Judas Interview: How Ken Levine Is Building on BioShock With 'Narrative LEGOs'

you are the frog in a pot boiling so slowly you don't even know what's happening but I'm here set you free hey everybody Ryan mcaffry with IGN I am coming to you from an undisclosed location in the Boston area uh with my friend Jeff Keeley Jeff you're here because a we like you B you revealed the game that we're here to talk about on the game awards that's right at game awards uh 2022 we had the honor of revealing the next game from Ken LaVine um which is named Judi and you and I got a chance to play uh four or five hours of yesterday yes which was quite an experience but the thing is you know even though we shown these trailers I think everyone sees them oh it feels like it's Bioshock in space but there's so much to the game and the world and no one has had a chance really to sort of dive beyond the trailer but today I think we have that opportunity don't yeah Ken you were kind enough Ken LaVine the creative director on Judas you know him from Bioshock BioShock Infinite my favorite K Lan games System Shock 2 from 1999 which I know dates me a little bit but what are you going to do everybody loves the old hits uh Ken thanks for inviting us down to play the game and let's let's talk about this thing let's talk about Judah shall we y so I want to start with the macro here um video games especially the bigger Blockbuster games that you are known for making they take a long time to make they take longer than ever y but this game uh it's been now we're we're past the 10 year mark since BioShock Infinite so can you tell us kind of just what's taken so long and I mean that with with all due respect because totally is it have you have you started and scrapped a couple things or has it been trying to crack this this big idea that I know we're going to talk a lot about here over that time like talk to us about about this journey well yeah you would know probably more the people because I remember I showed it you game on the Whiteboard sort of like my my whiteboard drawing of it and it's evolved a bunch since then but the the core ideas have really fundamentally remained the same and that give you a sense of the Genesis and then I can take you through why the why the time period um and um so a lot of it came with all of our games I think we're trying to solve the thing that we wanted in the previous game but weren't able to do so for ghost story what I've always liked to do was create characters and worlds you know even going back to Thief when I work down thief the first thing I you know I started with is like this fil Noir kind of character and that you know that setting that fantasy Noir setting you know so i' I've always been very interested in character because that's how I come to film but characters are really hard to do in games because of all the things that games do combat rate games do exploration green but characters really tough you could write it as cutscenes but those are sort of rigid and you know you're sort of get what you get and the player doesn't get interact with it much so a lot of games have most of Storytelling happening in in in in non-interactive cut scenes that's never really been my thing but then you left these challenges of how do you can be a character if you're not cutting to these big dramatic scenes so you know for one of the reasons I was so excited about getting the opportunity to System Shock too is System Shock one had I think at that point with the best characters in video game to Showdown sure so when I got my opportunity to dig my claw into that character I was like I need to bring her more to the Forefront I need to get the a player to have a direct relationship with it and we move from a enemy in System Shock one to sort of a friend ofy relationship in System Shock 2 I show and that was super fun I had Cher brosus who's amazing actress and so we're really able to make that relationship core but still she was essentially a bunch of audio files you know in the game and you didn't really see her and she was just talking to you through very fixed bits and there was only one choice you really made with her I think she tells you not to go into a room at some point then you can or you you can't you discover some horrible things she did if you do go in and she punishes you for that and Gab love that moment so I wanted to you know so I like so the next game I was like okay you know how do we ring more character the next sort of big first person you know environmental game we did was Bioshock and Graphics had evolved at that point enough where the world could be a character but also we could bring Alice we could bring Andrew Ryan in we could bring Tenon Bal in but they were all pretty much behind glass the most developed characters in that game were quite big daddy little sister but they weren't like dialogue characters yeah but you saw them in the world in their ambient place and they feel like they Liv there and belong there but we were still like well you don't really have a character that you interact with who's not really effectively in a cut scene so with infinite Elizabeth was the big push like how do we get you to have a companion character who you really feel like you're going on this journey with you're seeing her evolve you're seeing her change and I remember we got to this point on the gain development which is fairly late in the development and I was like I said something really dumb the kind of thing that everybody would Gran at when you're late in development she like you'll be really cool guys what if um you know what if you Elizabeth could get mad at you and she could say well screw you Booker I hate all this stuff you've done and I'm gonna bail and it came out of my mouth and I was like oh my God we can't do any of that because BioShock Infinite was a basically a fairly linear pretty almost entirely linear experience we we try to tell great story you on Rails and yeah that was the script yeah they were nice they were super nice rails like think I hope I hope people think they were nice El but we didn't have that opportunity to you knew Elizabeth but she didn't really know you she knew Booker but she didn't know you so the next question was and the biggest problem is like well if you do something different how does the world heal itself like if the player takes a radically different path and the levels were all handcrafted and pretty constructive so I was like well how do you solve that problem and I went and I had to think about it and um I end up doing a talk at GDC you know I think 2014 The Narrative Lego right yeah yeah that was that was what it was called yeah and and the metaphor is basically like Lego it's you've got a bunch of these precrafted bricks right and they're really welld designed and the bricks know how to communicate with each other they know how to interface with each other and and this is you know and this is the genius but you can build how many things can you build out of those bricks right so you have a bunch of handcrafted elements but they can they they come with them a set of rules based upon how they combine so you can make almost anything and and you're saying story not just the actual arure right it's like both pieces of it right it's like how does a narrative yeah so so so taking the Lego metaphor we started thinking well could we use handcrafted elements but are not huge entire level but sub elements like lines of speech pieces of art um texture Maps um encounters loot um even the layout of the whole experience yeah and make those out of modular chunks and then teach the game we call it pseudo procedural because it's not like Minecraft where everything's being generated off a you know a set of a set of pure mathematical heris stics you build all these smaller pie elements in the game and then you teach the game how to make good good levels essentially and good story and good story and re and most importantly reactive to what you do so when you decide to go I'm not going I'm going I'm not doing that I'm going all the way over here then the game knows what to do because in BioShock Infinite the game just would have panicked and said I can't do that I can't do any of that and so but that was a major R&D task because you know again the gamer may not care about the sort of you know there's some Gamers I think are super interested in that low level of detail but the gamer just wants the great experience for us the goal is how do you give the gamer a game that knows them as well as they know the game so I'm I'm guessing that cracking that new problem because I don't think anybody's really done that at least on the the scale and and the the way in which you're attempting to do it guessing that took longer than you thought it was going to take that's right cuz I think it was for a while the perception was that oh Ken's like not going to make big Blockbuster triaa stuff anymore he's going to scale way down into something smaller was that a correct perception so I definitely didn't want to do like infinite I think I think I had this idea that I wanted to like make this massive thing that appealed to a huge audience we made it much more action oriented and the scale got huge and the team got huge and I thought and I wanted to make something that wasn't as Blockbuster you I didn't want to do another huge like action movie because I did it and I was exciting but then I'm like okay I did that and I wanted to turn more back into the player interaction the player having more of a voice in it and at first I thought like you said it was going to be like oh we do this sort of double a thing and be kind of experimental but then I guess I don't know myself very well because as I started we start to develop the world and the setting well first of all the technical problem I don't know if I was surprised by the challenge of the technical actually we had had certain things very early on like you probably recognize it how the lines of speech are strung together you saw a version of that very very early on they sort of the sort of Lego of the of the dialogue and the environment you so very early version of so those those series tested out very early about how the Lego pieces are going to come together yeah but then as I started thinking about who is Judas what is this ship she's on who are the characters and first we had very very different takes on all those characters um but Judas was more consistent I started falling in love with the world and I started seeing more and more opportunity to tell a bigger story not a roller coaster ride in the same way as before but more of a player a deeper player interaction driven world but yeah I guess it kind of scaled I mean to me having played it I mean it feels like it's as big or bigger than infinite in terms of some of the it does seem like it's going to be longer than the 15 to is hours that that infinite was sure ter of qu I think that's look I also take that so I remember when I was young and I didn't have any money I remember when I buy a game and I would spend you know