Ghost Story Games, led byBioshockCreator Ken Levine, has been actively working on an action-adventure FPS game named Judas that many gamers refer to as “Bioshock in space”.
In arecent interviewwith Nightdive Studios, Ken stated their mission for Judas is to deliver a finished game with carefully-crafted interactive narratives focused on player experience rather than additional monetization.
Bioshock Creator Explains The Future Of Interactive Narratives
Ken Levine, the creator of hit series like Bioshock, explores how he stretches the concept of game narratives in his upcoming title Judas.
“You buy the game and you get the whole thing. There’s no online component, there’s no live service, because everything we do is in service of telling the story and transporting the player.” Bioshock has been critically acclaimed for rich storytelling, immersive environments, and a visual style that was completely new and unique for its time.
There’s norelease date for Judasyet, and it appears many gamers are skeptical about the future of the game, as it’s seemingly beenstuck in development hell.
“Half of the original team working on Judas left the company during development.”
Ghost Story Games Pushes Through Development Hell
In a time when microtransactions, DLCs, battle passes, andlive-service gamesreign supreme,Ken Levine saysthere arestill some advantages to keeping it old-school and delivering finished games that focus on a carefully crafted story.
“These are games that are really traditional single-player games, and they don’t have that kind of monetization in them, and I think the audiences reward those games.”
The gaming industry has been suffering recently from mass layoffs,piracy websites, and studio closures, and Ken expressed that he understands the need for big-budget games to employ additional monetization methods.
“It’s a difficult time in the industry, as you know, and not everybody is as lucky as we are that we get to make a game that can really just pursue the player’s joy.”
In Ghost Story Games' upcoming FPS, you take the role of a hacker named Judas, and you’ll find yourself aboard a damaged space vessel called the Mayflower - but you’re not alone. The spaceship is full of robots, and there will be three main characters you’ll interact with: Tom, Hope, and Nefertiti, and the way you interact with each of these individuals willchange the way your narrative unfolds.
IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey describes the upcoming FPS game as “robots-gone-wild insanity”.
“You’ll fight Fix-It robots who used to tidy up the ship by shooting them or zapping them with lightning, one of the powers you can acquire for your left hand. Even better if there happens to be water on the ground that you can electrify, thus taking out multiple enemies at a time.”
This is Levine’s first project sinceBioShock Infinite, and while some gamers in the community remain reserved about the future of Judas, a fresh spin on the beloved Bioshock games with aninteractive narrativecould be just what the gaming world needs right now.
