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Irrational: 1980s BioShock Infinite scene came from "abandoned" game

Remember that infamous scene from the E3 demo of BioShock Infinite? It was made of assets from a previous project at Irrational that was canned, the studio has said.

Speaking to Gamasutra, the team at the Boston developer said that the scene, in which Elizabeth is trying to heal a dying horse using a tear which brings part of the world of Columbia into 1983 was made with assets from a killed project.

Creative director Ken Levine admitted that the scene was originally due to take place in a forest.

"Originally, the scene I wrote was, she uses a tear to turn a sick animal healthy," said Levine.

"It was a scene to sell Elizabeth's character... she has trouble controlling this. It was supposed to be to this primeval forest kind of thing, and it just wasn't striking or different enough... but we had assets from a game we abandoned."

Irrational was "literally about to throw away" the assets from the project that was used in the scene, according to lead artist Shawn Robertson, but art director Nate Wells added that the goal was to explain "this element to the audience, but doing it in a way that doesn't feel like 'exposition."

BioShock Infinite releases in 2012 for PS3, 360 and PC. For reference sake, here's the E3 demo again.

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BioShock Infinite

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Johnny Cullen

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Johnny has experience at a wide range of games media outlets, having written for Eurogamer, Play Magazine, PC Gamer, GameDaily, and more. He worked at VG247 pumping out news at an astonishing rate for several years. More recently, he founded the games website PlayDiaries.

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