Judas - narrative FPS set on a disintegrating starship from Ken Levine's Ghost Story Games

[LESS T_T]

https://www.judasthegame.com

Spoiler

CHALLENGING STORIES, CHALLENGING GAMEPLAY

Ghost Story was founded by twelve former Irrational Games developers and our mission is simple: to create immersive, story-driven games for people who love games that ask something of them. While we believe our new games will have strong appeal to fans of BioShock, our new focus allows us to craft experiences where the gameplay is as challenging as the stories.

We are not yet ready to share any more on our new game, but we invite you to join us and take part in our community, Sign up here.

About Ghost Story

“Ghost Story for me is defined by a small but experienced team working together to push the boundaries of what interactive narrative means. Because of the team size, there is a flat hierarchy and a strong DIY attitude that prevails at the studio. This means each team member has clear ownership and responsibility for how they are affecting the game. It’s great to come to work every day and see so much talent and passion working together towards a common goal.”

Shawn Robertson, Art Director

“Real focus on making core games for core gamers. Emphasis on making games with inspiring and intriguing story and characters, with a high quality bar for execution. Deep interest in finding innovative solutions to problems that have plagued game development for decades. The world and IP we are creating is richly specific and original, and conveys both wonder and nostalgia.”

Seth Kendall, Senior Animator

“I appreciate working with a talented, respectful team who shares the same high-level vision and commitment to our project. It’s a supportive and collaborative work environment where we can all work together and all be heard.”

Emma Clarkson, Associate Producer

“Everyone here wants to make something truly special! This is a rare Goldilocks studio. I.e. not too big, not too small, but just right – this is the perfect mix of talent, size, experience and stability that culminates in a group who are working towards something special that (I believe) no other studio could take on.”

Guy Walshe, UI Artist



“Working at Ghost Story is an incredibly rewarding experience. Each employee’s ideas are heard and embraced, we all have a major impact on the games we make. There is tremendous talent in this studio, which makes each day challenging and exciting. This is a place where you never stop learning.”

Kyle Williams, Lead Narrative Scripter

“Ghost Story really encourages each and every person to have a healthy work-life balance. While everyone is expected to be in during core hours, there is enough flexibility for new parents like me to spend the mornings with my baby and still get home in time to tuck her in at night.”

Jennie Morse, Associate Producer

“We are in such a fortunate situation – to be working on a new IP, on a small team of highly experienced developers, with strong direction and with the backing of a well-established company, we are truly in a unique position to explore a new idea.”

Jeremy Carson, Technical Lead

No game announcement yet.

It's still under Take Two.

 

[Morgoth]

Dammit I was just about.... never mind.

At least I was faster with the Prey "Mimic Madness" trailer today.

 

[LESS T_T]

From FAQs:

Who is Ghost Story?
We’re a Boston-area game development studio dedicated to making immersive story driven games for gamers that like a challenge. The studio was founded by a group of former Irrational Games developers, such as creative director Ken Levine, art director Shawn Robertson, executive producer Don Roy and more. We’ve been concepting, prototyping and experimenting on a new game for some time now and have attracted new talent along the way. You can learn more about our team and our vision here.

Why the name Ghost Story?
Ghost stories are immersive, exciting, and steeped in community. The name reminds us of our mission.

What happened to Irrational Games?
The Irrational Games studio was closed in 2014. However, you might have seen continued activity on the Irrational Games Facebook or Twitter accounts. These have remained active because many on our team were key contributing members to BioShock and love engaging with the fan community. That is separate from what we are working on today. We are a new team, working on a new game and we’d like our studio name to reflect that.

Why is Ghost Story involved with BioShock?
In addition to Ken Levine being the creative director for BioShock and BioShock Infinite, many other members of our team were key contributors to the creation of those games. We’re humbled by and thankful for the fan communities that have formed around our work. So, we’re excited to continue to be a part of those communities and look forward to continue engaging with them through our new channels.

What is Ghost Story currently working on?
We’re working on a new immersive sci-fi game with RPG elements. We haven’t announced any details yet because we are still in the early stages of production, but create an account and sign up for our newsletter or follow us on social media to be among the first to know when we do. You can also follow creative director Ken Levine, executive producer Don Roy and many of our other team members on twitter.

Are you working on a BioShock game?
No, we are not working on a BioShock Game.

When can we expect to hear something about the game?
Likely not for a while, but create an account and sign up for our newsletter or follow us on social media to be among the first to know when we do. You can also follow creative director Ken Levine, executive producer Don Roy and many of our other team members on twitter.

Why is it taking so long to make the game?
We are a small, agile and collaborative team trying to do new things. It takes time to nail the concept and it takes even more time to execute it. Our smaller team-size and experimental nature does however mean that we aren’t moving as fast as larger studios might.

