Float around any industry for long enough and you'll start to become familiar with the sorts of names that pop up around the tag of 'excellence' too often to be labelled a fluke. Hideo Kojima, Amy Hennig, Hidetaka Miyzaki- and Ken Levine. One of the team responsible for rewriting the way we looked at narrative in video games as well as pretty much putting a solid line under the survival shooter genre type so that games like Dead Space could exist all those many years later. The classic System Shock and the critically renowned Bioshock franchise are testaments to legendary development minds that dared to innovate, not just 'remix'. And it has been quite a while since his particular talents have been applied to the gaming world. Long enough that many of his contemporaries have gone their own ways, started up smaller studios and are now creating little gems of their own.
But Ken Levine just isn't the type to scale down his ambitions, I suppose. Even when his brand of game fell out of vogue in the industry as the ever more mercenary types who ran the boardrooms began weighing up 'cost benefit' analyses and axing out real potential in favour of profit generators- he never signed on for the sake of keeping work. God knows how he had remained in the industry all these years, scraping by in a world defined by flash-in-the-pan revenue hits- but god also bless the fact we've yet to lose another legendary auteur. I shudder to think what it will be like when the old guard start to blink out, like stars snuffed out of the celestials sea. I dare not think where how deeply those shadows will be cast in their wake.
Much had been made of the man's absence, of his retreat towards TV, but now in the age of our lord it seems the man has returned with another proposition to capture the popular imaginations of the fascinated- following a many a rumour as to his whereabouts. We've heard talk about how his years have been spent attempting to refine a unique form of dynamic storytelling that will allow entire threads of narrative to be generated in a non-linear fashion- an idea that most seem to struggle comprehending, to which I count myself among that number. Some seem to believe his idea is exactly what the indie-hit Wildermyth was designed to do- presenting RPG character choices entirely as narrative storybook decisions deciding the background and the party's lives in the same breath. Others seem convinced that he merely meant to ape the Roguelite genre and their typically non-upfront narrative approach that demands detective sleuthing from an appraised player. I, have no idea what could have captured the auteurs imagination.
What I do know is that the fruit of his labours, Judas, is now teased and revealed to be heading our way some time in 2025- and thus then we will learn once and for all exactly what it is that has Ken Levine so enamoured about the way modern video game stories can be told. And to be absolutely honest with you- I am the slightest bit underwhelmed by what we've seen. Not that it's bad by any stretch of the imagination, honestly from all I recognised I only recalled positive memories of Levine's past victories- but that in itself was a bit of the problem. I'm kind of surprised just how similar to Bioshock this game looks, and I really expected to be blown away by something new I guess.
I suppose in a twisted way what I was waiting for was that same sense of absolute wonderment when I first saw Death Stranding- a game which utterly flew in the face of everything I had come to expect from 'The Metal Gear guy'. And whilst when we actually got our hands on the game the unmistakable bones of Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain were stuffed up the backbone of the title's creation- it has to be said that the spirit of Death Stranding was utterly distinct from what he made before. Ken Levine's Judas kind of feels like the lost Bioshock 4 that we never got in style, presentation and potentially even in theming, if I'm picking up the vibes of sociological fallacy as piquantly as I think I am.
Judas takes us to a crumbling space station stuck at the brink of a collapse on both a societal and technological level wherein it seems the flimsy frills of decadence obscure the impending doom looming over everyone but the protagonist, the eponymous Judas, striving among the refuse she despises in order to "Fix what you broke- or... leave it to burn." Which... kind of has shades of the original Bioshock setting in it, albeit seemingly slightly modernised to reflect the 'social media' age. Which doesn't feel especially... cutting, to be honest. But perhaps that's just my wit dulled through years of identical commentary, incapable of spotting a more interesting target underneath the presentation. I wouldn't be surprised- Ken ain't no fool and I hear he doesn't like to tolerate them much in the workplace either. If any game is going to go above my head in marketing, it's this one. Oh, also the gameplay looks literally identical to Bioshock, with one-handing long barrel guns and power-infusing plasmids to boot.
These similarities do bother me somewhat because we still know about the 2K-powered Bioshock 'Reboot'/'Sequel' which is being juggled about right now- and we could very well be looking at a spiritual successor being compared against the original franchise's resurgence. Does that sort of situation ring any bells for you? It's essentially what happened with 'Dead Space' and 'The Callisto Protocol', where the Remake for Dead Space ended up entirely overshadowing the rocky launch of 'Callisto', as fans struggled to come to terms with the fundamental distinctions between the franchise they loved and this 'successor' helmed by the original creator. Judas might just have even more in common, and so might end up being in direct competition with the new Bioshock at some point down the line!
Concerns aside, I do think there's a special little something about Judas in it's promotion footage that really shines to me. A glint of confident excellence and pristine sheen that we don't often seen anymore in the homogonous slate of modern game design. My expectations are damned high with a Ken Levine title, as I know are his own expectations towards his staff, and though I loathe to think of a world where Bioshock is outshone as a narrative shooter- I would prefer that franchise get put to a neat rest rather than be reawoken from an otherwise neatly bound finale. Fingers crossed Judas has what Callisto Protocol didn't.
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