Ahead of the release of Secret Level, the Concord episode has received a huge amount of attention, and not for the right reasons. Based on Firewalk Studios’ game, it’s one part of the 15-episode anthology series which animates different stories from some of your favorite games.
However, before the series could come out, Concord was unfortunately pulled offline. Soon attention was directed to Secret Level, and whether they’d be keeping an episode centered around the ill-fated first-person shooter in their line-up.
As creators Tim Miller and Dave Wilson tell GamesRadar+, though, there was never any discussions about removing the final episode. “It never came up with us, I mean, Amazon never suggested it, and we didn’t either because why? I mean, we have games in the mix that are no longer like Unreal Tournament,” Deadpool director Miller tells us. “This one the course to 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.”
He continues: “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?’ And honestly, it’s simply because we’re proud of the episode and it looks cool. The fact that the game is no longer around is unfortunate because we liked the developers, they 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.”
As executive producer Wilson explains too, the decision to include Concord was made years ago, and was part of the series’ ethos to include past, present and future games. The aim for them was “to have those future games sync up with our series”, he adds, citing another episode focused on the upcoming Exodus.
“Like Tim said, we’re incredibly proud of that episode and it’s almost poignantly fitting in [that] it’s a lovely legendary story about this crew. I’m very proud of the episode. Patrick Osborne, who directed it, did a great job, the studio that created it there was fabulous. They’re all lovely people. If there was an episode that was filled with joy, that one was great and it’s oddly sad on the other side of it.”
Miller knows what the conversation around it has been though, as he admits he finds it hard to stay away from YouTube comments. However, he hopes viewers can detach from the conversation around the game and just enjoy the episode for what it is.
“There’s no reason that really applies to us, you know,” he says of the negativity. “Because there was maybe a misalignment in the type of game, in the marketing strategy for that, and the time it came out. I mean, those are all things that don’t really apply to us, our show, and that episode. So, you know, they’re worthy of discussion in the gaming world, but it doesn’t really apply to the show. So I’m not sure why people think it should and hopefully they’ll just enjoy the episode.”
Secret Level is released on Amazon Prime Video on December 10, with additional episodes released until December 17. For more, check out our guides to the best shows on Amazon Prime Video and our round-up of all the upcoming video game adaptations you need to know about.