| Judas | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Ghost Story Games |
| Publisher(s) | Ghost Story Games |
| Director(s) | Ken Levine |
| Engine | Unreal Engine [1] |
| Platform(s) | |
| Genre(s) | |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Judas is an upcoming first-person shooter game developed and published by Ghost Story Games. It is Ken Levine's first video game since BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea in 2014. The game is scheduled to be released for the PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S.
Judas takes place on Mayflower, a generation ship traveling through space carrying the last remnants of humanity to Proxima Centauri. The ship is run by three individuals: Tom, who wishes to preserve humanity in its original form; Nefertiti, his Nobel Prize-winning wife who wishes to transform humanity into a race of robots, free of flaw; and their adopted daughter, Hope, who wishes to "delete" herself from existence. [2] Computers control the entire society, including grooming the human residents to be model citizens and report on those that deviate from expected behavior. The game's main character, Judas, has been able to break free of that direction, her actions leading to revolution aboard the Mayflower. [3]
Judas is the debut title for Ghost Story Games, a studio founded by Ken Levine following the shutdown of Irrational Games, the developer of the BioShock series. The game's concept started in 2014 when Levine talked and explained ideas that they would want to work on during Game Developers Conference with "narrative Legos", where they can alter story elements, which they can use to make a very re-playable game, with multiple outcomes. [4] Levine described the inspiration of these narrative Legos extending from his past experiences in writing key non-playable characters, including SHODAN in System Shock 2 and Andrew Ryan in BioShock . He had desired to include these ideas with Elizabeth in BioShock Infinite , having her more reactive to the player's actions, but the narrative structure of the game prevented him from exploring this idea too much. Instead, he had come up with the narrative Lego concept to consider building a game without a fixed narrative, one that could be built from pre-built sections of narrative, level design, art assets, and other aspects that could be assembled on the fly in response to the player's actions. [2]
In 2015, Levine stated that this game would be a first-person science fiction game, similar to the System Shock series. [5] Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor , in particular its Nemesis system, was cited as one of the game's inspirations. Levine added that the game would be a more challenging experience than BioShock and BioShock Infinite . [6] At the start of 2022, Bloomberg News reported that the game had fallen into development hell, with Levine's style of workplace leading to employee burnout. [7]
At the end of the same year, at The Game Awards 2022, the game was revealed with an announcement trailer to positive reception. [8] Judas will be released on Microsoft Windows via Steam and Epic Games platform. [9] Take-Two Interactive, Ghost Story's owner, expects the game to release by March 2025 at the latest.
The Game Developers Choice Awards are awards annually presented at the Game Developers Conference for outstanding game developers and games. Introduced in 2001, the Game Developers Choice Awards were preceded by the Spotlight Awards, which were presented from 1997 to 1999. Since then, the ceremony for the Independent Games Festival is held just prior to the Choice Awards ceremony.
System Shock 2 is a 1999 action role-playing survival horror video game designed by Ken Levine and co-developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. Originally intended to be a standalone title, its story was changed during production into a sequel to the 1994 game System Shock. The alterations were made when Electronic Arts—who owned the System Shock franchise rights—signed on as publisher.
Alyx Vance is a fictional character from Valve's Half-Life video game series. She is introduced as a non-playable, supporting character in Half-Life 2 (2004), accompanying the player's character, Gordon Freeman, throughout much of the game. She subsequently appears in a similar capacity in Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007), and as the titular protagonist of the VR game Half-Life: Alyx (2020).
Irrational Games was an American video game developer founded in 1997 by three former employees of Looking Glass Studios: Ken Levine, Jonathan Chey, and Robert Fermier. Take-Two Interactive acquired the studio in 2006. The studio was best known for two of the games in the BioShock series, as well as System Shock 2, Freedom Force, and SWAT 4. In 2014, following the release of BioShock Infinite, Levine opted to significantly restructure the studio from around 90 to 15 employees and focus more on narrative games. In February 2017, the studio announced that it had been rebranded as Ghost Story Games and considered a fresh start from the original Irrational name, though still operating at the same business subsidiary under Take-Two.