especially back then you spend $50 on Nintendo cardridge or something like that and that was you know I don't know what $50 is now you know back then it was a lot of money and I'm working you know eight hour dollar an hour job I really it mattered to me that that game had a lot half to it and another thing I think I was frustrated with my own work was that the Limited amount of play time you got out of those games too now you could pad something out forever and that's you know I could have made collect a million you know like you know you know shot glasses or something throughout it but you know that's not really an organic way to manage that I did want to give the player an experience a entirely single player oriented you know no kind of like the games I came up with you'd buy a game you'd get the game and you play the game and that was the that yes personal experience yeah although we each have we'll talk about I'm sure but we also have unique personal experiences is cool about but but you know not dependent upon needing revenue and all those things it's totally understandable like I I totally understand because games are super expensive but I'm lucky the t2 was winning I would hey I want to do a single player game but no online component no multiplayer component that's entirely focused on how can you make a single player experience different for every single player that plays it well I got to ask on that note I know some some people probably don't super care about the business side of things but you know Jeff you and I have been doing this for a while I I'm fascinated by the fact that that take two has it speaks well to them they've completely left you alone for a decade like I I think a lot of developers a lot of companies you'd have been cancelled three four years ago at this point and and you you actually you're not under the 2K Banner you're not under the private division Banner you're not under the Rockstar Banner you're like your own little satellite we're like the pipsqueak of take one one game one label basically how how have you gotten take two to just kind of let you do your thing uninterrupted for this long I say to has a I think a long has a long Vision you know they know that new IP is really important because you know you don't you can only ride on existing IP for so long they've got some amazing IP you know you saw the GTA sure completely blew up people are still super excited but eventually somebody you know you need a company need to be producing you know the new you know the new new stuff and it's really hard especially in shipa space with that those kind of that kind of money to do that and so I think I hadn't done enough you know i' been with the company long enough they I had built up enough trust by shipping you know some a couple of big games for them that and also I have a good enough relationship with the management that I'm extremely transparent about you know expectations and sure they probably have liked it that go faster I'm I'm totally understandable I'm sure they would have but I you know I just keep them in the loop I I I say you guys want to come play the game you guys want to see any documents and you know generally they they take a more hands-off approach but they you know we do regular meeting of them going financials and all that stuff so we keep them we're extremely transparent and I think that really helps in they're they value transparency and I think they also know what they're good at and they know what I'm good at and so they they put put a lot of faith in me I don't know if anybody else would have cuz even with my you know I have a reasonably good track record it's still a lot of trust and I I deeply appreciate that I mean they they must believe that you've got something here if it's if it's been this long and they're still fully behind you mean that they clearly believe in you at this point yeah I think they believe you know they know they not only know the game but they know what I'm trying to do with this sort this Lego thing um and because it's a model for how to it's a different model how to build these types of games on top of that so I'm sure they see that potentially it's not just this game we can also use that technology we sort of built an engine of how to generate content and populate content in the game in a very different way than anybody said it before part of it is it's your personal experience but also I imagine it's going to be something that's even more replayable as a single player game right and that's the thing I get excited about because we play a lot of these amazing single player games like oh I'm done I played through story and I mean not to give it all away but do you imagine this is the kind of thing where when it's done is the kind of thing you're going to go through experience Ryan and I will have a different experience that we'll talk about but then I probably will want you imagine people wanting to go back and replay and have different experiences yeah think we could probably should talk about in the context of the experience you guys had you know we talk about like your relationship with these these characters The Big Three yeah we should yeah probably set it up about these trailers are there's a lot in those trailers and the funny thing was when we you know I had come a couple years ago and seen and played some of it before we did the trailer and it was the trailer I people saw it and they're like oh looks cool looks you know high production value we said Bioshock in space that's a great thing we showed at game awards to the creator of Bioshock everyone went crazy but you know in that trailer there are their characters and it's so interesting is it how this plays out so maybe yeah just I mean I don't think you've had a chance to even just say like you you know what is the setting of this game who is Judas like give us a little bit of preview because then I think we can get into like our experience but and it all ties into the narrative Lego thing too we try to do things a little differently like an infinite we rolled it out with this huge event in New York yep and it was just me showing video yeah and they had to put a lot of faith in me and I think we listen to our audience they like we don't want the flash we don't want the bomb Bast we just want to see the game so you know as you guys know better than anybody when I started talking to you about this is like I don't want to tell you about the game I want you guys to come play the game and we gave you a build in progress you know it's you know it's not a e3 demo it is just a giant chunk of the game warts and all um because you just want to see you know it's not finished and so you know you guys encountered your fair show bugs and gray boxes and stuff like that and this is not you know it's not a spoiling but I don't think it's the Bioshock world this is a new world right it's entirely it's an entirely new world how experience and we and we knew when we showed the trailer your thing and we did this the other trailer recently at the Sony think that people are going to not see well okay we see it's another cool world you know hopefully cool world cool characters cool art style but they I guess I want and we had to keep our mouth shut about what makes us so different right so who actually is Judas yeah that's a good interesting question because we we want to to something a little different this time because in our previous games you know BioShock Infinite and and Bioshock you're sort of a character who ends up in these places through happen stance and well without too many spoilers you think you're a complete stranger to those places and you get the opportunity to learn about them at the same time the players Le learning about them where in Judas you're born on this Colony ship this Colony ship that's going from a dying Earth um to proximus centari which is a you know a many many it's a generational Journey it's a it's a multigenerational journey and you're actually born on the ship into the society and so we have this interesting challenge of you've got a backstory in this place you have a history in this place you know the characters in the place and um you fall into the shoes of this person who's act completely Central to the story and actually is the person who caused the events that caused the collapse of the ship as compared to like Rapture where you're coming into a place that's already the ship has collapsed or what like what's the state of it yeah when you come you know when you wake up you know you guys saw the beginning of the game the ship is in a state of collapse you're literally the last human being potentially alive in the universe um and you start the game and you you know curious to your experience you start the game we talk because you said born ship but then I one of the first things you see in the game is you kind of look over and you're sort of like a Westworld kind of thing where you're being printed out or we have footage of it that's probably playing right now we're talking so what so yeah you say born on the ship but you're kind of reborn or what is like are you are you a you said human it's like you're a printed human well yeah so there's this technology called reprinting um on the ship and that's the promise they have because it's a generational Journey like how do you get people on a generational Journey if you're going to die in a [ __ ] spaceship you know you know the middle of space because they have this technology which is untested until the very first moment of the game it's theoretical called reprinting now it's basically um you know you've seen 3D printers right um imagine if you could map the human body down to the molecular level and you could had a sophisticated enough you know you even see they're printing organs now um human organs they're printing pretty simple organs because you know you're basically making copies of organs very rudimentary copies of organs but if you knew and you saw the crystal in judas's hand right of course yeah it's that's a recording device that's recording your molecular State at every second of your life it's a huge data storage device and they use that essentially The Matrix to use sophisticated organic 3D printing to reprint you after you've died at any arbitrary moment in your history yeah now we get into some philosophical stuff here because like you know in an entirely material materialistic Universe your memories your personality your experiences the they're really just chemicals in your body they proteins and their you know um their salts and the and the water you know all those things and if you could re make a duplicate of that exactly is the thing that's being printed did you or can you modify it well that's what that's another thing that happens in the game you see when when you start your Crystal has been damaged so you reprinted without certain of your memories right they're like there Tetris blocks that are kind of missing remov you may be experiencing severe loss of memory when you start the game you know you die do you actually learn