Who's here a decade later?

10 years later and he is finally doing a game that uses this very concept

One of my life goals is Ken Levine's autograph on a body part

I was very sad when hear that Ken leaving Ir and starting something new. After watching this, I understand his goal better. Now I'm looking forward to see what he will present for the next project. It doesn't even matter whether or not it will be successful, he absolutely have some amazing idea in place. I'll support that development even the first project turns out crap.

I feel like I've seen this video like 4 times since you posted it. Please announce your new game soon. I'm so excited to see it. PS. Just played Burial at Sea for the first time and oh my God it's amazing! You sir are a genius.

I think we still havent even scratched the surface of what games can do with story. Even with games like Witcher...most of the story and choices made are thru dialogue trees. I think in the future we should have games where story is driven by regular gameplay, too. Like imagine if in a fantasy RPG, you kill everyone in a single town. Then news of that town pretty much just disappearing spreads throughout the world. And since you pretty much commited mass murder, your character's personality changes in cutscenes because of that- like if u used stealth to kill everyone, he sounds devious and cunning, but if you just confronted everyone face on when u killed them, he could sound angry and cruel all the time. Or maybe when u do certain really good or bad acts, you become more famous/infamous to the people around you- gangs try to beat you up, and townspeople ask you more for help or try to run away from you

Ken Levine, become a lecturer damn son

I like the idea of taking the traditional approach of "do stuff for faction until you unlock the quest" but then having the quest you unlock change depending on what your relationship with other factions are

You can tell Ken was supposed to be a “Creative Director”.. he calmly speaks but easily puts his point across without getting too smart or analytical about it. The man is great at what he does and Bioshock will forever remain a powerhouse of storytelling and world building. Looking forward to whatever Ken has planned next!

A design for a SPECIFIC game, a product PITCH, a SPECIFIC development plan, an INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. I am here ken! Play your ace in the hole!

8 years later and I'm returning to this video after watching the trailer for Judas. I'd agree with other comments in this thread that we still haven't really surpassed the narrative versatility of a game like Fallout New Vegas in Western RPGs yet. I'm interested in seeing what scale of story Ghost Story wants to tell. The narrative seems to be centered around a damaged starship, will it be smaller in scope than the region-spanning F:NV? Also, how much will the lead character's personality and emotion change based on player choices? How large will the factions we deal with be? I've also assumed the game will be open world based on the examples Levine is referencing like Civilization. But will it be? What would a non open world game with narrative legos behave like?

He sounds like Heath Ledgers Joker haha.

Oh my god... Ken is making real life Westworld.

The passion system sounds like the faction system from Fallout: New Vegas, but with every star being it's own faction

If he a makes a new Bioshock game which the narrative is endlessly replayable, I think he will make history, it will be the best game ever made. The best videogame story that I have played was bioshock infnite. A good story and endlessly replayable narrative is the game I will definitely buy rather than any other game.

Levine its been 4 years my friend... im growing impatient.

I would love to hear what he thinks about Baldurs Gate 3

It sounds like someone's finally going to bring the JRPG dating sim systems to the forefront! I hope this relationship systems becomes more mainstream because I love deep interaction with characters. (One of the main reasons I like the Persona series.)

Thanks gamespot for posting these!

That was a really interesting talk. I'm interested as to whether this change in direction is purely business focused or due to a creative interest. Either way, as a fan of single player linear narratives, it's a genuine shame to lose Levine's future contributions into the genre.

Wow. The insight and clarity offered in this presentation is starting to make me think... Ken Levine downsizing at Irrational might be one of *the most beneficial things to happen to the industry*.

The world grows closer to the world of Bioshock and yet we haven't heard a thing about your new game in 6 years Ken Levine. We are waiting.

Was just thinking "why don't games like this ever have co-op" right when he mentioned co-op.

Wonder how Ken's progress is like for this vision at this point. As much as I love and will continue to love action RPGs, in the back of my mind I can't help but think about how they have a fixed number of possible endings created by writers (not to de-value the importance of writers and some of the cool endings we get in some games). Of course part of what a game tries to do is create the illusion of having your choices and the ending you arrive at be your own, but it gets harder to buy into that illusion at times. More than any other new release, this is probably the thing that I've been most looking forward to in some time (alright, aside from a new Silent Hill....)