 

[Morgoth]

Why is it taking so long to make the game?
We are a small, agile and collaborative team trying to do new things. It takes time to nail the concept and it takes even more time to execute it. Our smaller team-size and experimental nature does however mean that we aren’t moving as fast as larger studios might.

This is what I love to hear. Just take your time boys and gals.

 

[Ash]

Ghost Story was founded by twelve former Irrational Games developers and our mission is simple: to create immersive, story-driven games for people who love games that ask something of them

I will not take you at your word, but I'm listening.

Sad you have to specifically state these days that you intend to engage player's brains and not force them through hours upon hours of tedious repetitive mindless "gameplay".

 

[Neanderthal]

Pity that Bioshocks their inspiration, thought Freedom Force were a much more ambitious an incline game personally.

 

[orcinator]

Sad you have to specifically state these days that you intend to engage player's brains and not force them through hours upon hours of tedious repetitive mindless "gameplay".

Yeah I'm sure the people behind "wait a minute that card" will make something that requires brainpower to play.

 

[Neanderthal]

 

[Siel]

I'm curious about what he can do without the AAA project pressure but this nuMale team doesn't make me too confident.

 

[Kalin]

 

[Heretic]

They look quite normal to me. Could have been much worse.

 

[tormund]

A Kodexian Krowd.

 

[Great Deceiver]

So, pretentious walking simulators made by hipsters. Gotcha.

Man, Freedom Force was so long ago.

 

[Morgoth]

 

[Baron Dupek]

So many white people in that group yet painted hairs are on?
Double standards.

 

[Morgoth]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...t-game-will-be-more-challenging-than-bioshock

Ken Levine's next game will be "more challenging" than BioShock
And how Ghost Story is managing expectations of its revolutionary "narrative Lego".

By Tom Phillips Published 30/03/2017

BioShock creator Ken Levine took the stage at EGX Rezzed in London today for a look back over his career so far, in a conversation with Eurogamer's Oli Welsh.

Afterwards, I met with Levine to look forwards at his next project - the as yet untitled game which will be the first from Levine's new, smaller studio Ghost Story.

We've heard snippets of information in the past about how this new project is a reaction to how traditional story-led games - particularly ones made on huge budgets which take years to finish - are made.

Levine has used the term "narrative Lego" in the past to describe a story-based game which can be replayed multiple times for a different experience. During his conversation on stage with Oli, he also mentioned how he wanted to push back on the notion that big budget games must be focus tested and easily understood by a wide audience.

It is this more hardcore audience of gamers that this new game is being made for, Levine said.

"We're less concerned with making sure this is as smooth an experience..." Levine trails off. "I mean, we worked hard on BioShock and BioShock Infinite to make it fairly frictionless. I've been inspired by games which are comfortable with a little friction, which doesn't hand you things, which tests you both with difficulty and how it works. How things work aren't laid for you.

"It is also going to be a more difficult experience, more challenging to the gamer than the last two games we've done," he added - BioShock and BioShock Infinite. (BioShock 2 was made by a separate team.)

"The impetus [for this project] is you spend five years on a game which people finish in a weekend," Levine continued. "I'm really envious of games like Civilization which I've played for a very long time. A lot of games now are built to maintain a long relationship with the gamer. My games haven't really had that. So this appealed to me because you spend all this time on it and then people just go through it and it's a short experience."

Levine's conversation with Oli also touched on how all games change through development - and that this was no bad thing. More to the point, a game often only comes together in its final stages as the realities and pressures of finishing a project prompt tough decisions to be made - when you have a "gun to your head", Levine put it.

But Levine is no longer at a big studio with an even bigger publisher breathing down his neck. He will have to police himself, and his studio police him. Who will hold the gun to Levine's head now?

"It's very important we [all] do," he said. "We're part of Take-Two - we're not being published by 2K but are owned by Take-Two - and they're very generous with us in terms of giving us space and time. We think to make good games you do need to have an entrepreneurial spirit of 'what are the constraints we're giving ourselves and 'when is this game going to end?' And really strive to do that. Because often if you don't pose constraints things tend to go pear-shaped.

"They are self-imposed constraints but we take them very, very seriously because it makes us better developers.

"We're not going to ship anything we don't think is awesome and we are fortunate we don't have to, but when you set a time for yourself it forces yourself to make decisions, and that's when the great work is done, when you really have to make those decisions. We've actually just gone through another scheduling pass recently and the team found it a really positive experience - it forced us to really say 'what is this game', what stays, what goes, what's important. I found that to be a very helpful process."

The specifics of Ghost Story's game remain under wraps - and it sounds like they will for a while. All this promise of narrative Lego and of changing the way people play story-led games generates big expectations. And in a post-No Man's Sky World, it's an issue all developers are aware of.

"[That's] one of the main reasons we're not communicating right now," Levine answers. "Game development is a perilous process especially when you're out there talking about. Things change from under you.

