At The Game Awards 2022, Ghost Story Games finally announced the final name of its debut project: Judas.
Ghost Story Games is essentially a rebranding of Irrational Games, the revered game studio behind masterpieces like System Shock 2, SWAT 4, and BioShock.
As some of you will undoubtedly remember, founder Ken Levine stepped away from large-scale triple-A development after the release of BioShock Infinite, opting to work with a smaller, leaner team that eventually became known as Ghost Story Games. While Levine’s original intention was to create a startup, Take-Two persuaded him to stay within the group as a self-published label.
As such, Take-Two’s latest earnings report may have provided an indication of the release window of Judas. For fiscal year 2024, Take-Two said it would release sixteen games, three of which fall into the company’s ‘immersive core’ category. The slide below, shared as part of the presentation of the upcoming lineup, clearly shows only NBA 2K24, WWE 2K24, and Judas as those three announced games.
While the release window of Judas is still listed as TBA in that slide, Take-Two president Karl Slatoff explicitly said during the earnings call that the third immersive core game (beyond the aforementioned NBA 2K24 and WWE 2K24) coming in fiscal year 2024 is an ‘eagerly anticipated new IP’ from one of the group’s premiere studios.
Needless to say, that description fits Judas perfectly. Jason Schreier’s latest report from January 2022 hinted at two more years of wait, which would mean a release in the first quarter of 2024.
What is Judas, anyway? The official description labels it as a single player narrative-driven first-person shooter set in a disintegrating starship, with the protagonist forced to concoct an escape plan by making or breaking alliances with their worst enemies.
As hinted by its codename (Project Replay), it’ll have a strong focus on replayability. In late 2015, Levine discussed the concept of narrative LEGOs, where the developers create small chunks of narrative that can be recombined in many ways, providing much greater replayability than a traditional linear storyline. The obvious goal is to allow the player’s agency to define how a playthrough pans out, enticing the user to replay the game and witness another outcome.
Judas will be released for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X. You can already add it to your wishlists on Steam and the Epic Games Store, where the game is listed as ‘coming soon’.
