Secret Level continues to look like a sizzle reel for a new console launch lineup, but in a good way. The Prime Video series featuring over a dozen stories set in the fantasy and sci-fi worlds of actual video (and tabletop) games has one last trailer before its premiere, and it’s packing in a lot, including the briefest glimpse of a story based on Sony’s recently scuttled hero shooter Concord.
Revealed last summer, Secret Level is from the studio that made LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS and each of its 15 episodes is a one-off animated take on a popular gaming franchise or property, from classics like Pac-Man and Dungeons & Dragons to more recent indie hits like Spelunky and Sifu. Complete with a star-studded cast featuring the talents of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, and others, the show’s latest trailer whips between each one-off episode to demonstrate the full breadth and visual variety of animation powering the series.
I don’t know if any of the stories will actually be good, but I’m excited to watch:
Buried between the Warhammer 40,000 space marines and Keanu Reeves piloting an Armored Core mech, there’s a lightning-quick flash of a beautiful blue and magenta nebula with a ship flying through it and the title card Concord overtop. That episode will be the last gasp of an ambitious sci-fi universe the developers at Firewalk Studios helped to jumpstart this year. Unfortunately, the game itself ended up being an unprecedented flop, and Sony shut down the studio just last month.
“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,” Tim Miller, the lead creative behind Secret Level, told Rolling Stone this week. “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.”
He added that he personally has no idea why Concord failed the way it did. “There was no nicer, more invested group of developers than the team on Concord,” Miller said. “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.”
Secret Level premieres on Amazon’s streaming service on December 10 with new episodes dropping throughout that week. That might be when players finally catch a better glimpse of what Concord’s developers hoped would make it so special.