Kenneth M. Levine is an American video game developer. He is the creative director and co-founder of Ghost Story Games. He led the creation of the BioShock series and is also known for his work on Thief: The Dark Project and System Shock 2.
BioShock is a 2007 first-person shooter game developed by 2K Boston and 2K Australia, and published by 2K. The first game in the BioShock series, it was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms in August 2007; a PlayStation 3 port by Irrational, 2K Marin, 2K Australia and Digital Extremes was released in October 2008. The game follows player character Jack, who discovers the underwater city of Rapture, built by business magnate Andrew Ryan to be an isolated utopia. The discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which grants superhuman powers, initiated the city's turbulent decline. Jack attempts to escape Rapture, fighting its mutated and mechanical denizens, while engaging with the few sane survivors left and learning of the city's past. The player can defeat foes in several ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Rapture's defenses against them.
Troy Baker is an American voice actor and musician. He is known for his numerous roles in video games, including Joel Miller in The Last of Us franchise, Booker DeWitt in BioShock Infinite (2013), Samuel "Sam" Drake in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016) and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (2017), Rhys Strongfork in Tales from the Borderlands (2014), Snow Villiers in Final Fantasy XIII (2010), Kanji Tatsumi in Persona 4 (2008), Vincent Brooks in Catherine (2011), Talion in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014) and Middle-earth: Shadow of War (2017), Pagan Min in Far Cry 4 (2014), Revolver Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) and Higgs Monaghan in Death Stranding (2019) and Death Stranding 2: On The Beach (2025). Baker currently holds the record for the most acting nominations at the BAFTA Games Awards, with 5 between 2013 and 2021.
Prince of Persia is a video game franchise created by Jordan Mechner. It is centered around a series of action-adventure games focused on various incarnations of the eponymous Prince, set in ancient and medieval Persia.
2K Marin, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Novato, California. Founded in December 2007 as a spin-off from their parent, 2K, the company developed BioShock 2 (2010) and The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (2013) before laying off or relocating all staff in October 2013 and silently being closed.
Andrew Ryan is a fictional character in the BioShock video game series developed by Irrational Games. He serves as the secondary antagonist in BioShock, and also appears in its follow-ups BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea. Ryan is portrayed as an idealistic business magnate in the 1940s and 1950s, aiming to create an underwater city called Rapture to avoid government oversight and scrutiny. As civil war erupts in Rapture, Ryan's utopian vision collapses into a dystopia, leading him to become reclusive and paranoid. After winning the war, he becomes increasingly ruthless in his control over the city's remaining inhabitants.
BioShock is a retrofuturistic video game series created by Ken Levine, published by 2K and developed by several studios, including Irrational Games and 2K Marin. The BioShock games combine first-person shooter and role-playing elements, giving the player freedom for how to approach combat and other situations, and are considered part of the immersive sim genre. Additionally, the series is notable for exploring philosophical and moral concepts with a strong in-game narrative influenced by concepts such as Objectivism, total utilitarianism, and American exceptionalism.
Rapture is a fictional city-state in the BioShock series published by 2K Games. It is an underwater city that is the main setting for the games BioShock and BioShock 2. The city also briefly appears in BioShock Infinite, and is featured in its downloadable content, Burial at Sea. The game's back-story describes the city as envisioned by business tycoon Andrew Ryan in the mid-late 1940s as a means to create a utopia for mankind's greatest artists and thinkers to prosper in a laissez-faire environment outside of increasing oppression by the world's governments and religion. However, the lack of government led to severe wealth disparity, a powerful black market, and unrestricted genetic modification, which turned the city into a dystopia exacerbated by Ryan's tyrannical methods to maintain control. The masses turned towards political activists like Atlas who advocated an uprising of the poor against Ryan and the elite of Rapture; and on the eve of 1959, a civil war broke out, leaving much of Rapture's population dead. The remaining citizens either became psychotic "Splicers" due to the effects of ADAM, a substance that can alter genetic material, or have barricaded themselves from the Splicers to protect themselves, leaving the city to fail and fall apart around them.
BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter video game in the BioShock series, developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K. Infinite was released worldwide for the PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360, and OS X platforms in 2013. The game is set in the year 1912 and follows its protagonist, Booker DeWitt, who is sent to the airborne city Columbia to retrieve Elizabeth, a young woman held captive there. Booker and Elizabeth become involved in a class war between the nativist Founders that rule Columbia and the rebel Vox Populi, representing the city's underclass. Elizabeth possesses the ability to manipulate "Tears" in the space-time continuum, and Booker and Elizabeth discover she is central to Columbia's dark secrets. The player controls Booker DeWitt throughout the game, fighting enemies and scavenging supplies, while the computer-controlled Elizabeth provides assistance.
Elizabeth is a fictional character in Irrational Games' BioShock Infinite, the third title in the BioShock series. The game is set in 1912 on a floating steampunk city named Columbia which was founded on the principles of American exceptionalism. Elizabeth has been groomed in a controlled environment to take over the reins of the city once its current leader, Father Zachary Hale Comstock, dies. Elizabeth has the power to open "tears" in the fabric of reality; she is able to view every event across all of the infinite timelines simultaneously and effortlessly open doorways to them, allowing her to access parallel universes.
The development of BioShock Infinite began after BioShock's release in August 2007. The five-year development, led by studio Irrational Games, began under the moniker "Project Icarus". Irrational's creative lead, Ken Levine was inspired by events at the turn of the 20th century and the expansion of the concept of American Exceptionalism set by the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. His story took these events to create a tale set in 1912 where the player, as former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, is challenged to rescue a young woman, Elizabeth, who has been kept aboard the floating city of Columbia in the middle of a civil war between its founder Father Zachary Comstock and the Vox Populi, the underclass revolting against him.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a 2014 action-adventure video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. An original story based on the legendarium created by J. R. R. Tolkien, the game takes place between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings film trilogies. The player controls Talion, a Gondorian Ranger who bonds with the wraith of the Elf Lord Celebrimbor, as the two set out to avenge the deaths of their loved ones. Players can engage in melee combat, and use wraith abilities to fight and manipulate enemies. The game introduces the Nemesis System, which allows the artificial intelligence of non-playable characters to remember their prior interactions with Talion and react accordingly in subsequent encounters.
BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea is a two-part single-player expansion to the first-person shooter video game BioShock Infinite. It was developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K Games for PlayStation 3, OS X, Windows, Xbox 360, and Linux platforms. Episode One was released digitally on November 12, 2013, followed by Episode Two on March 25, 2014. A retail version was released as part of BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition, and later included in BioShock: The Collection for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
The SXSW Gaming Awards were awards given to video games during the annual South by Southwest Festival (SXSW), held in Austin, Texas typically in March of that year. The Awards were part of the SXSW Gaming Expo which is part of the SXSW Interactive branch of the festival.
Ghost Story Games, LLC is an American video game developer based in Westwood, Massachusetts, and led by Ken Levine. The studio is the rebranding of Irrational Games as announced in February 2017, and while still the same business subsidiary under Take-Two Interactive, the rebranding was considered a fresh start by the founders as they move into more emergent narrative-driven titles compared to the larger titles they had made under Irrational.
Atlas is a character in the BioShock video game series created by Ken Levine, published by 2K Games. He first appears in the first title of the series, where he sets himself up as a benefactor of Jack, the game's player character, upon his arrival in the underwater city of Rapture. During a pivotal scene later in the game's narrative, Atlas discloses that he is actually the crime lord Frank Fontaine in disguise, the main antagonist of the game, and that he had been manipulating Jack to act against the city's founder Andrew Ryan. It is also revealed that he is responsible for orchestrating Jack's mental conditioning during his infancy and later a chain of events that led to his subsequent arrival in Rapture. Atlas/Fontaine also appears in the sequel BioShock 2 through audio diaries, and more prominently in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, a prequel which sets up the events of BioShock.