Bioshock creator Ken Levine has been talking about his next project, and though he’s not quite ready to spill the beans on what it’s all about just yet, he has revealed some interesting details.
Speaking to Game Informer, Levine said the game would contain a new narrative system, with characters reacting to the player differently based on their wants and needs.
“The whole system that I came up with and that we’re developing is based upon the fact that to make an interesting character, you have to have a character who has a bunch of passions, wants, and needs,” Levine explains. “The player now has the ability to facilitate those wants or needs or go against those wants or needs or ignore those wants or needs.”
“The reason I think the system is going to work is because it’s a very organic way to look at a character. It’s a quite systemic game. The system we’re in, the character’s feelings about you change, they go up and down. But the heart of a character is still wants and needs, and that makes it no different than anything I’ve ever written before.”
All we know about Levine’s next project, a smaller, digital-only game for Take-Two, is that it will probably be first-person, and will likely take place in a sci-fi setting. He’s also expressed an admiration for Shadow of Mordor’s emergent Nemesis system, and all his talk about complex character development systems would seem to fit into that.
