Players would originally have had a silent companion in BioShock Infinite, Irrational Games's Shawn Robertson said today at GDC.

Initially, the development team was worried that players would bored with Elizabeth's lines on repetition. Eventually however, they decided that it was necessary for Elizabeth to talk to other characters as part of the plot. However, this decision was quite controversial in the office at the time.

At the time, we were not confident in our ability to create a talking character, which is why we went so far down the road in creating a character that couldn't talk.

The decision to make Elizabeth a talking character was hugely controversial around the office at the time.