that right away so you're being printed back from the dead so for a brief period of time there was nobody alive on the ship and then part of the journey is discovering what happened to you um because you're missing some of those spe you know most of your experience you know most of your memory you know these characters you're interacting with the big through you have a long and detailed history with them and a very contentious history with them um but you've also coming back and you need to get off the ship because as I said the ship is it's a sinking ship Story the ship is in an asteroid field it's orbiting Proxima you can't get down to Proxima that's all Judith wants she needs to get off the ship before it sinks and the ship is actually dynamically sinking through the course of the game based upon these asteroid fields that you have to deal with on you know as you explore the surface of the ship and the ship's getting more damage and getting more dangerous over time but you are but every time you die you can be reprinted and who's reprinting is that the ship reprinting you or someone is choosing to reprint you it's well you you'll you'll I don't want to do too many spoilers but you'll find out you know know originally there was a uh there is a basically they have enough juice it's a tastes a very rare element which only appeared as coming from meteorite on Earth but they think it's abundant on Proxima to do that printing process they had enough for one uhuh and for some reason what you find out Judas and she's called Judas for a reason on this ship she is probably as you could tell the least popular most hated person on the ship you are the least most the outcast the Judas of the ship ship the trader to the mission as they call it the mission to get Proxima who's been the biggest problem in the ship for some reason you think the most desirable person will be printed for some reason the least the ship printed the person who's the biggest outcast on the ship to try to solve this problem J stands for judice cu the tagline remember the first trailer was fix what you broke I think yep so you know the inciting event as you go through the experience early learning you you probably have seen it you you can get hints that SHO is the one who caused the you are the one who caused the collapse of the ship and figure out why that is is you know part of the experiment but very early on and I want to stump on your guys experience you get a sense of who she is and her role on the ship and what people thought of her on the ship and why she's called the judice what's the penalty for treason boy but the narrative then really gets further driven and maybe not primarily necessarily but maybe equally driven by you've already mentioned the big three which we're in that first trailer yeah and we yeah we should talk about those characters and the actors and yeah yeah you've got this constant push and pull of make one happy yeah to the other two get mad make side with one of them and one of them gets mad one of them's like saying okay cool I'm glad you did that so there's the this tug of war that's going on that kind of ties into not kind of it absolutely ties into the the the narrative Lego thing you're talking about and they're ejected into the world y yeah you find it early on their physical bodies have been destroyed by an asteroid strike you actually get to see that happen but you got to start by just telling who they are from the trailers we don't know who they are so you can see them up there they were the people who were running the ship um they all sort of had a different department which they ran uh Tom on the left was responsible for like Safety and Security on the ship and making sure everything went smoothly Nefertiti um Dr oek or Nefertiti oek was a ro famous biologist who is responsible for keeping people alive on the ship um because life in space is really complicated you may have heard of like I think there was a a twin who was on in the International Space Station and he came back from space with his genetics altered enough because being in space that he's no longer effectively a twin wow with this twin really because because he his cells are mutated I mean space there's a huge amount of problems also life they don't know exactly life on proxy comp like we don't really know even now like with sophisticated telescopes and everything they have guesses about what planets are going to be like so she's got to deal with the problems of keeping people alive in space keeping people alive on Proxima U so she's responsible for the Health and Welfare of people on the ship and hope hope is responsible for sort of the she's everybody's best friend everybody's counselor everybody's shrink and she's also the ship's Matchmaker because as you probably learned that family and matchmaking and romance is extremely different on this ship and um she is takes a very heavy hand in that and what happens um and Judas is involved in this Judas reveals to them and then to everybody else that they're not people actually they're robots they didn't know that nobody on the ship knew that and that Revelation causes them to all go through sort of a different each of them goes through a different kind of existential crisis and the whole ship collapses because the leader figures collapse with this new knowledge imagine being told none of you know Ryan Jeff none of your achievements are your own none of your accomplish none of your memories are your own that just sends them down a crazy spiral all three of them and that's Judas did that she discovers what they are she exposes to the world and to them what they are and that is one of the thing that causes the collapse of the ship your mission has failed Tom the flesh was not meant to survive on proxim now there's still room for you in the mission NE I swear don't you ever call me that again and so you now have to you know when you're on the sinking ship you also know that the only way down to Proxima is through this asteroid field but a human can't pilot that ship down to Proxima so you need one of your essentially one of your free worst enemies to who have this you know they're machines so they have you know Pico second reflexes and you know ability to use lar and all these other things to navigate the field so they need you to get down to proxim because they all have a different vision of what the future of the mission you know what we call Capital and Mission the future of getting Humanity to proxim is they all have a different vision for it now they used to be they were a family essentially um you know EK and Tom were married and hope was their adoptive daughter so they have a family that used to be now they're all broken up in a loggerheads with each other and so you're negotiating with the three of them they serve a similar role in some to Elizabeth that they're these companions you interact with the world but their opinions of you is constantly shifting and constantly changing and the world is reconfiguring itself to account for your relationship with them don't you speak to her like that or what Dad you listen to me hit the bricks Tom I am telling you the [ __ ] bricks are you helping if every time you help Tom you're pissing off Nefertiti and you're pissing off hope um every time you help hope you're pissing off the other two and you're they're constantly in this sort of this this this this this conflict with the three of them but also learning about them building friendships and you know imagine being stuck in the situation in a Lifeboat with your worst enemy and having to learn maybe the things you thought about them the assumptions you made about them weren't entirely true maybe you get to learn about what they had to go through their challenges in life and how they became such a thorn in your side and you became a thorn in their side and it's really a journey of Discovery please do this for me Judas help me end this thing but you're not going to have that relationship with all three of them in a single playthrough you're going to learn the more you say if you ended up you know you go through the experience and and you don't you don't choose somebody at the beginning right to to go that's why I love that it's there all those sort three story lines are running in parallel Y and then you're interacting with them and we see these moments like when we were playing it's like sometimes you know early on there's that sort of scene with the you know the three of them in a family so it's like they know each other but then they're breaking off and they're talking to you individually right there moments where they'll project in and I had one where like I was trying to get fuel for the ship and then because Tom was upset with me he like you know pushed it away and I didn't get it and things like that because he was upset that I was spending more time with one of the other characters these are sort of living Dynamic relationships with all three of and that's all the narrative Lego stuff right yeah it's effect absolutely um like the moment he described you know they'll if they're pissed of you there's a whole range of actions they can do they Sab yeah you were trying to get fuel to get around the surface using there's a you talk more about a minute how you navigate the surface of the ship you can you have the ability to navigate the surface ship and choose where you go it's a very nonlinear experience but you were trying to get fuel for your craft and Thomas pissed you and I'm sure he warned you ahead of time you keep doing this [ __ ] and I really needed that fuel I went up to the station to get the fuel and then he like literally knocked it away breaks it yeah and and that's all all those moments basically out you know once you get past first couple of hours or so it all that stuff is dynamic those scenes can happen anywhere you know and there's tons of those different kinds of interactions the dialogue can happen anywhere they appear to you their physical bodies have been destroyed by an asteroid head and part of the challenge you have to find backups to their physical bodies so they can p the ship and they're appearing to you as Holograms right now but they can appear anywhere they're not like in cutcenes you know you don't have to watch them in cut scenes they will appear wherever you walk wherever you look I love you're not stuck cuz you kind of keep traveling through lest project as you you don't have to sit there and watch the scenes for the most part they're just appearing to you they can even appear with each other and argue and argue or or discuss things with each other and again because they're not pure enemies they still love each other but they're they're at loggerheads in this situation it's a broken you know they have a sort of a broken family story but to what you're saying the game all those events and then we have so many of these different types of events I think of it as like notes and quarts so like these individual events you know whether it's Tom getting mad at you or sometimes you'll be in a fight and you know