Judas, the game in development at Ken Levine’s Ghost Story Games, just had a huge amount of details revealed by the man himself. Levine was featured in a fresh 75-minute interview with IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey and Geoff Keighley, who had just played four or five hours of the game.
It’s by far the best look we’ve had yet at the game that the creator of BioShock has spent nearly ten years making. It all goes back to the narrative LEGO concept he first presented in late 2015. That’s why the game had to stay in the oven for so long: according to him, it took four or five years of research and development just to ensure the game could adapt to the various actions undertaken by the player.
There’s far more to the underlying system featured in Judas, though. Levine said Ghost Story Games had to teach the game how to reassemble all the prefabricated elements in various ways not just for the narrative but also for level layouts, treasure, enemy spawn, et cetera, without making it obvious and jarring for the player. This ties into the roguelike element twist: whenever the player character dies, upon respawning, the ship will have changed, and the players will be able to modify certain upgrades to increase their odds of succeeding in the next run.
The respawn itself is linked to the story, of course. To start, the main character is called Judas by the rest of the characters because she’s considered a traitor. She is part of a colony ship fleeing a dying Earth in a multi-generational journey toward Proxima Centauri. Judas exposes an ugly truth: the characters managing the ship are, unbeknownst to them, robots rather than humans. This reveal causes a chain of reactions that ultimately leads to catastrophe, as the ‘Mayflower’ ship is moored in an asteroid field and sinking. In an attempt to save the mission and, therefore, humankind itself, Judas is chosen for resurrection thanks to an untested technology called reprinting.
Unlike in the BioShock games, where protagonists didn’t know anything about the worlds they stepped into, Judas has long and storied relationships with everyone on the ship, chiefly the so-called Big Three: Tom, who handled security; Nefertiti, a biologist; and Hope, counselor and matchmaker. Despite actually being robots, the three have a very human-like relationship, with Tom and Nefertiti being romantically involved and Hope being their ‘daughter’.
However, they are a very dysfunctional family, to say the least. They’re at odds with each other and will try to convince Judas throughout the entire game to side with their vision for the mission. Levine said that the relationships will be completely dynamic, with the Big Three constantly shifting their opinions of the player and each other. During the exploration of the large ship (which is said to be large like a city, and joining a specific sector happens through a strategy game-like topdown view), players will experience dynamic events that can occur anywhere and at any time. Examples include one of the characters smashing a fuel reserve that the player was seeking because they were angry at them.
Moreover, the characters (who are just holograms since their physical bodies have been destroyed) will even interfere in combat situations based on your standing with them. For example, Nefertiti may suddenly hack a turret to help you if you’re currently on good terms with her. On the other hand, if she’s pissed at you, Hope may ruin your stealth attempts by pointing out your location to foes. By the end of the game, you will have to pick one character to side with, but throughout the playthrough, you will be able to shift your allegiance any time you want. This leads to multiple endings, of course.
Levine also touched upon the combat, which will be relatively reminiscent of BioShock with its mix of powers and weaponry. The big addition is the hacking system, explained by the fact that Judas is a self-taught engineer. With the hacking, Judas can affect her foes and even the environment itself in a sandbox-like fashion.
For their part, Keighley and McCaffrey pointed out that the game looks impressive from a fidelity standpoint, not to mention as polished as any BioShock despite its hugely modular design. The main goal is, obviously, to greatly increase replayability.
It’s a very ambitious project, that’s for sure. Judas doesn’t have a release window yet, but following this reveal and the fact that two journalists went hands-on with it, we may not have to wait that much longer to play the game ourselves.
