It's been 10 years since BioShock Infinite and creator Ken Levine still isn't done with the Judas follow-up project. But the game is getting closer, as evidenced recently by its appearance in trailers and now, a marketing theme in which select people like Game Awards host Geoff Keighley I have played it for several hours.
On the surface, this is a BioShock game in all but name, with shootouts and elemental powers in an unconventional alternate universe setting. And this is essentially what the game's trailers have shown us so far.
Now, Levine has discussed how all of this fits with his long-standing desire to make a game out of “narrative Lego”—essentially, out of handcrafted pieces that come together differently each time you play.
JUDAS – Geoff plays Ken Levine's new game in BostonThe basics are that you play as Judas, the long white-haired woman glimpsed in previous trailers, aboard a crashing city-sized spaceship called the Mayflower. She begins the game having died, but is able to “reprint” herself back to life, which seems a similar process to BioShock's Vita-Chambers.
A central element of the Judas experience (and how the game adapts to each playthrough) will be the digital projections of three other characters with whom you can ally yourself to varying degrees: a sheriff character named Tom, played by the omnipresent Troy Baker , a woman named Nefertiti and a girl named Hope.
How you will experience their stories and how they will react to Judas will depend on your actions and how you explore the game's non-linear world – similar, Keighley says, to how Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system reacted to players.
Choosing to take on quests for one of these characters will change how the other two view you, to the point that they may show up to sabotage your progress. In the end, you won't be able to keep the balance between them and you will have to choose a side.
Keighley describes the combination of the player character's actions and how you respond to all three as a complex set of variables, but recognizes that the success of this is something that can only be judged when the game is finished, and its true complexity. everything is revealed.
Again, there's no word on a release date yet, but we expect Judas to launch this financial year, before April 2025.
