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Levine's Irrational at work on 'original title'

Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick says BioShock creator was removed from sequel to craft all-new game with franchise potential.

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Online speculation has been rife as to the nature of the in-development project at Ken Levine's Irrational Games. On Tuesday, that guesswork went 0-2, when Take-Two officially announced that XCOM would be reimagined as a first-person shooter on the Xbox 360 and PC, courtesy of BioShock 2 developer 2K Marin. Levine had also been erroneously attached to the reboot of Take-Two's Spec Ops franchise, which turned up at German developer Yager in December.

Irrational revealed its new logo earlier this year, but not its new game.
Irrational revealed its new logo earlier this year, but not its new game.

So what is Levine working on? Job listings indicate that the project will be a shooter. And according to recent statements made by Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick, it will also be an all-new property. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Zelnick said that Levine's Irrational Games was taken off of last year's well-received sequel to BioShock "in order to produce an original title that could become another franchise."

Zelnick offered no other details on the project. However, speaking to GameSpot in January, Levine himself said that the game's full reveal would occur this year. "This is the year we'll start talking about stuff, and we stop hiding behind the iron curtain of secrecy," he said. He also said that while the game is the only one Irrational is working on at the moment, "it's a big project."

He went on to note that the announcement would come sometime after last month's Game Developers Conference. However, he would not confirm whether it was scheduled for an Electronic Entertainment Expo announcement in June.

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