Dev Explains Why BioShock Infinite Has A Dancing Bread Boy
French people love bread, and cheese, and wine. Those are the stereotypes. In fairness, who doesn't love those things? They're great. Anyway. A recent tweet showing a little Parisian boy dancing around a small column in the street and holding a baguette above his head in BioShock Infinite has gone viral, leaving many to wonder why he's there. The dev responsible for the French character has come forward, and the answer isn't as deep as some have theorised.
The moment in question takes place during the Burial at Sea DLC, in an alternate reality to the one of Infinite. As such, some have suggested that the boy is there to depict a version of France that Elizabeth has only been able to imagine in books, paintings, and other romanticised art forms. A moment where a bluebird lands on her finger and chirps La Vie En Rose like some sort of Disney moment reinforces this take.
RELATED: We Don’t Need Another BioShock
However, those takes are wrong, and the reality is quite funny. Game Developer Gwen Frey has broken down the process of bringing bread boy to life. Who is he? What is his purpose?
As Frey recounts, she was responsible for populating the Paris scene with chumps - people who would make the scene feel more alive but who would have no AI so as not to impair the performance of the game.
She decided to add a couple of kids to the scene to give it more motion, and reused an animation of a dancing couple seen earlier in the game. Game devs reuse animations to save time and money, if that makes you mad, get used to games taking twice as long and costing three times as much.
When she scaled the animation down, some issues arose - feet clipped through the ground and hands went through each other. So, after some tweaking, Frey
Read more on thegamer.com
