BioShock creator Ken Levine's next game has characters with "passions, wants and needs"

BioShock creator Ken Levine has said character motivations in his next game will be less black or white and more organic.

Speaking with Game Informer, Levine is developing a new character system which incorporates evolving feelings due to inherent "passions, wants and needs."

"The whole system that I came up with and that we’re developing is based upon the fact that to make an interesting character, you have to have a character who has a bunch of passions, wants, and needs," he said. "The player now has the ability to facilitate those wants or needs or go against those wants or needs or ignore those wants or needs.

"The reason I think the system is going to work is because it’s a very organic way to look at a character. It’s a quite systemic game. The character’s feelings about you change, they go up and down. But the heart of a character is still wants and needs, and that makes it no different than anything I’ve ever written before.

"If you look at the characters and what they want and need, that’s the heart of what the characters are - not their skin color, religion, [or] their sex. It’s what they want, what they need, and what’s in their way. That’s a function of talking about who they are and how they got to this place. Sometimes it’s skin color, race, or gender gets them to that place. But that’s a story."

Levine hasn't revealed the premise of his next project, nor much of anything really, other than he was creating a non-linear, "narrative-driven, highly replayable" game containing sci-fi elements.

The game is being developed on PC using Unreal Engine 4.