Take-Two's latest quarterly report also featured an update on the publisher's lineup, including Judas, the next game by BioShock and System Shock 2 creator Ken Levine. According to Take-Two, Ghost Story Games is now targeting a launch between April 27 and March 2029, which incidentally is the same timeline as 31st Union's Project ETHOS.
That means we might have to wait up to nearly three more years to play a game that has been in development at least since 2014. Levine first outlined his "Narrative LEGOs" design philosophy in a GDC 2014 talk and later discussed it again in late 2015:
We're trying to make this crafted narrative but in small chunks, so that can then combine in millions of interesting ways. The end goal is to have a narrative that plays out differently based on what the player does, to give the player that experience of "this is a great narrative experience, but I'm gonna play it again and again and it's gonna feel different each time".
Clearly, this ambitious design concept took a very long time to be successfully implemented. It wasn't until The Game Awards 2022 that Ghost Story Games finally revealed the title's name, Judas, and a debut trailer. More information started trickling down here and there. In March 2024, Levine himself outlined the structure a bit more, and another developer blog was released in late 2025.
The game puts players in the role of Judas, a mysterious woman aboard the Mayflower, a city-sized generation ship carrying the last remnants of humanity toward Proxima Centauri. After sparking a devastating revolution aboard the vessel, Judas must survive by forging or breaking alliances with the ship's three ruling figures: Tom, who wants to preserve humanity as-is; Nefertiti, who wants to transform humanity into a race of flawless robots; and Hope, who simply wants to be deleted from existence.
The central design pillar is the aforementioned narrative LEGOs system, where player choices, down to small behavioral details, shape how the three characters respond and evolve. A key mechanic called Villainy means that whichever major character you neglect will eventually turn against you, gaining new powers to actively subvert your goals.
The game will be released for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S and X.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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