Ken clearly *has* the vision for the future of gaming. Others have spoken of this, but few have mapped & charted the course to get there. It's clear a game should eventually evolve like the gamer does. Let it breath like another mind so you keep coming back to see new or great challenging experiences that you feel, emote, care about, & learn from. Philosophy is a critical part of this all where games become less "widget" or but evolve creating new experiences that grow. Price point will be higher, but take 50 shitty $60 games, vs. one amazing $1000 game. This could be as soon as 2025

Thank you. I have been looking around for this talk. What a genius!

Really curious how this works out, the question about having deeply thematic narratives in emergent storytelling is exactly what I'm wondering about, I find it difficult to imagine how systems could create such experiences but who knows. When I look at games such as dwarf fortress and rimworld, there are clearly stories that pop out from the interactions of all the systems in the game but these always feel to me like an interesting / fun / surprising sequence of events that are nice to watch or read about but lack any real depth that would make me think about it again long after in comparison to deeply thematic narratives like bioshock, the last of us, etc.

This is great, I hope you create some more great things to come Ken. Also good luck to those from irrational

Hi kevin, just finished Infinite for the 6th time probably... we really need more of it! Please! :)

*Mount & Blade: Warband* works with the same idea of Lego Narrative, but without the degree of complexity presented by Ken. That game also doesn't have a main story or a main quest. It's all about what you do and who you interact with.

Is he planning on building a game that allows player driven narrative stories, based on the Civilization game play and world? I would buy that in a heartbeat, because that is the type of game I've been looking for.

Ahh, Morrowind. NPCs can react negatively or positively to personal passions and also faction related global passions. NPCs can refuse giving certain information if they don't like you. You can piss a whole faction while keeping an individual from that faction as a friend or vice versa, unscripted by the disposition system as it is systematized completely, unattended by developers. Some even would call it broken for that open endedness. And Morrowind main quest is such a backdrop, most forget about it and some don't even know it exists. This talk is like a presentation for my Morrowind 2.0 dream. Good call out on Bethesda, Ken Levine! They should have been on Morrowind 4.0 by now.

I'm very much looking forward to it. It sounds like a very unique and player-driven experience. I hope to see this game in 3-5 years! :D

6:24 i guess this is what currently happening at Ken's project now?

Thank you for this

Waiting...

Ken assures me that even if I get old, I can still be relevant.Thanks.

Levine is a fucking genius. Fuck the haters.

This is more about overcoming decades of entrenched game design habits than it is about coming up with a new game design paradigm. Game designers must first give up control because that's what narrative is.

Besides the very interesting talk Ken Levine is a great presentor nice to listen to.

Utterly unfeasible in the setting he's picked in this presentation, but in a spaceship with only 3 stars? That's when I get excited. Big potential here.

genius. one of my idols.

A lot of it sounds like New Vegas's "faction" system, but on a much more personal level. I'd still want an overarching narrative or "main quest" of some sort in there, but I suppose you run the risk of the system being much more interesting than the main game. The best example I can think of is the Nemesis system in Shadow of Morder. While the narrative started off all right, once you get going with the power struggles and personal vendettas, it becomes so much more interesting and involving than the structured part of the game.

Great talk

I am preordering the next game he puts out, the literal second it's anounced.

I think it's a good idea to limit the number of 'stars' not just because of the player's ability to keep track, but also because the system would likely suffer a lot when the computer itself can't keep track of what's going on and have the 'stars' react appropriately. That should be easier if there's less to keep track of in the first place. But I imagine that it might simply be too tricky to accomplish, as the permutations might grow so quickly that a game that's complex enough to be interesting to play will always end up being too complex to keep track of. 41:20 One motivation for making 'stars' dislike the player could consist of appearing to have the moral high ground when those 'stars' are provoked into hostilities. That perceived moral high ground could determine how other 'stars' react to the conflict that ensues. After all, those other 'stars' should probably be a tiny bit concerned that they might be next in line to be killed unless the player seems to merely defend against attacks.

ken, you still amaze me, you have the guts to do something you will be frowned on for, and still you continue to make games. I know that you didn't lay off those people for money, prophet, and just for selfish reasons, NO you did it because AAA gaming was getting to you so you started over. Good luck ken you still amaze me and can't wait for your game :) keep it coming dude

I love this genius

Plus sometimes it is really nice to feel as just some other character and not some transcendent star

Wow, fascinating talk. I hope developers take this on board, games could really start to differentiate themselves from movies. In MGS Ground Zeros, I've spent 20 hours replaying the main mission and its spoiled other open-world games for me, they just seem inferior in comparison. It feels so open and free, like you can do anything, now imagine this level of open-gameplay with the open story structure witch Ken is talking about here, THAT would be INSANE!!

