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Ken Levine is Not Involved With BioShock 4, Says People Will be 'Surprised, But Unsurprised' By His New Game

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

Speaking with Arcade Attack, Ken Levine spoke on a variety of subjects including his new project, the BioShock movie that never left development hell, and of course whether he is involved with BioShock 4. To some BioShock fans' dismay Levine has confirmed he is not at all involved in the development of the next entry in the BioShock franchise. Levine says that while he wishes the developer the best, he doesn't want to do half measures with regards to the series and that he essentially knows as much about the game as anyone else does at the moment.

Elsewhere in the interview Levine talked about his new game which is in development at Ghost Story Games. He says that gamers will be "suprised, but unsurprised by what they see." Levine says his new title is quite interesting and looks forward to showing it to the world. However, don't expect to see the game until closer to its launch as Levine says the team didn't want to unveil it too early and have a period of build-up, hype, and then delaying it and causing disappointment. Levine's game has been in the works at 2K and Ghost Story Games since 2014, and earlier this month 15 former and current developers went on record saying that the project has undergone reboots and changes for many years.
 

Kuranghi

Member
John Travolta Movie GIF


Can't wait for Bi(F)auxShock 4 and BioNot.

Kev Levine sounds like a bit of a wanker according to the stories, but to truly assess the veracity of these claims I'd like to meet him in the following states:

* In a cafe while he's on a limited time break waiting for an order
* Mildly drunk in a pub after work (1-3 or more beers max depending on personal tolerance)
* Shopping for clothes with his wife and/or children
* On tons of mdma (or other "bring out the love and hugs" drugs) at a party on a private island/lake community mansion
* On his own hiking in the highlands of Scotland, meeting in a bothy maybe
* In his boardroom, discussing the latest development updates (this one is very important as we already have much information about his state here, so this will be used for confirmation of those stories)
* Right before and after he's done a non-tandem sky dive, especially if he fears it
* Thirty (30) seconds after an eldery woman has died of a heart attack at a restaturant where he's dining, table service has to be stopped for 15-20 minutes because her corpse is blocking the kitchen passage-way and the backdoor has been jammed since last week.
* Posing as a mentally challenged person in the streets, who passes by and drops his ice cream onto Ken's shoe.

I will then collate all this data and we can truly know if Ken is a "good guy".

I'm gonna need to book quite a lot of travel and pay for many disguises and rounds of plastic surgery to engineer these situations GAF, so I'm calling on you all to donate to my GoFundMe page. I'll update the page with the link later on today depending on the reception my post garners.
 
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MrJTeera

Member
John Travolta Movie GIF


Can't wait for Bi(F)auxShock 4 and BioNot.

Kev Levine sounds like a bit of a wanker according to the stories, but to truly asses the veracity of these claims I'd like to meet him in the following states:
John Travolta Movie GIF


Can't wait for Bi(F)auxShock 4 and BioNot.

Kev Levine sounds like a bit of a wanker according to the stories, but to truly asses the veracity of these claims I'd like to meet him in the following states:

* In a cafe while he's on a limited time break waiting for an order
* Mildly drunk in a pub after work (1-3 or more beers max depending on personal tolerance)
* Shopping for clothes with his wife and/or children
* On tons of mdma (or other "bring out the love and hugs" drugs) at a party on a private island/lake community mansion
* On his own hiking in the highlands of Scotland, meeting in a bothy maybe
* In his boardroom, discussing the latest development updates (this one is very important as we already have much information about his state here, so this will be used for confirmation of those stories)
* Right before and after he's done a non-tandem sky dive, especially if he fears it
* Thirty (30) seconds after an eldery woman has died of a heart attack at a restaturant where he's dining, table service has to be stopped for 15-20 minutes because her corpse is blocking the kitchen passage-way and the backdoor has been jammed since last week.
* Posing as a mentally challenged person in the streets, who passes by and drops his ice cream onto Ken's shoe.

I will then collate all this data and we can truly know if Ken is a "good guy".

I'm gonna need to book quite a lot of travel and pay for many disguises and rounds of plastic surgery to engineer these situations GAF, so I'm calling on you all to donate to my GoFundMe page. I'll update the page with the link later on today depending on the reception my post garners.
Heh heh “asses” heh heh durr hurr burr
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
As much as Ken is known to be a pain in the ass to work with I don't have a lot of confidence in another team to do it right because I don't think the things that define BioShock are what people think they are.

