BioShock creator Ken Levine is working on a new game, and he says its "open narrative" design will be like Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor...
For many gamers, Ken Levine will need little introduction. The mind behind such classics as Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2, and BioShock, he's famous in the industry for creating smartly-designed games with thought-provoking narratives.
Last year's BioShock Infinite, although critically acclaimed, had faced a lengthy and difficult production. Levine himself seemed exhausted after its release; in February this year, he wrote a letter which stated, "Seventeen years is a long time to do any job, even the best one [...] While I'm deeply proud of what we've accomplished together, my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we've done before."
That letter effectively marked the end of Irrational Games. Of the 90-or-so staff still around after the completion ofBioShock Infinite and its DLC, just 15 were kept on, as Levine focused on "starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavour at Take-Two."
"In time," Levine continued, "we will announce a new endeavour with a new goal: to make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable."
Beyond that, it was too early to say what these smaller, more experimental games from Levine's pared-down team would look like - at the time of writing, even the name of Levine's new studio has yet to be unveiled.
But more recently, Levine wrote a piece about the open-world action adventure Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordorfor Medium, in which he spoke about some of the ideas behind his current work-in-progress.
It is, he said, an "open narrative" game, where its story structure and characters change in reaction to the player's choices. Levine cited Shadow Of Mordor as the first published example of this approach to game design, with an ingenious system which generates characters and missions algorithmically.
"By breaking down the elements of character into small chunks and re-combining them based on randomness and, more important, responses to the player’s choices," Levine writes, "Shadow Of Mordor tells a story that could never exist in another medium."
Levine draws a distinction between Shadow Of Mordor and the kind of games he's made in the past, which have intentionally played with the conventions of traditional narrative game structures, or something like Dragon Age, which is essentially a "choose your own adventure" of branching paths.
"If [the player] could change something in BioShock Infinite," Levine continued, "the story would break. But you can change the narrative in Shadow Of Mordor—kill an important character, fail an important mission — and the story heals itself, because the system can create new characters on the fly."
This system is akin, Levine says, to the kind of thing he's been toying around with in recent years: a narrative experience that is generated rather than rigidly authored, and will even restructure itself based on player choice.
It's only a hint as to what he's actually making, of course - is it another shooter, an RPG, or something else entirely? - but it's certainly a tantalising one. And as a personal insight into a relatively new approach to game design, his piece is well worth reading in full.
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