The latest round of hype for Secret Level, Amazon’s show based on various video games, is here, ahead of the show’s official premiere on December 10. Both an interview with the creator and a new trailer have answered the lingering question of whether Concord will still be featured: awkwardly, but maybe thankfully, yes.
To quickly recap: Concord’s servers were taken offline less than two weeks after the game launched in August, and Sony ultimately closed developer Firewalk Studios in late October after seemingly completely losing faith in a studio it poured gallons of money and hype into. Some of that hype was in the form of its inclusion in Secret Level, which you could see as an odd choice given that, at the time the show was announced, Concord was newly out, and the most we’d seen of the world Sony and the show’s creators were banking on was an awkwardly-received cinematic trailer.
Despite all that, in the newest Secret Level trailer, you can catch a glimpse of Concord, most clearly through the word "Concord" showing up on screen. This is, interestingly, separate from another episode apparently focusing on PlayStation more broadly.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Secret Level creator Tim Miller addressed the issue. Rolling Stone writes that “it was never an option to kill the [Concord] episode… there was no way for Miller to know what that eventual fate [of the game and studio] would be during the three years it took to produce Secret Level, nor had it ever been a consideration to remove the episode from the anthology.”
Miller says:
There was no nicer, more invested group of developers than the team on Concord… I honestly don’t understand why it didn’t work. I know that they were trying to do the best they could, and they were a talented group of artists, so I feel terrible for that…
I don’t feel bad that it’s a part of the show, because I think it’s an episode that turned out really well, and you can kind of see the potential of this world and the characters… If it’s the remaining vestige of that product, I hope the developers feel that it’s in some way worthy, just a little bit, of the blood, sweat, and tears they put into it.
I find the vibes very weird here, but I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. If something of the game can live on, if Miller and ::shudder:: Amazon can believe in Concord in a way Sony wouldn’t, I hope that brings some positive feelings and closure to the folks from Firewalk. But it also feels like one more reminder of how weird the situation around Concord was, proof of how much Sony was putting behind the game until it so abruptly wasn’t, and another crack in the foundation of Sony’s focus on live service despite the cost and risks.
And it’s hard not to grimace at Miller’s mention of Concord’s “potential” given everything that happened. At a Comic-Con panel in October, before it was clear to the public the game wasn’t coming back, Secret Level co-creator Dave Wilson reportedly described the Concord episode as “the last ride of Captain Cassidy and the freegunners,” which, well, yes. But even this quote speaks to the tragedy of Concord’s life–what emotions are we expected to have about the “last ride” of characters few people even got to know?
Like I said, I hope Concord’s creators feel good about this version of their work seeing the light of day. I look forward to feeling very weird about the episode when the show comes out.