They're probably going to try to go back to Rapture and beat that dead horse some more rather than search for relevant and smart social satire.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
As much as Ken is known to be a pain in the ass to work with I don't have a lot of confidence in another team to do it right because I don't think the things that define BioShock are what people think they are.

They're probably going to try to go back to Rapture and beat that dead horse some more rather than search for relevant and smart social satire.
The next logical step seems to be a Jeff Bezos / Elon Musk space station city in orbit, built by Foxconn employees. An extension of a privatized space industry.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
Never been a bioshock person but I fully understand the praise it gets. Continuing with Levine could bring some fresh ideas to it. I am looking forward to both Bioshock and his next game just to see what they are from a creative perspective.
 

winjer

Gold Member
People were also surprised with GTA trilogy, and BF 2042 and the list goes on.
What a dumb, generic attempt at creating hype without showing anything.
 

Shubh_C63

Member
Yeah it will definitely be Space action-horror genre.

I mean, Starfield, Dead Space reboot, Homeworld, ME-4...we are set for a space genre hype.
also I liked B8, just not in love with it.
 

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

Discussing his early career at Looking Glass Studios, Levine detailed the process of writing Thief, which saw him forced to go back to the drawing board on multiple occasions.

“Thief was a bunch of different game ideas before they became Thief but they all shared a common element, which was this notion that it would be cool to be working around a world and hear an AI talk in the world and say, ‘is somebody there?’ And that’s not something that really existed in games – maybe Metal Gear had the initial impulses of AI awareness ramping up.

“We sort of took that notion of having AIs, that their whole awareness arcing up and down was this whole cycle that you go through, and that was really good for stealth because you were getting a lot more feedback. That element really remained through all those game ideas.”

Levine wrote pitch documents for games with titles such as Better Red Than Undead, Dark Camelot, and Dark Elves Must Die. He said he built a different world setting and mechanics for each of them which were ultimately discarded.

“The guy I was working with, my mentor figure at the time, was Doug Church at Looking Glass, and we’d talk about them for a while, and he’d end up saying this isn’t going to work. I’d have to learn very quickly to bounce back from rejection and I think he was right in all those cases, like I think Thief was the best of those ideas, it was the most unified of all those ideas.

“But it was a very good lesson. I think it’s an important lesson for young developers to learn, that just because you wrote something, you created something, doesn’t mean it’s good, or good enough.

“And I can go back and think about all those things – they were good, and they had their strengths, but we actually came up with something better, and it really gave me the most important lesson in games, which I think a lot of developers struggle with, which is you’ve got to throw out your work.

“As a writer, there’s a saying: writing is rewriting,” he continued. “And it’s a luxury in the games industry to be able to do that. I have been fortunate enough to be able to have that luxury and I think most of the reason that if the work I do is good, it’s because I’ve been able to say no, this isn’t working and move on and throw it out.

“And that can come across as indecisiveness and I can definitely see why people feel that way, but for me, I don’t know another way to get there, but it also requires you to be willing to pick up that pen again and start over, and I think it’s critical, so I view it as a luxury.”

One Ghost Story employee told Bloomberg the studio’s debut game now appeared to be on track, but that it could still be a couple of years away from releasing.

Levine didn’t comment on when the title might come out, but he told Arcade Attack that he’s keen to avoid the mistake of showing it too early, as he feels Irrational did with BioShock Infinite.

“I think people will be surprised but unsurprised by what they see in equal measures,” he said. “But it is something quite, quite interesting and I’m looking forward to showing it to people.

“I don’t want to have a long period of having to build up interest and hype because it would end up feeling fairly inauthentic and I think that gamers want to know what they’re getting and the only way to do that really is to announce closer to launch.

“We just don’t want to go out there and show something that won’t end up being completely representative of the final game, as much as we can,” he added.

“And so it’s been hard because we haven’t been able to share any news with our fans for a very long time and I think a lot of people are like, ‘what are they doing there, are they just sitting around doing nothing?’ And I understand that, but we are taking on a very challenging product, but I can promise you it’s being worked on every single day and we’re very excited about it.”
 

Tschumi

Member
Surprised but unsurprised.

Sounds like the kind of base covering bullshit a fake auteur game developer in a show like Silicon Valley might say at a iffy product launch lll
 
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