nefti will pop up and take over control of a turret and start destroying your enemies for you because you've been helping her out and she really appreciates that or you're stealthing around and you think you're being really stealthy and Hope's mad at you and she'll show up and say like hey hey she's over here and that's not a cut scene that's not a bespoke situation those are all Dynamic moments at the Lego you know these are that's a Lego concept right her breaking stealth for you or her helping you with stealth right you know all these things you know depending on how they feel about you those things can happen anywhere and the whole world is seated with basically sockets where all typ you know whether it's a piece of furniture whether it's a poster whether it's an encounter whether it's treasure whether it's one of these moments where they interact with whether it's dialogue scene these can happen anywhere and what the most interesting thing is they combine in completely unique ways because all these things are like Lego pieces so they're not a chunk of content we're loading in it is tiny little bits of things that can mix together I remember I mentioned notes and chords a minute ago so I think of these as notes but what is a core right a note is a series yeah it's a series of notes and the sum is greater the whole is greater than the sum of its parts the C Harmony is another thing like that and we come back to the theme of Harmony many times that you have that when you have all these little Lego pieces you know they're not very impressive right you know our Lego pieces are more impressive by time showing up and breaking any machine anywhere you know or doing one of his other things but because they're mixing with other things that are happening at the same time which are not which are created independent of each other the the system brings them together to make these larger chords that make unique moments like you didn't have that moment and somebody else could have had that moment but in a completely different context in a different level with it you know in a different state with a with a big three a different you know a different standing say because you can see you also track your relationships with yeah I was just say because there's like almost a reputation system term with each character so is is the goal as a player to sort of keep everyone happy or eventually you're going to you know it feels like I'm going down One path of one character someone else is trying to convince me to go down that path them so that that interplay between all of them that's kind of what you want right is that you're kind of it's not like you pick one path as you said and then the other two characters disappear it's like they're in your face they're trying to convince you so it's like are you trying to I mean everyone will play differently but it's the idea that there's going to be that constant back and forth that you have to sort of manage that you know man just s an equilibrium or do you feel like eventually you're going to go in One Direction well eventually I won't say too much about what happens but late in the game you can't keep that up forever you can't keep everybody Happ eventually you got to you gota you got to make a choice but we want to give the player the opportunity to facilitate them taking their time with that playing one off the other um you know you know you'll and the game knows like if you know if you're really behind with Tom he might show up and give you a bribe and say hey if you go over this District I'll give you a great reward but stop working for Nefertiti and he'll also know what you're doing for Nefertiti so he can reference the specific thing you're doing and that's right they do have they do seem to all have kind of total knowledge of what's happening right so like he knows what you're doing with the other characters yeah they're they're they're paying pretty close attention and they're aware and they they get frustr you know in the same way you know you're you're you're you're still out there you know playing you're dating right and somebody wants to get you know they all want to get married and they're getting frustrated with you and eventually you know um people won't wait forever and you'll find out what happens what happens is pretty intense um down the road but we're not yeah that's something what we want to save you know when we were playing through you kind of go through you know not not to spoil too much of it but you sort of go through you know learning about Judas and then you start to meet these characters and you first meet Tom right and you kind of introduce to each character in their stories but then very quickly as you said it starts to get more Dynamic where we should probably talk about the app too right that sort of overall yeah we we'll get to that because there's the whole yeah you know what I'm I'm hoping that we're accomplishing here is trying to paint the picture for people of how this really kind of builds past Bioshock yes you know because like you said that's more of a a relatively on Rails yeah experience and so you know we've been talking about the the these these big three and the motivations and tugging and the sort of tug of war back and forth so it's not you know we've seen procedurally generated levels like I'm a big Diablo fan and Diablo's been procedurally generating dungeons for 25 years but what's what's really interesting in Judas is that you're procedurally or you're you're narratively Lego assembling the actual story as you go not the the macro maybe but the micro y of the story and like I don't know we were talking after after our session yesterday Jeff and I I actually and I'm not just saying this because you're sitting like I I kind of I forgot that it's that it was all sort of procedurally constructed as I went like it well and the levels too right not just the yeah the geometry but the actual the The Narrative bits too we didn't want the audience to have any we didn't want the audience to pay a price for the pseudo proceduralism like that they were getting a less interesting looking level or very repetitive thing and that's why we sort of use this hybrid model of we handcraft elements and then that are very handcrafted but then but they're beautiful cinematic moments like there's a I think we have footage one of the ones where classic kind of Bioshock caliber and Judas memories those are the crystal so there's one moment where like you get some of her memories you get to play those which are the EET sort of big crazy moments but then as you said with these moments of the big three those levels as you said feel handcrafted and as you said I think there are things where posters change and other things that but then like the narrative also as you said I think is it it has to like you know when I was talking about Shock Infinite the problem was the world couldn't heal itself if we wanted the player to do something different oh I don't want to go down this Corridor I'm going to go over here like the game would be like no no so we had to you know I think you know if you're ask a bullet point the big differences you know I think in terms of the Bioshock vents they to get those big story moments I'm sure like you know you saw like the drop ship sequence and you try to go down approxima and you run into the asteroid field um you know the very big moments but then and those are more bespoke but then as you go on to the game you the story becomes massively reactive to you and and massively Dynamic and you're going to have a very different experience and you're going to have but I think that we we didn't want the player to pay the price ready of this so we we wanted what do what do people I think what do people expect out of us they expect a really detailed world that feels lived in feels believable feels purposeful you know like a society that's thought through that it's not just like oh you the evil empire overlords blah but how did this you know why did this sort of dark [ __ ] up world evolve like was it just somebody was evil or was there a series of Necessities you know about life in space that led to this kind of terrible situation where you're at the bottom of the barrel of this culture we people expect that from us and and we wanted to do that in environment where the finger the players's fingerprint had a massive imprint on their experience and that's you know when you ask about why 10 years that's a large part of it about four or five years of that that was just R&D of the rudimentary technology to allow for that because I don't want to ask the player I think originally I was sort of like well you know it would be an experiment but I was like well for our fans they want to have one of our kinds of games but they I want to give them something where they have they're a much greater driving factor and that really you can't fake that it really took us to go rethink how we make games build you know we have a environmental decorations a modular environment decoration system a spawning system treasure loot narrative beats interactions with the leaders um you know how you generate the maps how you generate the layout of the surface of the ship that you move around on the macro moving around the surface of the ship that's all being done through a bunch of heris dynamically reactive to all the things you do and it was a huge amount of work and that's I think why people that's why that's why you don't see that a lot of this because most companies wouldn't fund yeah that's the bottom business line I guess and I'm really lucky and really I'm super lucky that I had somebody believe in that because I think it would have been probably as you said most other companies it would have been too much of a risk especially you know when you're talking about s AAA production B yes yeah I mean there's there's a there's a few more layers we got to get into you mentioned Jeff the the sort of the ship layer I mean the Mayflower is like the size of a major American city would you say right like it's this it's not just like a little you know ship from Alien right it's it's like a whole it's it's a colony ship that had to carry a massive opulation so it's effectively a city and you know unlike Rapture Colombia it's not just a city where you're sort of seeing the fake stuff in the distance when you look out the windows and you see different districts out the window when you actually Traverse the surface of the ship those are all real and those are places you can go to it's not I wouldn't say it's an open world game in the sense it's you don't like get in 3D vehicle and drive around sort of you know you guys can tell me your impressions of how you travel around between I I I don't think we should ruin how you get around it's really good yeah but but I do think as you said that part of what I love about is you know your other games have been amazing linear stories and you know there you can move around the environments but this when you do get to you know sort of a little bit later in the game you do get to you