If you showed me the new trailer for Judas – the game from BioShock creator Ken Levine's new studio – totally out of context, I would probably tell you it looks a whole lot like BioShock. This was also the case over a year ago, so its appearance at tonight's PlayStation State of Play live show arguably hasn't told us all that much, but new gameplay footage slipped into the game's fresh story trailer really drives the overlap home – in a good way, I think.
Judas' latest showcase opens with a heady, psychological monologue that's doing everything it can to avoid saying "would you kindly." In a matter of moments, we're back in hallways mowing down robots and sycophants with a gun in one hand and elemental powers in the other. There's even a gruesome close-up shot of our hands getting fried. It's like we never left ol' Rapture.
Have I just gone BioShock-blind? I'm not complaining, I just can't separate Levine from Rapture. "Fix what you broke" is the trailer's closing tagline, which to me smacks of BioShock Infinite's central theme. There's a shot of you acquiring a shotgun by pulling it out of a corpse's hands – another classic BioShock 1 scene. I can almost hear my radio buddy telling me to "remember the one-two punch" when our hero zaps a robot with her left hand. That said, I don't remember gun-toting cowboy dinosaurs in any of the BioShocks, and I'm very here for the other new ideas and twists Judas undoubtedly has in store.
- BioShock's Ken Levine calls his most iconic FPS "a very, very long corridor," but his next game Judas is "made very, very differently"
- BioShock Infinite “may not have been the thing I wanted, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t the thing the audience wanted”: Ken Levine guides us through his entire gameography
This Judas trailer only confirms that it is "in development" for PS5, with no mention of a release date or window. It's also coming to PC and Xbox, for the record.
Here's everything announced at the PlayStation State of Play show.
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