Reposted in-part from Kotaku:
"Where Rand had Fountainhead's Howard Roark and Atlas Shrugged's John Galt, Levine had Andrew Ryan, Rapture's founder.
Levine said he views the game's chief protagonist as a cross between Howard Hughes and 'one of Rand's characters if he were put in the real world with all of the real problems people have.
'Rand's characters are super heroes,' he said. 'Great people without flaws.'
But Brook says, that's not really a fair interpretation of Rand's beliefs.
'It seems to me that he's misrepresented what Ayn Rand believes and her ideals beyond objectivism,' he said. 'He's setting it up to fail. He believes, based on what I've read, that any system that is absolutist is ultimately going to lead to disastrous effect. Any system of black and white, any system of ultimate morality.
'In many cases that true. But I think what lessens the game is that misinterpretation of objectivism.'
Rand's characters aren't flawed because not everyone is, Brook says.
'I think its flawed logic in the sense that he thinks that people have to be flawed,' he said. 'I think in many respects (Rand's) books do put her characters in real life.
'I think there are great people and perfect people and I think we all should strive to be great and perfect.'
That's how Levine's Ryan starts out, a 'new man', an incredible individual, but in the end he fails and falls.
Ryan fails, Levine says, because while building the utopia of Rapture he never questions himself, never stopped to think if he had gone astray. And because of that he betrays his own belief system and ends up 'wanting his cake and eating it too.'
Despite his failings, Ryan still remains true to his ideals in the end, an important point.'He brought his end upon himself and didn't shirk away from it,' Levine said. 'He wasn't a hypocrite. He may have failed, but he really believed what he did and put everything on the line for it.'
Read the rest of the article here.