On December 17, 2024, episodes 9 to 15 of the animated anthology series Secret Level were released on Amazon Prime Video. Highlights include the episode about the online shooter Concord.
What is Secret Level? This is a series of disconnected, animated short films about video games, produced for Amazon Prime Video by director Tim Miller (Deadpool). With Love, Death & Robots, the creative mind had already created a similar series for Netflix in a fantastic manner.
On December 10, 2024, nine episodes had already gone live, featuring some highlights such as Keanu Reeves’ appearance as a pilot in Armored Core: Resource Management, the wonderfully silly episode on New World: Forever King, the epic Dungeons & Dragons: The Cradle of the Queen, or the delightfully brutal episode on Warhammer 40K: Fear No Evil.
A week later, on December 17, 2024, the rest of Season 1 followed, with The Outer Worlds, Mega Man, Spelunky, and Honor of Kings. However, a surprising highlight of the second half of the season is the short film about the online shooter Concord.
Here is the trailer for Secret Level:
The Thieves of the Galaxy
What makes the episode about Concord special? In just under a quarter of an hour, the episode “The Story of the Implacable” tells of a heist by the Freegunner crew led by Captain Cassidy, where the thieves must take on the powerful guild and attempt an escape through a deadly space storm.
Expect a colorful, likable group of outsiders who throw quips at each other, execute plans with more luck than sense, and continuously remind one of the Guardians of the Galaxy. There are both quirky and silly situations. The typically high-quality animation of the anthology series. The 15 minutes went by far too quickly.
A few months ago, this would have been the perfect starting point to promote the shooter of the same name and its heroes, to give the universe a profile and get genre fans excited about the online shooting. However, it is now too late for that. Concord has been offline for a long time. The responsible studio has closed.
Maybe that’s for the best. After all, the short film would have set up an expectation regarding the story and characters that the shooter in its final form could never fulfill. The focus was too heavily on the Games-as-a-Service foundation. Here again the most important points about the quick end of the multiplayer shooter:
- Concord flopped brutally at launch and could only register a peak of 697 concurrent players on Steam.
- Sony reacted quickly. Only 12 days after launch, the shooter was taken offline. The few buyers were to be refunded.
- According to various reports, Sony is said to have invested a three-digit million sum into the project. An insider even speaks of 400 million US dollars (without the acquisition cost for the studio).
In the meantime, the game director of Concord, Ryan Ellis, had also stepped down from his position to transition into a supportive role. Thus, a familiar figure bids farewell to long-time players, as Ellis was the creative head of the best DLC for Destiny, now he is the face of Sony’s flop on PS5 and Steam.
