Three years after Shock recidivist Ken Levine formally unveiled his next game as Judas, we still don’t know much about it, except that it sure looks like a new BioShock. But that situation will hopefully be changing soon: Levine posted the very first Judas dev log today, and said he hopes “to communicate more frequently to update you with new details of what we are working on.”
In previous BioShock games, the bad guys—Frank Fontaine, Comstock, but not Sofia Lamb because Levine didn’t work on BioShock 2—were always going to be the bad guys. In Judas, though, that role will be based on the outcome of your actions toward the Big Three, the game world’s largely unknown shot-callers. They’ll initially be your pals, but your actions toward them will eventually drive one of them to become the villain, granting them “a new suite of powers to subvert your actions and goals.”
Beyond just becoming a boss to fight, Ghost Story aims to give the villainous shift an emotional impact. “In Judas, you’re going to get to know these characters intimately,” Levine wrote.
“We want losing one of them to feel like losing a friend. We want to play with that dynamic, and we want that choice to be super hard. The Big 3 are all going to be competing for your favor and attention. They can bribe you, save you in battle, talk shit about the other characters, and share with you their darkest secrets. But eventually, you’ve got to decide who you trust and who you don’t.”
That works the other way too, at least as far as it can in a videogame: “The Big 3 observe you as you play, and they have feelings not only about how you approach combat, hacking, and crafting, but most importantly your interactions with the other two characters.”
Levine said the development team just completed “the biggest Judas playtest yet,” and apparently it went well. Not so well, however, that the team is ready to commit to a release target.
“As you know, release dates have a way of slipping by, and we’d like to avoid having to change the date after we announce it,” Levine wrote. “But we know Judas is not really a game until the players get their hands on it, and that’s a day everyone on the team is working toward.”
Consolation prize: Some new key art. It’s high-resolution so feel free to zoom in and see if you can find any secrets. For what it’s worth, I don’t see a lighthouse anywhere.
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