Ken Levine and his Judas

 

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.

Not Ken Levine too...

 You either die the hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain

Oh what a lovely year 2022 is turning out to be already. Hardly a week in and one of the artists who've I've respected for most of my life has suffered an expose to reveal him to be a much more flawed beast then any could have imagined; and I didn't even know he was still making games! Yes, we're talking Ken Levine, the head behind Irrational Games and thus the name most commonly thought of when considering the development of famed objectivist fever dream 'Bioshock'. His is a pedigree that always seemed to demand respect for it's vision, and the strength of the games his studio made are undeniable, but you know what they say about the creative ones, dontcha? They're always the ones who go crazy the fastest. It's just something in their brain chemistry that makes them super volatile, one messy day and they're all cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs. Maybe it's for the better that I heard the apparently false rumour that Ken had given up game development entirely to go and become a TV writer. (If he had it would have saved us all this embarrassing parade, now wouldn't it?)

Yes, as it turns out Ken was with us all along and actively still working in this industry with a brand new smaller studio from the one he shut down. This team, Ghost Story Studio, have apparently been active roughly since Irrational Games was disbanded, which one would think wouldn't be such of a shock given how that happened back in 2014. You'd have thought we'd have heard of something from a studio that's been kicking around for that long, no? Else the studio is actually just a front for an elaborate money laundering scheme like I starting to think The 'Initiative' is. (I'm still honing in on the finer plotpoints of that theory, catch up with me later.) No, we should have seen a teaser trailer, a studio announcement- heck, maybe even gotten a small title out of them by now! I know the studio in question had only about a bakers dozen worth of employees in the beginning but... seven years! Not even I can procrastinate that long. (And trust me, I've been practicing.)

I remember hearing of a game that Irrational were working on before the end that was something relating to these artists who's minds you would explore in a very physical sense in order to unravel their darkest secrets, certainly a premise that would allow for a whole lot of creative world design and perhaps interweave visual design and narrative in some clever meta-ways. But whether that game was real or just imagined, it would seem that, according to recent exposés, it was Ken Levine himself who chose to pack the whole thing in. (At least that's the way that people are framing it, maybe there were behind the scenes actual financial concerns that spurred his decisioning.) According to what we're hearing now, Levine seemed to have that artistic break from the immediate reality of his situation and turned sour on the idea of working within a company with other people. Not just for the interference of a publisher being closely tied to you, although from what we've heard on the man now I'm sure he complained about that a fair few times. No, apparently Ken just really wanted to downscale his team into a small group where he would have creative control.

Now question that if you will, also question the decision to section off 11 employees as the 'designated survivors' who had to keep that secret for weeks in the knowledge that all their friends are about to be jobless. (Ah, another step on the road of the 'artist'- losing track of basic empathy!) The draw of the new studio would be simply- the stability of a major studio and the freedom of an indie, the only drawback being that you had to work in close proximity to him all day. A proposition I'm starting to understand as being nowhere near as dreamlike as it initially sounds. (Why do all of the clever and ambitious ones have to be dicks?) Some of these survivors have come out to tell their experience to the one man who'll make sure it's posted on every site, Jason Schreier, and in a mood typical of these grand pieces he likes to put out- the reality of life for the developers sounds like a spiral of chaos and bad management that only offers a frail, vain, hope for future reconciliation. Schreier really is duty-drawn to the most doomed parts of our little industry here, isn't he? (Well I suppose that's where the stories are.)

Funnily enough, despite having been granted all the adoration and celebration as an 'auteur', and a one-of-a-kind mind, the problems with Ken's new kingdom under Ghost Story Studio (aside from his development studio seemingly being named after one of the worst/best anime dubs of all time) is envy. His envy. Envy of himself, envy of others- Ken is a perfectionist, as one in such a position has to be, but without supervision he seems to have blossomed into the worst type of perfectionist, the narcissistic destructive kind. Ken is the type of boss who utterly chucks out work he doesn't consider to be totally perfect, who galls at the presence of ideas that the staff haven't already cunningly masked to sound like his own ideas, (the term 'Kenception' sounds like a suitably belittling foil the team thought-up for this process) and just like freakin' Chris Roberts, Ken spends his every summer playing new games and suddenly deciding this thing he just saw needs to be transplanted into his game, thus rebooting development again.

From the sound of everything, it seems like Ken is a beast being pulled by two competing demons. One which is utterly intimidated by his own past work and so shudders to consider delivering anything lacking the social and commercial impact of System Shock, Bioshock or Infinite; whilst the other demon is cock-sure and doom-driven, convinced that he alone carries the secret formula to success and the goings on in his precious little mind are too grand to be put into pathetic words. There's nothing inherently wrong about having a game director take total control of a project, like Kojima would, but it comes with a heavy responsibility on the brain in charge as well as those operating under it. Kojima needs to ensure that every single department head working under him knows exactly what his vision is, and so that when they go to sleep they are dreaming of the same finished product. It's a relationship that requires clear communication above all else, as well as trust given that these employees know what they're doing. Ken seems to have struggled with that and given the development hell this game of theirs has been in since 2014, his prospective new magnum opus has suffered.

And then there's the problem which ties so closely to Cloud Imperium Games that it hurts; Ken is losing his grip on the cutting edge. Drawn to wanting to be the first always, Ken is always changing his mind and plans to ride the trend that the industry hasn't jumped on yet, but his own managerial shortcomings delay the process so much to the point his ideas stop being the new hotness. Just like Roberts dreams of a whole universe being rendered, nicked by No Man's Sky; people have pointed out how Ken's proposition, narrative legos which click together to generate a unique core narrative each time you play, was the key concept behind the recent critical darling from indie studio Worldwalker games- Wildermyth. His perfectionism has crippled the studio and now he's not going to get to do the interview circuit, boasting about his new 'Strand like game' which is going to be unlike anything you've ever played before.

Reports end on that 'faux happy note with the past problems very much still looming over everyone' finale that Schreier specialises in. Some people say that Levine is trying to be better, and others seem to think their long-struggling concept is finally entering a sensible development cycle, (as in, a 2024 release is a hopeful guess) but with Levine's cycle all it will take is a single relapse to throw away months worth of work and pretty much reboot everything from scratch again. We can all hold our hands in bunches and hope that we get to see another Levine game in our short lifetimes, but perhaps he just made the wrong career move and no longer has the resources (or guiding whip) to bring things together like he once did. This guy was one of my chief inspirations back in the day, and it sucks to hear this is the self destructive cycle he's wrapped up in now. (especially since I'd thought he rode off into the sunset to work on other mediums entirely.) Here's waiting for the, now-inevitable, exposé when it's eventually revealed that Kojima eats babies in order to power the creative juices that forms his ideas. (Actually... after playing Death Stranding I think that's a very real possibility.)