One big frustration with modern video game design, is if you try to be nice to EVERYONE, then you default to nuetrality and losing, instead of getting to be a high level hero, because rewards for completing content are insufficient to aid players against endgame content without throwing all the player weight behind a narrative ally that might not exactly be compelling enough to be "cool". Furthermore, I haven't had an OS add-in in over 25 years. I've made suggestions for updating Windows 10 taskbar and print screen/record and clipboard, al very clever hacks, even the keyboard mouse input being replaced with something better than either, but it's very difficult to get any OS-level access to implement it. It's mostly static. Who designs this stuff? Games for Windows is a death sentence... One thing that Diablo 3 does really well is vary the monster/enemy personas with modular elements that can combine in interesting ways. Character model shape, size, skills, elemental properties, all combine in interesting ways to vary the combat. This methodology could easily be used to procedurally generate points of interest (Quests, a la Star Wars Galaxies), and Allies and quest givers. It's mostly a matter of swapping variables (Like the example with Orcs/Dwarves/Elves/Goblins, you could simply swap the nomenclature and visual/audio input that makes the player identify with the content). I suspect a lot of modern engines are Bespoke, and implement data harvesting of players' lives, to introduce drama, stress, and unique narratives, but it can be psychically harmful if the player doesn't get what they want and is faced with too many black and white choices, if the designer is not effectively telling their story and balancing resources with edification through artwork, and if the difficulty curves and statistics are super-competitive. WoW Classic was supposed to offer gameplay elements like this with "Reputation" and "PvP rankings", but it was never made available to players like me because the time investment would be "Grind kills all day every day for years on end". Reputation isn't necessarily the only way to advance player activities, there can also be physical (geographic/architectural) thresholds, like nearness to a monster generator or resource mine, or co-positional item inventory thresholds, like a gun that gets a new type of ammo, or maybe a new style arrowhead for your bow, or even point and click adventure style unlocks where you can't get to the new area until you use an inventory item with an environmental object, or solve an environmental puzzle that isn't too cryptic. I guess what I'm getting at is that there are lots of ways of allowing players to drive the narrative, and be driven. The last question mentioning thematic and overarching patterns and atmospheric qualities are important in making games with more than just a handful of these systems possible, and I think systems like the one I am trying to design for my wordpress page with copresent tags are rife for exploitation in determining who or what constitutes a theme that can be modularized and statistically mapped to generate an enjoyable experience, add-ons be damned, and add-ins be praised.

Bioshock infinite is one of the best games ever created

I always wanted way of the samurai 2 / 4 and RuneScape combo game. I want other characters to be in my game too, RuneScape even made their own banking system with this amazing feat. I’m not really in to space so Judas will be fun for me but I guess it’s not the same topic as guns. I would love to see swords and plasmids that would be so cool..

Feel like he's been living inside my head. Had me with Civilization.

A system like this can't replace direct relationships between characters, which still have to be handcrafted, and are expensive.

Elf Wooing Simulator 2014.

I guess it's kind of already started with Shadow of Mordor and the nemesis system and a little bit with Far Cry 4 and the randomized animal attacks.

Got twenty minutes in before realising I'd lost track of what he was even talking about. I'll just trust he knows what he's doing and look at the reviews for whatever he releases next.

6 years...

I mean, just imagine the amount of work it'd be to do all the animations, voice overs, etc. for each of these scenarios. And most of the work wouldn't even be seen by the average player unless they played it over and over again. This is something for far down the road when AI is much more advanced and can fill in the gaps - eventually we'll probably have AI crafting narratives on the fly.

In my opinion he is planning on making a combination between world of warcraft, skyrim, Game of thrones + the walking dead or mass effect moral choices

SPOILER ALERT. Some things about TV Shows Dexter and Game of Thrones in the Q&A section by the audience. What kind of dumbass calls out a spoiler and then only after the fact says 'spoiler alert' my gawd. Ken is not to blame, doesn't put a foot wrong.

oh ken it's near 2017... give us more information.

