14 DAY TRIAL // Ken Levine, the creator of BioShock, managed to touch many with the unexpected twists and turns of his narrative-driven first-person shooters.
Unfortunately, Irrational Games closed down after shipping BioShock Infinite, the third episode in the series, and it's highly unlikely that we'll see a fresh episode in the near future.
While that may be for the better, since it's better to remember the games as solid entries rather than see the original idea slowly curl up in a ball and die due to being milked for profit, people are still expecting Levine to announce his next video game project.
However you look at the games and the many uncertainties left in their wake, the fact of the matter is that they remain some of the most compelling and interesting interactive experiences that the gaming world has produced so far.
One of the strong points of the BioShock series is the great way that the games play with the notion of free will and player agency, bringing it to the level of an actual meta-game that you play against yourself due to your own expectations of what you're supposed to do in a video game.
The only shortcoming of a finely crafted narrative is the fact that it's a very linear experience, not permitting for the gamer to step outside its carefully traced boundaries.
Levine addresses this issue in a very interesting article written for Medium, revealing some of the revolutionary ideas and mechanics he has recently discovered, that could potentially fuel his next creation.
Would you kindly kill orcs in whatever fashion you please?
It seems that Levine found a surprising way to deal with freedom and consequence, which will most likely inspire his next creation: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's emergent narrative.
The game offers you a backstory, a bunch of tools, and lets you create your own journey. While there are some clear paths that you must tread on, there is none of the usual hand holding, with big arrows pointing you in the right direction at the right time.
You are free to write your own story, and the narrative stems naturally from the gameplay. Monolith Productions' action-adventure video game is a blend of Batman: Arkham City mechanics and Lord of the Rings lore, and its radically new freeform narrative is perhaps its biggest strength.
The game offers players the opportunity to make meaningful choices, and the flexible narrative adapts to them and incorporates them in a streamlined manner, rather than breaking at the seams. The player ends up with a custom story that reveals itself more organically, often in unpredictable ways, due to the fact that it is structured around certain interlocking building blocks that can be arranged in a wide variety of ways.
Ken Levine's current project is unannounced as of yet, but judging by this piece, it will most likely be something to do with the new breed of industry buzzwords: emergent narrative, meaningful player agency, flexible and adaptive experience.
