System Shock 2 Director Ken Levine Says He Couldn’t Make A Bioshock Work In Space

At the 2022 Game Awards, Ken Levine debuted the first trailer for Judas, his first game since BioShock Infinite. Filled with scary automatons, body augmentations and a dystopia lined with brass features, no one would have been shocked had it been a space-set sequel to Levine’s famed steampunk series. Not to be confused with the official BioShock sequel in the pipeline, Levine sat down with IGN to explain how Judas will offer something different.

“If you ask me to define what a BioShock game is, I couldn’t really even tell you,” says Levine. “It’s slightly alternate history, but still really bound in historical periods. And I think you couldn’t really do a game in the future. I mean, at least I didn’t have a way to do it. Somebody could figure it out.”

It’s an odd remark given that Levine did exactly that in 1999. When BioShock first debuted, a lot of the hype surrounding it stemmed from its similarities to Irrational’s System Shock 2, a tense, cyberpunk immersive simulator which Levine served as director on. As above, so below, BioShock took many of its gameplay and narrative elements and plunged it into the ocean. A cautionary tale of how even the best planned innovations can be so easily consumed by nightmares.

When it began, BioShock was praised for its political satire. Jabbing at the then-reemerging Libertarian movement and Ayn Rand’s dogma, Rapture was an untaxed haven beneath the waves, succumbing to political corruption and brain worms all the same. By comparison, the sky-bound followup BioShock Infinite was far less refined in both narrative and gameplay. Wagging its finger in every direction and shaving off most of the RPG elements.

Levine seems to respond to these criticisms, saying that people shouldn’t come to him for political guidance. That he’s more attracted to banged up antiheroes like Walter White than commentating on the ecosystem that makes Walter Whites. “Everybody’s a hero of their own story,” says Levine. “Judas focuses a lot on the best of intentions and what evil can come from that. I like exploring those questions and seeing how things can go wrong, how things can go right, but I never try to lecture people.”

According to Levine, Judas will center its lead character over its environment, leveraging the player’s choices to develop their own allegiances than move along predestined intrigue. The sci-fi shooter has no current release date, with Take-Two’s financials suggesting it’s a ways out. Irrational was shuttered in 2014 despite the success of the BioShock series. Judas is the first game from Levin’s new studio, Ghost Story Games, and the project is not to be mistaken for Bioshock 4, which is also somewhere in development. Elsewhere, original System Shock creator Warren Spector just released his new stealth game, Thick as Thieves, and it’ll run you about the cost of a Starbucks coffee.