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Ken Levine is the creative lead of BioShock. Ghost Story Games and its long-awaited debut project have been plagued by shifting design goals and an overambitious vision according to a new report. It isn't a new criticism of Levine, but it suggests that the game's nearly eight-year waiting period might not end any time soon and hints at some details about what Ghost Story is actually doing.
Schreier states that Ghost Story, a division of Take-Two Interactive staffed with former members of Levine's old studio Irrational, was supposed to release a small game in 2017. The project was a sci-fi shooter set on a mysterious space station where three different groups would respond to the player's actions. The setting sounds similar to Levine's earlier space horror game System Shock 2. The scope of the project was larger than the team could handle, with a complicated dialogue system that would change based on player choices. The project has not a name or release date as of now.
The game has changed directions many times.
Levine's management style and perfectionism are said to be a part of the delay. It describes a place where projects would get suddenly reworked or scrapped after months of work, like previous reports from his time at Irrational. One anecdote describes studio members joking about convincing Levine to adopt their ideas via "Kenception," a reference to Christopher Nolan's Inception. Levine is said to have said that the studio's budget is a "rounding error" in Take-Two's operation, which could give its game an indefinitely long development process.
Ghost Story has some built-in tension. Levine was interested in narrative Legos, the kind of procedurally drama produced by Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system or some recent independent games. The procedurally generated games Dead Cells and Void Bastards are mentioned in the report. It seems that it has been pursuing the feel of a big-budget 3D experience, something that is difficult to produce with a highly variable story.
The BioShock franchise has continued without Levine and a new one is in the works. An unrelated System Shock sequel has followed a more tortured development path.
System Shock 2 helped define the sim, a genre that gave players a feeling of free choice through versatile but often painstakingly handcrafted systems. It is a style that is ripe for an experiment with infinitely generated conflict and Levine's love of lofty, clashing philosophical movements. The studio is also being used for those clashes.