know you have choice in sort of where you go right so it's not fully open world but they're definitely like you know missions or opportunities with the big three or others where you can go off and you can you know you can play that in any order you want right and there is this sort of it's almost like a it is kind of like a a topdown isometric sort of strategy map almost that appears and allows you to sort of navigate around you have to think about like you know how many steps do you have and you run out of fuel and so that that I I assume even though we've only played four or five hours of it I assume that becomes a big part of the game is sort of deciding how you're going to play and navigate through so you're moving around the ship but it's I it's sort of a fast travel in a way but it's sort of done on this this strategy layer yeah you want to go right to different districts and when you arrive at District then you're in a full sort of Bioshock style level you know where you can fully explore but there's resources on that traversal do you know what do you pick up you know where how do you spend your fuel do you want to get to this District or you know do you want to work for Tom over here but he's really far away and host offer you the special reward but you really have a good relationship with tomm you don't want to piss them off so you're making all these choices about these relationships but also about you know the needing resources because Judith is a engineer she's you know one of the things about her you probably figure out early is she is a sort of in a society where nobody's allowed you know I think one of the themes you can sense is that automation has taken over is a major component of the ship in fact that the the ship is literally run by machines even though they didn't know they were machines because you know the guy who created the ship knew people wouldn't accept that so he faked it and made machines I thought they were people but Judas nobody's to know about technology on the ship because they don't want people to know about technology because they don't want people to find out that the you know the truth about the ship they don't want people to do exactly what Judas did which to screw everything up she sort of like you know the Newtons and the and the and the vines of their time where there was no real colleges that taught these kind of things you know they had University thing but these are really people in all the early inventures and I they said were self-trained essentially and Judas trains herself and becomes a brilliant engineer and part of the game I think that's really fun is that you get to see her get inspired you know what do engineers do engineers solve problems they see inefficiencies and they improve on things and Judith is constantly seeing efficiency seeing problems and then engineering solutions that eventually through a process of what we call brainstorming she eventually gets the ability to actually use that 3D printer to make well you see that when you're in combat or something and they'll be all a sudden you know she'll there'll be this little thought bubble it pops up right which is one of those great well and and on that note too you know because we still haven't even talked about the core game the mechanics yeah there's a lot I know I know we've been showing the b-roll that people get a good sense of it as as we've been talking but um the the other sort of major differentiating factor I think compared to your previous games is without giving the details away which because the details in a Ken LaVine game are best experienced yourself and not spoiled by any by us but the there is a roguelike loop to this game where you do improve yourself and you can improve you can improve between runs there is Health around but it's scarce and it's not always easy to to get to uh before before expiring before before you Keel over uh due to the enemies which I actually I really want to talk about the enemy design in this game too but can you start by by talking about the the Rog likee Loop here yeah like I think like all things we never set out like when we did s sh two we never were like let's make an RPG to compete with with Might and Magic or with Ultima we think of game Design Elements as tools to help tell a story like we call internally it's really refining on we call a Judith simulator we're not trying to make a first-person shooter we're not trying to make a Rob like we're not trying to make you know as you said a strategy game we use elements and I've always done this I've taken elements from different places you know sister shaku was pulling RPGs and Shooters together um I wasn't trying to make the most RPG of RPGs of all time I just want to give the players choices and how they grow so yeah as you said when you die in this game and I don't want to talk super much about what that narrative experience is because it's pretty people are going to be pretty surprised by it about what that is but yes you do have the opportunity when you die to go change yourself improve yourself increase you know the your tool change your tool um chest which is a pretty Broad and very tool chest and change the the Mayflower yeah itself um and I won't get into a ton of details but as you're going through the game you know there's a lot I won't say too much but there's a bit of game development in the game you know there's a bit of that vibe in the game and um I want yeah I don't want to say too much oh with the modifiers they said when you you know you basically can reprint yourself back in the M but you can modify elements of you and other things as you sort of go back in for that next run the feel and and so and so you know we use a term here go that goes like we try to fail forward you know so you're learning death is not the end in Judas right you you get reprinted but and you get reprinted better and you're earning resources you know as you play to do that reprinting and you and it's not like you're it's not like everybody does the same thing you can you know how you improve yourself is you know you have resources you can spend but the narrative upgrad somewhere right I felt very much upgrade screen where I was kind deciding how I was going just like you know portion my points right yep yeah and I think we want to we're going to push further in allowing players to really you know because like our other games there's stealth components there's you know sort of a left-hand power component there's the weapons there's environmental interactions you know and we're all sort of new and improved versions of all those that's also that we you know said R we'll talk about that's the very Bioshock nature of like you know the hand powers and I mean it feels me a combat feels great and that's all what we would which is probably why the trailer had a lot of people thinking it was Bioshock in space cuz the more the moment to moment combat is going to look fairly familiar there's Firepower there you know ice power I mean it's like all that stuff there might be oil on the ground that's that's leaked from a a barrel that you can if you've got the the Firepower you can the literal Firepower you can ignite that yeah and now we have this new hacking system in the game which is you know Bioshock we had hacking but it's basically it was a pipe treat you know it was like a mini game yep where we now have a system like you know in BioShock you sort of have the left hand powers and the right hand powers and now we have an additional Judith is a hacker and so she has this sort of Fairly dynamic system where she could mix sort of nouns and verbs to create effects like for instance oil like in BioShock you find oil six on ground you can make an enemy leak oil create Dynamic oil puddles on the ground as you're leaking around you can make them you can infect them with viruses I don't know if you I don't know if we have that part in the game yet but yeah infect them with viruses and they will socialize with each other you can destruct them and they'll go play cards with each other when you find you find them all you want to hack and then just describe you sort of hack in it sort of pauses the game and you get to kind of put together your mixture yeah whether it's aggressive or passive yep Y and and they can do things like terrify each other like you one Ro we walk around all other ones we terrified them and running away or be terrified of their enemies and you're using that like you know what we try to do is keep giving the player control over the environment so they can see an encounter that kind of looks overwhelming at first they look at their tool chest and like okay how am I go go about this and you know hacking is just another tool for that but like you said I don't think I'm not going to pretend like we're not doubling down on things we've done before because I think know that stuff works I think people like that the moment to moment is going to feel familiar to but also I think as you said with the hacking I think it feels like it's you know progressed from like the familiar that we like but then it's just adding a new element the mix with the hacking and then obviously the powers and the upgrades of Judas I mean there's a lot going on like I don't know if we'll have the footage to show what I'm about to ask you about but like what's what you know you're playing the game every day what's your favorite kind of go two power right now that you're willing to reveal let's say I think I can't reveal the one I'm I'm most favorite about but what I keep pushing for in the team he's pushing for is how do we put our elements in the environment that allow you to um control take control of the envir that feels really powerful when you take control of the environment like you make an oil leak on a guy socialize it's like the right you know just like Lego blocks put that you know it's like there's narrative Lego I think there's even sort of skirmish game play Lego of how you put these things together because we don't want to dictate how to play any encounter we want people to like some guys are going to be sing around some people are going to you get you know tune that the all those rewards and punishments leaders give you that those can happen more frequently so you're then depending more upon them but of course then if you're spending points on that you're not spending on points of something for yourself so we really want the encounters to be able to playable you know playable from a variety of different approaches but I really I've always liked the combinatorial nature of things so you know having your weapons having your left hand Powers having your hacking having the environment you know now being able to take control you know Judas is an engineer the we knew like she has to control machines right she is super powerful when it comes to controlling machines even though they're her worst enemies you know having them giving them viruses having them socialize with each other if you want to get through an area you're being stealthy have an enemy terrify the other