The BioShock writer and creative director is wrapping up his first project with Ghost Story Games, and it’s a sci-fi shooter with RPG touches.
We hadn’t heard from Ken Levin for a long time, the writer and creative director of both BioShock (2010) and BioShock Infinite (his last game, already from 2013), but according to the job offer that his new studio just published, Ghost Story Games, this could change very soon. The developer is looking for a “senior producer” for the title, which according to said offer is in “the last stages of production”. In addition, the publication also reports the approximate size of the team (around 35 people) and the theme of the project, “a new and immersive sci-fi FPS with RPG elements.” The offer ends by talking about the “open” work environment in the studio, in which “every opinion counts, regardless of position”, and recommends being familiar with not only Rapture and Columbia, but also System Shock 2.
Logo of Ghost Story Games, the new studio of Ken Levine and the former Irrational Games.
Ghost Story Games was founded in 2017 with the remains of the defunct Irrational Games, which was closed at the time, so the game could have been in development for several years. Ken Levine has defined it in the past as a new and “ambitious immersive simulation project”, and has assured that with it he wants to “bury the cinematics”, make a kind of “narrative LEGO” and offer a “more difficult and challenging experience than BioShock “. It’s not much, but it certainly sounds good and having the team behind it that has everything suggests that it will be worth keeping track of.
BioShock is back too
Now far from the baton of Levine and his team, the BioShock saga has also confirmed that it is already working on its new installment, which will make use of the Unreal Engine and will be for the new generation of consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series X / S). At his command he has Cloud Chamber, a newly founded and settled developer in California, headed by Kelley Gilmore, head of Take Two with more than 20 years of experience behind him thanks to sagas such as XCOM and Civilization. The code name for this new chapter is BioShock Parkside and has been going on since 2016 despite its comings and goings. The last details that we have known about him speak that he will recreate “a new fantasy world” with Wes Anderson as a reference and will have a “combat system that serves as a paradigm in the genre”. We will see which of the two titles is released before, if this or Ken Levine’s, and we will see how they both do once their paths are separated.
