Remember Judas? No, not the biblical figure and not the Lady Gaga bop, this Judas is a project from Ghost Story Games. If you don’t remember, it’s the game that was reportedly in “development hell” before it was even announced. The team, led by BioShock creator Ken Levine, had gone pretty quiet for a few years after releasing the debut trailer, but today teased a look at some key art and mechanics for the game.
The BioShock lineage is clear from the handful of visuals we’ve seen so far, but instead of a linear binary of which NPCs and actions are good versus bad, Judas aims to place the moral compass more firmly in the player’s hands. There are a trio of major characters, dubbed the Big 3 in today’s devlog, who will be drawn to the player based on what you do in-game. If one of the main NPCs gets ignored for too long, they’ll become the game’s villain. This unlocks new sets of powers and abilities for them that could also influence your gameplay options.
For instance, there are Rent-A-Deputy stations where the player can temporarily access a weirdly wiggly ally to help them in fights. However, if you’ve alienated Tom, the old-school sheriff character, Rent-A-Deputies will attack you instead.
The emphasis here seems to be on building relationships with the Big 3, and the gist seems to be that at some point, you’ll have to decide which one will be your real enemy. Unsurprisingly, the team has no release date to share yet. Maybe in another couple of years…