enemy so they all clear out of the door you're trying to get through or go in guns blazing go in you know using your your left-hand powers and altering the environment so more of the hazards or fewer of the hazards show up you know through the the sort of Rogue loop system where you're modifying the Mayflower we want to get the player tons of inputs into the experience so it's it doesn't feel like ever feel like you know and you guys probably had conversations about you know the devil in your experience so it doesn't feel like you're playing the same game you know uh Jeff's playing right you know what I had I mean then you is it lir in the big three and then you have moments where even like I was in a nefer level and then Tom pops up and tries to bribe me to come over because he's going to give me a shotgun and this other thing so it's like they're trying to convince you you know where you're going to go next right so that's what I love is that the it's not just sort of there's a gameplay level and then the narrative happens it's like you're blending that all as you said we're even in in combat and then after that combat one level it's like one of the big three shows up so I love that the The Narrative is getting layered into these sort of gameplay skirmishes yeah we don't we try not to alternate between gameplay and a narrative um Sor oh I I wanted to get into because I love the enemy the creature design this game I want to ask Jeff what your your favorites are CU for me it's the the deputy and the dentist Deputy super so hope hopefully we've got footage of it but so the deputy is like a like a malevolent BoJack Horseman that's coming after you with a long rifle and gets real mad and we will charge and fun for the head shots yeah like um and then the dentist is is probably more of a disturbing character and that it's this it's like a it's a it's a person it's it's a dentist chair that's sensient a robotic but it's got a person in it like a body in it so can you kind of talk about you and the the design team the art team you talk about some of the either Inspirations or just where the hell these yeah what is the fiction behind people see these enemies and sort of like they're on the ship but like what are they protecting like why like how are they so so the back story is um is that they as the ship got more and more automated and all human roles started getting replaced by Machine roles they focus tested to what would be you know in the same way like Siri or or Alexa is it oh my god oh we got to keep that moment in creepy is um is an interface right I mean underneath the hood she's not a warm sounding human being she's a bunch of bits and bites right they wanted to put a happy face on these things on the ship back when the ship was normal these were all serving humans the dentist chair was a dentist who would you know a chair that would you know had legs basically that would walk around and show up when it's time to get your dental work done and you'd get your dental work done the the deputy do yeah well you'll find out later there are some elements on the ship that revolutionary elements and elements that weren't happy and some other strange more terrifying elements that became a threat to the society and the deputies were sort of both of police force but also kind of personal security because you'll you'll you may have seen them they're not functioning yet but there is you can actually rent a deputy at places and he'll work for you I did see that yeah it's not function but eventually you got to go up to it and basically it's sort of very similar to hacking them but instead of spend using hacking you're using the you know the money system which is called social become a companion to you yeah and and they and they'll hang with you and protect you for a period of time and so you'll have that with different types of of enemies who you can use as bodyguards so that was part of the ship but they were all trying to be a friendly face on um on machines because they didn't want people to be alienated by machines and that's what you're you know you see now you have you know chat TPT sometimes it gets really creepy you know it has it acts human it's so weird when it apologizes like you know I'm like dud don't don't apologize to me just be a machine and but so originally I think the first idea I had you know we had more just traditional robots at one point in the game and they were just very robotic looking and then I was like H that's right cuz when I was here I don't know probably six seven years ago you had like it was a lot of robots rolling around the sh it was very much like it's it's sort of like the I don't know what you what do you call the sort of the traditional robot like the three-legged sort of robots that are you know you call them like trunks or whatever they are what are the main oh the the the like sweeper bot things yeah what I don't know what you call oh the fix hits they're like they're like the janitors and the m that's where when I years ago that was a lot of like Fixit I felt were on the ship and then you started adding more personality I think yeah and so and you actually see those old designs as designs they threw away on the ship you actually come across like labs and I think you may have seen some of that we have some of those old characters and that sort of got Incorporated to the backstory of they kissed a bunch of frogs along the way and they they put those out and people were like oh they're weird I don't like them and so you know they had the idea of what if we made them more friendly and more fun and so the deputies even though are you know a basically a security police force who is you know when they have to put the smackdown on puts the smackdown on they're kind of these adorable country bumpkins who you know now since Judas would you know broke the ship they've now become psychotic and and hostile to you where before they were um you know they were the the friendly face of the sh have this interesting tension of and I remember when I first came up with the idea for the deputy people are like what's the horse stude doing there but then you know as the aesthetic evolved and the world became more colorful and more it all started making more sense to people you know I don't know how you felt about them but you saw them but you know we've had that experience at first when I showed people the design like well why is there a horse dude you know as this Deputy but it was really about making you know these seem Fe and we see this with you know machine design all the time um you know of trying to make it seem like a human trying to seem it much more accessible to people and minimize the sort of computer interface so what ultim timately do you want players to take away from this thing I mean it on on infinite and Bioshock one it's like you said a pretty linear situation you're G to most people are probably going to take away a similar thing like wow just got taken on this cool story ride there was a there were some big narrative moments that may have surprised me but this time around you've given so much more player agency so like yeah what are you hoping that that the player takes away this time around I think at heart it's that water cooler moment where you're talking about you know cuz as you work with one or more of the big three it's not just you know you're building You're Building cred with them you're building you're you're you're you're farming standing with them you're also going through a story with them and you're learning about them and they're learning about you um you know whole they all have and you're learning about their backstory and you're getting to know them in a way I don't know if you've ever had the experience for somebody you've been hostile with in the past you of get thrown into a situation with them and you and you you try often you overcome those there's a lot of suppositions you made about people and even you know especially when you've been through a really bad thing with somebody if you ever had that experience it's really tough because you're you're angry and these people you know Judas and the the these were these people have a long history with each other Judas they Judas was their biggest pain in the ass and a threat to the entire survival in their eyes of the mission you know and literally if the mission fails it's the end of human civilization that's it you know um Earth is dead you know if Earth is dead and this Mission fails game over um so there's a lot of tension the stakes are incredibly High I think it's the first game we made were really the sort of the fate of the the universe you know we don't tend to make games like that but we also at the same time want to make it an incredibly personal story so not only do I want you to have those Divergent gameplay EXP you described but you know he'll be talking about Tom but he hasn't played much with Tom and you'll have gone to the end of him and I want to be he'll say something about make certain assumptions not knowing him that well and You' be like oh you need you need to you know that to me like even like the old you know harvesting little sisters back in BioShock it's like that idea you know was very linear but like to me now you've taken that to another level where it's like you're going to make you know it's like make choices that I think will impact you know say a little bit about you as a player but also impact the narrative which I I get excited about that you know as someone that grind like loves story-based games they've always you know they've been incredibly rich and detailed but some a linear and to me it's like the idea that like I would you know I don't typically replay single player games don't they're they're not that they're not replayable to yeah people do and do New Game Plus and all that but to me it's like hey I've had that experience I kind of know that story and it's done and to me it's like the idea that I'm going to play this but have a richly detailed narrative experience but I could you know go down a PA and obviously there have been branching games where it's like oh you can make a choice and you know see what happens with biho right it's like oh what if I you know go you know do something different little how does that impact the story and different endings but it's like to me the idea that there's not just branches but he said it's that that those how do you build those Legos in different ways and even you know me and Ryan can have a different experience when we play through but I can have a different experience if I play through three times and do different things and it it vastly different not you're not going to know that much about Tom if you kind of ignore him the first time or don't do that much and it's not that linear where it's like can go you know look up a walkthr it's like I make these three choices this is this is ending B versus ending a right and I feel like so many of those games always been like oh there are five endings to this game and it's not even one story because like I you may have