Ghost Story Games, headed by the founder of the studio that put out the Bioshock series, released a developer log yesterday sharing the studio’s philosophy when it came to building up the protagonist and world of their upcoming sci-fi immersive-sim FPS game Judas. It’s been a hot minute since creative director Ken Levine has given us an update on the release date of the game since it was mysteriously delayed earlier this year, but the development of Judas is still very much in full swing. And according to an interview with the CEO of publisher Take-Two Interactive, it’s likely that the game will hit the shelves sometime next year. That interview took place in August, right around when the first dev log for Judas was released–which discussed some fascinating dynamic gameplay mechanics players can expect–and the one posted recently delivers more on that and expounds upon the “creative process” of the game.

Levine from Ghost Story opens up the dev log with the headline “Creating a Judas Simulator,” which might seem a little redundant for those unfamiliar with the game, but its title and protagonist’s name are the same. This isn’t a coincidence of easy naming. He further explains that the hook of Judas is, unlike Bioshock, focused on the changing narrative of the game, specifically how the character of Judas navigates and shapes it. So rather than the protagonist existing as the ubiquitous empty-vessel-with-one-liners-player-character, the game revolves entirely around how this fictional person operates, flaws and all. Judas is described as “strongly voiced” and “really defined” through her conflicting talents with robotics and seemingly poor social skills–which as the devs mention, makes for a hell of a story in a game set on a spaceship brimming with hostile robots and very touchy people. The dev log summarizes:

That tension at the heart of the character came to inform everything about the game, which we stopped thinking of as an FPS and started calling a ‘Judas Simulator.’

This points to another design choice explained by the devs; that to make Judas’ levels partially procedurally generated. Not by AI though–the various environments the game takes place on are asserted to be comprised of hand-crafted assets from the art team that are carefully placed using an algorithm. According to Ghost Story Games, this allows “…for reactivity in a way you’ve never seen in our previous games.”

Ken Levine’s first studio, Irrational Games, made waves in the industry with Bioshock, and to this day it’s often referenced as a revolutionary example of the immersive sim genre. Now with Levine’s new studio Ghost Story Games, Judas looks to double down on the tenets of that series, not just giving players the power to tackle the game however they want to, but evolving that idea even further via a world that is steered entirely by its protagonist.