"Ideally, and I don't know, but ideally we'd want to just say 'here it is, go check it out'," he teases. "But we're really not going to be talking about this thing publicly until we have a high degree of certainty of what it's going to look and feel like."

God bless Ken. He may have veered a bit towards popamole, but I still laud his experimental spirit that harkens back to the LGS era.

 

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43:58: hardcore statement

 

[Morgoth]

The old brigade bringing their old school ethos to modern gaming back and refined is the only reason why I still give a shit about gaming.

God bless Ken, the Arkanites, the Otherside Gang, the Gilbert BROTEAM and all the other cool developers that are still trying to keep my old gaming heart kindled.

 

[Mastermind]

I like how the idiot who made this video thinks "wounded knee" is an allusion to Skyrim rather than an actual historic event. Looks like Bioshock is the perfect game for him after all.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The old brigade bringing their old school ethos to modern gaming back and refined is the only reason why I still give a shit about gaming.

In which alternative reality is this happening?

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/ken-levines-...ration-from-shadow-of-mordors-nemesis-system/

Ken Levine's next game draws inspiration from Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system
Ghost Story is aiming for a replayable narrative game with a "much more ambitious" take on the Nemesis system.

At EGX Rezzed 2017 yesterday, BioShock creator Ken Levine came to the stage for a brief conversation about his career and what his new, post-Irrational studio, Ghost Story, is up to.

In late 2015, Levine described the team's next game as "sort of a small-scale open-world game" which "fights against the linear nature of the games we made before, like BioShock and BioShock Infinite."

Yesterday, Levine talked about making replayable narrative games—citing Chris Crawford's amazing 1992 dragon speech—and the two years of research and development Ghost Story has committed to solving the problem. He avoided too many specifics, but cited an inspiration we expected a lot of developers to draw from back when it released.

"The game that I think inspired me most—that we were maybe onto something, on the right track—was Shadow of Mordor, with the Nemesis system, which was my favorite part of the game," said Levine. That system empowered boss enemies who fought or killed the player, generating stories about their rise through the ranks which players could track as they hunted them.

"And that's a very limited, rudimentary approach to it that covers a very narrow area, but boy, when I sort of understood that I could kill whatever orc boss I wanted in whatever order I wanted, and really drive who I would kill and who I would convert, all that stuff—it's more of a meta-narrative and there's not a lot of dialogue support for that stuff, so our thing is much more ambitious.

"I haven't seen that much about [sequel Shadow of War], and I'm guessing they're probably going to double down on that, because I thought that was incredibly successful. That sort of gave us, 'OK, maybe we're not completely crazy in what we're trying to do.'"

Levine expanded on his thoughts during a Q&A session, saying that the studio's goal is to achieve "radical recognition."

"Like in Mordor, the player does something, [and] the game, as often as we can, should recognize that accomplishment or failure or whatever it is and find ways to have the world feed back that it cares," he said.

Responding to another question, Levine indicated that the game won't be designed like a Telltale game, which branch out as players choose actions and responses. Rather, it will be "a deeply systemic game," he said, describing a seemingly traditional narrative that can "react and comment on much more small level actions the player takes."

You can watch the whole interview on Twitch , and watch more EGX streams live throughout Saturday.

 

[A horse of course]

He talked about this years ago in a talk. IIRC someone in the audience later asked him how it differed from STALKER's factional relationships and he spilled spaghetti everywhere.

 

[Ash]

The old brigade bringing their old school ethos to modern gaming back and refined is the only reason why I still give a shit about gaming.

In which alternative reality is this happening?

Just ignore Morgoth's posts and rate them

He's probably even a closeted Bioshock fanboy.

There's a small portion of modern games floating about that can inspire any giving of shits, but modern "immersive sims" don't fall under that category. Not so far anyway.

 

[Space Insect]

I like how the idiot who made this video thinks "wounded knee" is an allusion to Skyrim rather than an actual historic event. Looks like Bioshock is the perfect game for him after all.

I'm pretty sure that the joke was that most of these "educated" players would think that it was a Skyrim reference rather than a real thing. One would think that if the person making the video lacked the knowledge of the actual event, he would not have included the joke.

 

[Mastermind]

I like how the idiot who made this video thinks "wounded knee" is an allusion to Skyrim rather than an actual historic event. Looks like Bioshock is the perfect game for him after all.

I'm pretty sure that the joke was that most of these "educated" players would think that it was a Skyrim reference rather than a real thing. One would think that if the person making the video lacked the knowledge of the actual event, he would not have included the joke.

No, that makes no sense. The rest of the video makes fun of how simplistic the game (or rather, that one "puzzle" that happens before the game even really starts) is and pretends it's some intellectual masterpiece. The author thinking "wounded knee" really is a skyrim reference makes perfect sense in this context.