had the experience of this concept called mudsling where if you're working too much with somebody another one of the big three is going to come in and say let me tell you something about that mean you go through a whole journey and you wouldn't necessarily learn that if you're if you're you know you you don't have to do that no I got I guess like I think like dropped an audio log that was you know against someone else and it's like yeah they're trying to convince you so that that interplay I mean one question for you is like the and not to spoil it but obviously it kind of you know goes in a bunch of directions is it the kind of game where then it kind of comes together and it's like oh there's ending ABC because you as a Storyteller like you obviously you know it's it's more open-ended but you do have a narrative you want to tell so it can't just be so Divergent that like you know anything can happen like how do you write a really compelling story so we started this game like I remember I've talked about this before on Bioshock I didn't really want the two different endings and that was one of you know the few concessions the publisher didn't make too many demands on us so you I would want to say they were overbearing but that was one they really wanted and I didn't really have my heart in I don't think those endings were super great they wanted the two endings they wanted the two endings and I just did I I wanted a much more um ambiguous ending and let the player do a lot of the work in their head where here wait what would what would your ending to Bioshock I never it's been long enough a we can I never wrote it but I kind of felt I wanted to I mean It's Tricky like you know they get too far to Bioshock but you know it's a complicated world because you are like harvesting potentially harvesting little sisters and I don't think like the game there wasn't we're not really trying to say this is how you should think about the things you know our games we tend to like games that don't answer questions for people would ask questions you know we're trying to say objectives you know in BioShock the IR Randy and objectiv is we're trying to say this is good or bad we're trying to say here here's the consequences of your action but it's like let it play here's an honest telling I think if you brought this into the real world even as Fantastical as Bioshock is for real human beings are trying to hold up these ideologies gets much trickier so same as in infinite we're here there are I won't go into any detail but you can end up in pretty different places depending on your choice you end up in pretty different places okay so so it's right it's Divergent but obviously I mean because that's the thing is like it's not fully on Rails but you obviously have a story you want to tell and kind of bring it to some conclusion but in this way it's less linear about like there's you know three endings to this game but it's like there's there are multiple endings and and depending on what you do in the endings can be quite I mean I'm not do too much there are some substantial differences and that to me gets you know you say when Ryan was asking like what player wants to go to me it's like if there is a game that can't accomplish that at the Fidelity and the writing quity what you're doing it's like hey maybe I could play this thing four or five times that's the problem you know a lot of single player games now Publishers also say like oh well people play through it once and they're done and that's why really to be proposition that you talked about at the top of the interview right when you're when you were a kid and had working an hourly job and you wanted a lot out of that game that you spent no that's to me in some ways you know this concept can it you know reinvent the single player in a way where it is replayable and I could you know buy a single player game I like I'm going to play this five times this year I have a different experience no one no game has really hit that bar for me some of my favorite single player games like X you know I'm obviously a huge fan and and you know the word both the original and and Jake Solomon's you know redesign and civilization those are huge games to me and those are also built actually modularly right like you know and they don't have a a discreet narrative like we do but I took a lot of inspiration for those games you know because they're like you know their map is being constructed at runtime and our maps are you know largely being constructed or you know put together from Individual elements at runtime um the ship is different every time you go you know you die and come back it's you know the ship layout can be different um and um so we drew a lot of inspiration from those types single player games but nobody's it's it's it's hard to put into narrative be as you can see um because um it's it's that's why it took so long because how do you do that with an a coherent narrative game that feels like it's from the same people that's why it becomes like still a sweeping epic and not just sort of you know like a generated you know story to you right because that's what's Harding and you being such a good writer and you know all these characters and stuff it's like that there's life to it so that's what I get excited about it's been as a like selfishly as a player it's been a bummer not having a Ken LaVine game to play for the last 10 years but after having the privilege to play a bunch yesterday as we're recording this like it's it I'm there's we've already experienced things that we talked about were like well we don't want to reveal it because there's they're definitely Ken LaVine things that that are happening in this game plus a lot more we haven't even seen yet so uh it is good to have you back you you I know there's no release date yet still working on the game there's a lot there though I mean that's because we played you know 4 five hours and it's like it clearly a lot and I will say like even though the fact it's been in development for as long as it has it feels very modern and I mean people see in the footage like I mean the visual Fidelity and the gameplay like it's not like this thing it's like oh you know sometimes you see games and it's like oh it see a little like it's very modern it plays really well and then yeah the the the stuff that is there is incredible and just to know that you know we talked a little about like the Judas quest line which is like you know another whole thing and you know we got a little bit of a hint of that but I think like I feel like even though we've played five hours we have like just scratched the surface of what this game is going I would agree with that that's why I think it's got to be your biggest game ever right oh yeah I mean the content yeah content pool was massively large but also you know testing a game where that's not linear that has so many states it can be in is you know incredibly difficult so that's another Challen of of the game is test is how do you test it when every you know the sort of different Lego pieces are coming together differently for for everybody so it's it's it's quite tricky but um yeah I would have you know I ideally I would have you know for many reasons would have liked to ship more games you know 10 years is a very long time it's a big chunk of my life you know was 10 years ago you know got my dog 10 years ago I'd had that of the dog for 10 years and um you know at the end of the at the end of the day we have we can't make something that feels old especially you know at the price point we have to make something that feels modern it feels fresh feels new delivers on new things but also delivers on what our audience expects of you know a rational or Ghost Story game I know we I know we should let you go but you just touched on something that I I've been I've asked a few developers this and I think you know game the gaming industry is such a young industry um you know you've you've been in it for a while and you're still a relatively young man but you've you've you've also been doing this for a long time like do you think about your sort of game development mortality in a sense of like how many more game you know you it has taken a while in this do you think about how many more games you have in you and and whether you ever want to retire or if you're just going to keep making your art until until you physically or mentally can't do it anymore like do you do you think about that at all at this point in your career I have no interest in retiring so as long as people continue to give me money to make GS I think I'm going to make them may may one day I'll have a change of heart but it's so Central to my life it is outside of my family know my wife and and my dog and my friends and it is really where I find meaning um and it's and it's how I express myself like you know I'm not like a guy on Twitter with all my opinions and things like that I express myself and I'm very fortunate that I have a and the team has a a venue of expression and that we you know not as an artist and having been a for a long period of time until I got lucky I'm not very successful artist most of artists struggle in in in you know complete um isolation and nobody's aware of their work so I'm always grateful I come to work grateful every day um that I get to do this that I get to make games that I get to work with creative people who inspire me and surprise me and amaze me it's hard you know making games is really hard and as you get older you know it doesn't get easier and yeah 10 years I'm looking at my life and um looking at my age and I am aware of that but you can't let fear drive you you know I think as an artist you just got to make the right thing and um but yeah it's it's a it's a long time I do think that that we have this system the next game hopefully would be much more truncated period of time I was going ask like can you do 10 years again or is that like as i' certainly rather i' certainly rather not I feel like you have the this thing is the the system to me it's like if this works I think you know you but also other developers like this concept I think could be really if it really works and as resonant right to players as it could be that's really exciting that I think can in some ways you know birth a whole new sort of genre of single player um games which and what's what's cool I'm guessing this is the case for you I I I imagine you feel this way I feel this way like when you've been doing something long enough like you probably feel more confident in your abilities as an artist now where like you Pro could you do you think you could have even have attempted Judas 20 years ago probably not right I I you know like infants who stagger around with Incredible confidence and will walk into chainsaws or stuff I'm kind of that guy like when I did System Shock 2 I never shipped a game before and I was like the president of the company and the lead designer and the writer and I had I just like oh yeah I can do this and I had no idea so like there's a irrational confidence