place. Being like that Rapture's a real thing even though it's not. You know, it's actually a very crude, you know the ti-, from the time, you know it will always be a crude bunch of polygons and texture maps. Yeah it's only, the original game is only in 720 I think. And I played a lot of it when we were testing on a, on a 14 inch like you know, uh, SD television.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Player sees Sander Cohen come down the stairs after completing Cohen's Quadtych in Fort Frolic; player watches Brigid Tenenbaum silhouetted in the window in Tenenbaum's Sanctuary in Olympus Heights; player walks into the entrance to the Lower Wharf in Neptune's Bounty; opening scene, Jack smokes a cigarette on an airplane while opening a wallet with photographs]
LEVINE: That it still felt like a sense of place and the music and the, and the characters. That it's a real place and I think that my memories of the BioShock game series is that I take away that Rapture's a real place and Elizabeth's a real person. Those are the two sort of big things that stick with me with those two games. And that's sort of what I'll always, you know, carry forward with me in my life.
KEIGHLEY: BioShock is, you know, it's a place, but as we saw with Infinite, I mean it's an idea, and it's a sort of a type of game I think a lot of people say. Like oh this is a, you know, like a type of experience. Um, when you think about, you know, your career, where you guys wanna go, I mean do you, that idea of those types of games. Do you miss it now that you've sort of moved on to other things now or do you feel like it's sort of you've closed that chapter?
ROBERTSON: I mean it's always a part of what you do, like System Shock 2 was a part of BioShock. There was, but it, it wasn't System Shock 2, it was, it was a gr-, you know, you're growing past that and trying out new things. Uh, I think BioShock and BioShock Infinite and even going back to SWAT 4, those will always be a part of my experience as a game developer and, and what we're trying to do with the medium. So I don't think it's something that you just draw a line and say, you know, we'll never return 'cause there's always lessons that you can learn and things that you bring with you to the, to the next project that you're working on.
LEVINE: I-I don't think the new game is gonna, like people like, they're not gonna be surprised that it's a, this new game is a new game from us. They're gonna see a lot of what we had done in before in terms of world-building and aspects of storytelling. Um, the goal is to sort of, you know, move away from the you really have no choice kind of, kind of thing. And that's a very, very, very, very hard problem which we've spent years working on. But, we're building upon a foundation of stuff we've done before, um, just trying to go in a different direction with it, but, it's, it's, it's always gonna be part of our DNA.
[SCENE OVERLAY: Player takes the Bathysphere from the Lighthouse into the descent to Rapture, a projector plays Ryan's narration: "A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."]
==Behind the Scenes==
*An Excelsior reference still remains in the game in a poster for Excelsior Elevator Repair.
Category:Golden Film Reels