Levine's new game "more ambitious"

By Tom Bramwell Published 20 July, 2009

Than his last one, BioShock.

2K Boston creative director Ken Levine has said in passing that his next game is vastly more ambitious than BioShock, although we still don't know what it is.

"We needed a certain kind of length for the title, because we had a scope and ambition in mind which is more ambitious than anything we've ever done," Levine told Gamasutra in an interesting interview about hiring practices.

"Even more, substantially more ambitious than BioShock. And we knew that was not going to happen overnight."

He also points out that the pre-production process has been "very long". "If you go back and look at our ads and stuff, we've been recruiting for how many years now? For this product? A couple of years?"

Levine, who is not contributing to BioShock 2, has yet to tell anyone what he's working on, although he wouldn't confirm or deny suggestions that it's a new X-Com title when he spoke to GameSpot earlier in the year.

Elsewhere in the Gama interview, Levine explains how 2K Boston quizzes applicants about storytelling and how art works on people, among other things, and discusses his fascination with antagonists and, of course, Ayn Rand.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • AphoticCosmos #1 3 years ago

    Well as long as it doesn't wind up as insanely boring after one impossibly awesome moment 2/3rds of the way through, I'm cool with that.

  • Negotiator #2 3 years ago

    Ambitious, I love that word, reminds me of my life.

  • WrongShui #3 3 years ago

    It better be X-Com.

    And it better be awesome.

  • ChthonicEcho #4 3 years ago

    Yes, I love the word 'ambitious' in the gaming industry. As it happens, it usually refers to a game that could have been so much more and has a stellar concept, yet has too many shortcomings to be considered anything more than a good game you enjoy while you play it and only remember it afterwards when you see discussions about it on the Internet.

  • makeamazing #5 3 years ago

    Oh my.. .XCOM please :D.... but dont ruin it... shame they probably wont make a turn based game as i would be happy with a cleaned up Xcom Terror from the deep!!!

  • metalmonk #6 3 years ago

    I can't wait for ........Shock!

  • the_mtfr #7 3 years ago

    An X-Com lead by Levine and developed by Altar Games with a huge pre-production phase would be most exciting.

  • YourMessageHere #8 3 years ago

    I can't quite connect "substantially more ambitious than Bioshock" with "X-Com" - how can a franchise as old and tired as it is, especially one based on as old-fashioned a play mechanic as turn-based strategy (not intended as an insult, merely a description), possibly hope to deliver on that sort of description? I hope it's something totally new, and fear ChthonicEcho may be lamentably right.

  • Katsumoto #9 3 years ago

    He'd best not be turning X-Com into an FPS!

    Maybe the "ambitious" part means he can make turn-based squad-centric tactics games fashionable again. Maybe. I hope so, so long as "fashionable" doesn't mean streamlined so hard you can't even tell it's a strategy game any more.