Ken Levine Explains Why Judas Prioritizes Style Over Cutting-Edge Graphics

In a recent interview with IGN, BioShock creator Ken Levine discussed his upcoming game Judas and his perspective on the evolving landscape of game development. He explained why cutting-edge technology and hyper-realism don't appeal to him as a creator.

"I don't think we've ever been a company that was like, oh my God, we need the latest and greatest technology. In the rendering space we've never been a company; outside of SWAT 4, we never really tried to do ultrarealism in our games," he said.

"It's expensive, and it doesn't age as well as sort of more stylistic things because BioShock still looks good, I think, because it wasn't trying to get every nut and bolt super realistically rendered. It was realistic-looking, sort of, but it was more stylized."

He pointed to newer gaming hardware like the Nintendo Switch 2 and the upcoming Steam Machine as evidence that the industry has hit "a bit of diminishing returns" in the race for better visuals.

"I think if you have the right art director and the right approach, you don't need to be on the cutting edge of technology all the time," he said. "Even the stuff we're doing with Judas, all this narrative stuff we're doing is not CPU intensive. It's work intensive on our side, and Baldur's Gate is the same way. That was just like a ton of work behind that. None of it was particularly technologically demanding, right? It was just a billion branching tree structures that they had to manage and think about - which I tip my hat to those guys because they did an amazing job with it - but that's not a technological, hardware challenge. It's an engineering and thought challenge."

Levine's next game, the first-person shooter Judas, does not yet have a release date. When it's ready, it will launch on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S.

Levine spoke to IGN as part of the IGN Icons series, celebrating 30 years of the video game industry and the people who have pushed it forward.