I know it's a very basic narrative based linear game BUT Wing Commander 3 and 4 were AWESOME at story paths.

It seems like a more advanced version of The Sims. I think what would be interesting is introducing this concept into a linear game like Bioshock Infinite.

Lots of comment about how all of this is too complicated for the current engines and AI and yet hes pretty much explaing Fallout New Vegas' reputation system and to a point Fallout 4 reputation system with the follower perks and the random encounter system, in fact F4 did the Zero Sum ending becuase even going with the Minutemen ending you still left factions unhappy (considering that the Yes Man ending on NV can create a full on positive ending for all factions)

4 villages, 5 stars of each village, and each star has 12 passions. The game will choose 3 of those, so every play-through has 20 characters with different passions. If you lie to one person, their passion may be another AI, but that AI has a passion or a elf, or next play-through its a passion for a dwarf, or no passion at all. Depending on the connections you get a unique gossip system essentially, and each time information spreads differently. So that lie you told in private, depending on the connection and passions may or may not be told. Ex. developing a strong connection with the Star first, than telling a lie, they will keep it. But if you develop their passion with another AI, than tell them a lie, their trust may fall on the AI and they will share the info.

Wow, he really does sound like the Joker.

ALL games DO NOT have to be NONLINEAR.

Lego is an uncountable noun. Narrative Lego.

With some points he is saying i have to disagree. He says linear games aren´t repayable. I think thats a cliche. Actually the most replay fun i get from games are high quality (!!!) linear games like The Last Of Us. My first play through was very offensive, i had many gun and fist fights. But as i played it again and again on harder difficulties this changed. I went more stealthy and the game showed itself to me from a whole different side: as a stealth game! I think it´s more about how to do it the right way. If you make a complex gameplay that you fill with a big variety of elements it can have a really high replay value.

I don't think the player should have complete power. I love this talk and think this system is amazing, but the player should be a piece of the puzzle - not the one piecing it together.

You know, I'd probably play a game based on his 'orc passion' and town example..

The new game shadow of mordor has touched on this game mechanic but I can see Ken Levine is talking about a much larger scale.

Now we know why after 8 year it still didn't exist

I want a monument island lego set.

Kevin Levis!

i fucking love dark cloud 2

2 Ken Levine, I don't like Bioshock's, but a really want to play your nex game. Also, you should play White Gold: War in Paradise. Those system are implemented there, maybe in a simpler way, but still.

so ken levine is making elder scrolls 6 confirmed

I know he said he didn't announce anything but i'd want that fantasy world simulator so bad. Just more focus on characters and narrative and not really combat.

This is what Warren Specter has been talking about for at least twenty years.

Can we make that fantasy simulator Game of the year? Or at least honorable mention?

It's 2018 now ken when is your next big game coming

I bet he hired people to be there, then fired them when it ended

Didn't they do this in Baldur's Gate 2 already?

ken if ur reading this get the game out already i fking luv u

wow killer!

JUDAS HYPE

If a game character ever passes the Turing test, would it be inhumane to kill it?

Well, thankfully we finally have a _proper_ sequel to Bioshock : Arkane Studios' *Prey* Took a flippin' decade, mind.

Okay so, this is exactly what Alanah Pearce was talking about. He has been working on it for more than 5 years

I dont know... for me it sounds like the Mass Effect series (the first one was the most complex in terms of social gameplay i think) And, god, i can see a HUGE amount of bugs comming lol.

When are you going to upload the "How to Monetize Teens" Panel?

Has the reactive macro-bar system been done, but a bit weaker and less complex, in the last two Fallout games?

What the hell is Ken doing... it's been 4 years and we haven't seen anything from him? How's he still in a job right now...? Confused

LEGO is plural. No S is required.

42:52

Dwarf Fortress has featured a completely nonlinear, systemic narrative structure built into the game long before even this talk 10 yrs ago

Maybe some awesome System Shock like game will be made by Ken and his team, with this idea. However, there is no enemy, you can side with SHODAN, but you'll piss off the human resistance against her. You can find several survivors on the space station or space ship and they'll be neutral to you, or some even hostile, since they are surviving, but you can trade with them for, say; you need cyber modules and the other human wants your shotgun, you trade and gain more trust, and so you can side with an idividual human. The person you sided with wants you to destroy the space station, while someone else wants to just kill SHODAN and the other wants to simply escape. As you go with them, the story has many outcomes.