guy there's a bit of irrational confidence I think you have to have and but I also have a huge amount of confidence in failing forward that I'm going to make mistakes I know I'm going to make mistakes you guys have seen things in the game that we tried we kissed the Frog if the Frog didn't turn into a prince and we abandoned it um and that's how I work um quite often and unfortunately I'm in a place where I I can do that and find the right thing but generally look everybody has those dark nights in the soul where like oh my God what am I doing this thing is a mess a disaster at points every creative work you anybody's everever made you have those moments when you do it for this long you eventually try to say if I beat this problem I'm going to you know if the team beats on this problem we're going to solve it because generally if you have smart people and you have a reasonable period of time you would solve most problems but yeah there are definitely times where you get overwhelmed and you just have to sort of go back and say look let me talk to the Ken who was in the middle of System Shock too and it was freaking out at 4 in the morning because the whole thing wasn't working and the journalists we did E3 and the mouse was inverted and the frame rate was terrible we had to take out the guns at the last minute because col biner happened and you're at that show flooor and everybody's coming up and nobody likes the game and you feel like a loser and sometimes that's going to happen you know sometimes you eat the bear sometimes the bear eats you um but I find that as long as you keep your wits about you you could solve most problems so in this 10 years like has it been a sort of a a sense for you that like you're always moving in the right direction you said some dark days but like in those like I was really when I came up here a couple years ago and you said I am finally ready to do a trailer finally anal like that to me was it was a great sense of Confidence from you that like you kind of knew you sort of cracked it right but like did you always feel like you sort of you said like with enough time and resources you can eventually get there but I imagine problem like this like was there a point along here where you're like actually I don't know if this is going to work or you know I just want to ship this thing I had that moment on infinite absolutely I had a moment I had many Dark Nights of the Soul where it was a very tough development much tougher development in this game and where I was like I don't know if I can land this thing and of course you can't tell anybody that when you're in that experience cuz the boss comes in and says I don't we going to land this thing what's the team going to do so you know to some degree that's useful though because you then have to convince yourself that you can land it and then you convince other people and we landed it um this game because of the process because of the slow ramp up because we have a core team of of you know genius creatives I have a lot of confidence in them and I never had any doubt we would land it I the question was like how long it was going to take and I didn't think it was going to take this long but we you know the reason we're now you know we get to the point where we can show the trailer the look of the game right show the characters we knew we were confident that was that was going to be pretty solid when you guys play the game most you know was a lot of tuning tweaking content um you know pacing all those things we have that we're still continue to work on but we have a system that allows us to twe that stuff infinitely but you know I'm I'm I'm as conf you know know you what you've got R test this too I think it's like it's also nice that you know you like revealed a few years ago we got to play it like you said like so many games now it's like reveal oh shipping in two months or whatever and it's like but there is the core of something amazing I know there's lots of work still to do on this right I mean for me again since you were you explained this game to me on a whiteboard so long ago I I remember thinking if this works this narrative Lego thing it's going to be awesome but if it doesn't work it's going to be so awesome it's not going to be good yeah said it does or it works in a way but it's not sort of a really resonant High Fidelity experience right or something that's you know becomes to computerized Rel like a better term right where it just sort of feel feels com random exactly and it's like it's generated right and it's like generated content that has the heart and meaning of what you've done and the the the living world and I feel like having played it I'm like yeah this this has all of that absolutely you guys said to me yesterday I couldn't tell when the sort of pre-bake linear stuff stopped and the other stuff began that that's the goal because we don't we don't want to put the burden on the audience okay now we're in sort of CED bedal l you're not going to get the experience you're used we want it just to be benefit for the gamer and that's what's that is the majority of the work but then once you have that system and it works you can tune things like pacing on a global level you know using numbers and variables um and collecting tons of data with from from players and we you know we do a lot of we've been testing the game with you know friends and family and you know behind Clos stores for a long time getting that kind of feedback and every drout of testing the games gets better and that's so I think what I am proudest of is the team is making the right decision a they're willing to listen to that feedback because especially early on that feedback could really hurt it always hurts for you know and but I've always believed in user feedback and you can't you're not going to take user feedback no user is going to tell you what to do they're going to tell you what they don't like and then you have to figure out well what is what is and if you get a a enough people say they don't like something okay then what's the cause of this problem that's the tricky part and then you try things and then you test it again and you know we've been I think we've had a very good rate of clearing problems but then we then you you unveil a new layer of problems and you test again and then you tweak things around but because we're not have to go into because it's not everything's not built as a oneoff you can tweak things like the rate of Tom's appearance the rate of encounters the rate of how mad they get at you for what you do that's all incredibly tunable from Central values and so we can rep Rune the game retune the dramatic Arc you know we were talking about pacing last night you know tweaking pacing thinking about what events feel like big events what events feel like smaller events and looking at pacings from other forms of net that's actually an interesting thing I was thinking about is like you know in this day and age of even though it's not a live service game like patching things updating things like do you imagine that you're going to be like tweaking values of the overall experience post launch like how's that how do you look at that yeah I don't want to make any promis at post launch plans but certainly as we lead up to launch we're going to be looking at you know use a combination I don't want to bore your audience we use a combination of you know qualitative and quantitative testing so we have all these analy we can look at but then you have people talking about their experience like well I got bored here and it's all very Samy here and then you sort of look at your Lego pieces you say what's going to make it feel less syy and making sure what are the you know like movies have almost all movies have the same structure like a threea structure right if you look at the pacing intensity yeah it's almost the same across all movies that's what works so we look at sort of traditional narrative forms like okay what's wrong with our pacing well you have to Riz set of tension you have to Peak your tension then you have to slow things down for a bit you can then heat it up again and what element feels more intense than other elements what element feels like comic relief right what element feels like these and because we have a system we know we build those elements and we know we sort of tag them with what how they fit into that rubric and then we can tweak the game based upon user feedback and look ideally you're you're doing AB testing where you give you know one set of people a certain kind of Hing and another set of different kind of Hing and then you see how they react and you interview them and you talk to them because you want to get something that feels really taught and really finely paced it just takes a lot of you know Rd time no matter what you're decision- making that's what's so unique about how you can test this right because we do totally different Divergent paths and how do you make that you know yep well resent yeah Ken you are attempting something new and we appre Jeff and I appreciate you inviting us down to to play that's just really cool I was we were talking yesterday that like so you we all deal in revealing games and showing games different ways and the fact that you just you know tribute to you and the team that we just got to play something you know warts and all and just talk with you about it I think was so cool and honest with the the us but also the audience right like this is just what the game is right now it's very easy to go and make a lot of big promises and that's what we have that's it's hard not to talk about the game for 10 years because until things solidified I didn't want to go out and I've been on long press runs before and you know things change in the game sometimes I and mostly I wanted to talk to people who had the experience of playing it so it wasn't me up there you know with my PowerPoint or my fancy demo that that you can't touch so I appreciate you guys I knew it there was a lot of time so I really appreciate you guys yeah we had a great time Ken LaVine thank you Jeff key a pleasure thanks Ryan uh everybody Judith in the works right now you will get to play it soon enough soon enough soon enough it is it is getting there and uh we'll have a lot more on Judas on IGN as uh as development marches toward the finish line so until then for everything in the world of video games stay right here at IGN

Channel: IGN

Views: 157,687

Keywords: Ghost Story, Judas, PC, PlayStation 5, Shooter, Xbox Series X|S, ign, videogames, video games, gaming, judas, bioshock, bioshock infinite, ken levine, interview, unfiltered, gameplay, narrative lego, irrational games, ghost story games, campfire games, take-two, take two, take 2, reactions, conversation, discussion, tom, Nefertiti, hope, proxima centauri, mayflower, first-person, first person, shooter, fps, fpv, procedural, generation, procedurally generated, campaign, single-player, single player

Id: aIqmnoo8Ui4

Length: 77min 33sec (4653 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024