BioShock creator and head of Ghost Story Games studio Ken Levine spoke in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz about the approach to storytelling in his story-driven shooter Judas and the scope of generative AI.
Image source: Ghost Story Games
Let us remind you that in the role of the Judas girl, Judas players will have to escape from the Mayflower spaceship that is crashing (precisely because of the heroine), enlisting the support of one of the three leaders of the ship.
According to Levine, the stakes in the plot of Judas have never been higher (compared to his past projects). Initially, they wanted to make the story more modest, “but as our ambitions grew, the game had to keep up with them.”
Levin does not like to rush the player – the stakes are raised dramatically high, but the gamer has the opportunity to explore every nook and cranny of the environment
One of the reasons why Judas took so long to make (more than 10 years) is because the team was trying to make the game “significantly more responsive” to user input, which is a huge amount of work.
«[Judas] could go in a lot of different directions, which is very different from the way we’ve made games before. Story points, how you got to them and what places you visited will vary greatly from player to player,” Levin assures.
Levin does not believe in the author’s intention and considers art to be the intersection of a work and a person
When it comes to AI, Levin sees the technology’s potential, but won’t trust it to write history. AI is not used in the development of Judas or for creating concept art, but is involved only in routine tasks like training a database of bugs.
Judas is being created for PC (Steam, EGS), PS5, Xbox Series X and S and has no release date. Levin said he’s grateful to Take-Two for the opportunity to take risks and spend as much time on the game as needed to make it successful.