BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea demands 'thoughtful' approach while playing as Elizabeth

BioShock Infinite DLC "Burial at Sea" will let players play as Elizabeth for the first time. But what does that mean? How will that work?

"Liz is such a different character to Booker, and if we were to just put Booker in a dress, then that would be the most awful betrayal of what we're doing for Liz, and players would just feel like it was a cheap way out, and that's not something that we want to do," level designer Amanda Jeffrey said. Instead, playing as Elizabeth will require being "much more thoughtful."

"I think, we would be betraying her character again if suddenly she's got these huge biceps and she's running around the place with a ginormous machine gun," Jeffrey told IGN. "She needs to be kind of thinking in a roundabout way of how to deal with her enemies. And, sometimes, that might mean completely bypassing the enemy entirely, because she doesn't need to... There's all of these different kinds of ways of being more thoughtful, and--I hesitate to say it--almost more feminine way of approaching a problem."

Tears will serve as a key differentiator between Elizabeth and Booker. Jeffrey admits that the team is still "trying to work out exactly how extensive Liz's tear abilities will be," noting that she must be far more powerful than in the main game, but at the same time, it can't result in gameplay that's too easy for the player. The mechanics also can't be too different from the main game. "We don't have enough time to make an entirely new game. We're building on an existing set of systems and all the rest of it," Jeffrey admits.

Another question that remains: is this a continuation of BioShock Infinite? Is it canonical? Is this the same Elizabeth? "I will say certainly you are picking up after the events of Infinite, and this is a person who has seen all the things you've seen in Infinite, and that's had an effect on her," Irrational's Ken Levine said.

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