"The end result is we have an interesting story with a beautiful piece of animation."
Amazon's animated video game anthology series Secret Level is dropping later this month, and despite no longer existing, that Concord episode is still coming.
Ever since it became official that Concord had performed so poorly the studio that made it would be shutting down, and the game would stay offline forever, there's been an awkward elephant in the room: it has an episode in Secret Level. Amazon has made it clear that the episode would still air, and in a recent interview with GamesRadar, series creators Tim Miller and Dave Willson shared that there was never any question about it. "It never came up with us, I mean, Amazon never suggested it, and we didn't either because why?" Miller said on the point of the possibility the episode could have been cancelled.
"I mean, we have games in the mix that are no longer like Unreal Tournament. This one not being out there was different, of course, but the end result is we have an interesting story with a beautiful piece of animation that people worked very hard to produce. And I can't see any reason why we wouldn't put it out there for the fans. I know people like to point out and go, 'What are they doing?' Or, 'Why would they do this?'
Miller went on to note that they're quite simply "proud of the episode and it looks cool" and that he finds it unfortunate the game isn't around any more. "[The developers] were nice people, and they were trying to do the best they could. But it doesn't affect our desire to put this thing out in the world that we worked very hard on and so did they, and a lot of artists."
Wilson also made the point that part of the series' ethos was to include past, present and future games, though I do think in this particular case, Concord's past is still quite recent, and still quite upsetting overall. Still, at least the episode might give us a look into what the future could have been - even if it's a future not many people wanted.