Judas Is Finally Unveiled by BioShock Creator Ken Levine

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.

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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