Concord, Sony’s new hero shooter, may be DOA, but its spirit will survive. Launched on PlayStation 5 and Windows PC on Aug. 23 only to be removed from storefronts on Sept. 3, with servers set to be fully shut down on Sept. 6, Concord will have one last splash in mainstream culture when its characters take the small screen in Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming animated anthology series Secret Level. Polygon has confirmed with sources close to production that, despite Sony’s decision to completely remove the game from existence, an episode inspired by Concord’s lore and design will roll out when Secret Level premieres in December.
The sci-fi setting of Concord was one of the theoretical main draws of the game, with Sony and Firewalk Studios investing heavily in weekly cinematic lore drops that would introduce prospective players to the the Freegunner crew of the Northstar, a space pirate ship that would travel between planets in the game’s galaxy. The animated content produced for Concord was… pretty snazzy? But the attempt to hype up the unknown characters with as much emphasis as the play didn’t click with audiences, and the game debuted to dismal player counts.
The cold response led Sony to ultimately pull Concord offline, and promise refunds to players who bought in early. The company also said it would “explore options” for what the pay-to-play game “including those that will better reach our players.”
Anyone mourning the loss of Concord — and there are a few players still leveling up in the final hours of its existence — should get even more excited for Secret Level. Created by Blur Studio’s Tim Miller, who has experience with genre-bending, animation-stretching anthology series after producing Netflix’s Love, Death + Robots, Secret Level brings cinematic-quality production to one-off adventures in various games. Concord is on the docket, along with episodes inspired by Armored Core, Crossfire, Dungeons & Dragons, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World: Aeternum, PAC-MAN, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament, Warhammer 40,000, and an episode devoted to PlayStation characters, which damn well better include Astro Bot.
Concord did not work for the masses as a game. If the lore was a priority enough to pump out animated episode updates each week, could it work better as TV?
Secret Level premieres on Dec. 10 on Prime Video.
