That's sort of what I'm getting at. When you read about the production of BioShock, it's fascinating how their ideas began to take shape. How they discovered their art deco motif because the shapes didn't require a lot of polygons, about how Little Sisters went from slugs to chipmunks to human girls, about how Rapture went from an island research lab to the city we came to know, it's clear that it all came to fruition because of tons of hands on the pottery wheel. The end result was something really amazing.
With BioShock Infinite, you hear some similar stories. How it started as horror, how there were more robotic enemies, how Elizabeth was a mute older woman, and the plot inspirations from The Wizard of Oz, and you hear about how Levine very unceremoniously would throw all this stuff away. He said that, somewhere in the scrapped ideas, there was enough content for six games. And I really get the impression that he had a lot of control about what did or didn't go into Infinite, and in the end, I think it really fell short about what it tried to accomplish. From purely a gameplay perspective, there's absolutely nothing that appeared in any of the extended gameplay demos and showcases that ended up in the final game.
So was Infinite a result of giving an auteur too much control? Would Infinite have turned out better if he had a little bit less of a influence? Was BioShock 1 a success because he hadn't made a name for himself yet? BioShock 1 feels like a game where he was constantly challenged, BioShock Infinite feels like a game he was not.
I hope I'm expressing myself clearly. I'm at work and it's really hard to go into the detail I want to. Hopefully you get what I mean. In the end, it's all just conjecture. But I see BioShock Infinite as a game made by Ken Levine and I see BioShock 1 as a game made by a team.