25-Jul-2003 The incorrigible old smoothie returns to thwart cat-stroking megalomaniacs and then hook up with their girlfriends Whether escaping mute, bowler-hatted Chinese men, engaging in a desperate face-off against a bloke with three nipples and a funny little waiter, or else just getting his rocks off with every attractive woman he meets, James Bond is the suavest of all secret agents. And astonishingly for a movie licence, he even pops up in the odd good game too.
Okay, so none of EA's Bond titles have come close to the brilliance of GoldenEye, the seminal title that appeared on N64 - but it's tough when your games are doomed to be compared to an untouchable classic for eternity. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why EA has decided to take a different approach with the latest Bond title, Everything or Nothing.
We recently spoke to product manager Kevin Chorney who told us just exactly what to expect from the eyebrow-cocking rogue this time.
Why did you decide to go with this kind of approach as opposed to the FPS games of recent years?
Chorney: Basically, there's no movie this year, right? So there's really no Bond experience that's gonna give you the movie feel. So you're not gonna be able to see Bond anywhere else besides in the game. So this way, you can actually see Bond; his swagger, his face, his voice.
So you're almost playing an unreleased Bond movie. We have a huge cast: we have Judi Dench, Pierce Brosnan, John Cleese, we have the Bond girl, Heidi Klum - she's the evil one.
The screenshots suggest a game that's been inspired by games like Splinter Cell.
Chorney: That's what a lot of people have been comparing the game to. This is more stealth-based than the last game, but there are other influences - the action you can see on screen at the moment [points to scree], where the action's slowed down - someone said it reminded them of Max Payne.
There's a combat system so that you can deal low and high blows, you can throw and grab opponents, there's counters, and it's definitely challenging - it's a difficult game. You can cycle through your weapons with the D-pad, switch through from weapons to gadgets.
So are there going to be any setpieces inspired by some of the older movies?
Chorney: It's a whole new script, all new action - there's a whole story in the script about a GoldenEye-style conspiracy. You're not limited to conventional weapons - you can grab hold of a bottle and smash it over a guy's head and he can do the same to you.
So what are some of the cooler gadgets that you'll be able to use?
Chorney: Later on in the game there's something called a spider-bomb. The spider-bomb is a kind of remote control gadget that has a fish-eye lens, so you can drive around using it for surveillence or you can actually use it as a bomb.
We also have something that we're calling a multi-purpose grenade, but really it's a bit more involved than that; it has three functions, and the first one is you can use it to shut down all the electric devices in the area.
Another function is the straightforward grenade bomb, and the third one is actually a stun device, so you can actually stun the guys around you without actually killing them, which serves a purpose in the storyline later on in the game.
You also have a special contact lens which again gives you different modes; you can use it with the stun device and it prevents you from becoming stunned, so you have to use it if you're in the range of the stun grenade. The other is it actually creates slow motion time, like a bullet time effect.
There's also something that right now, we're calling the nano suit. You ever seen Predator? It's like the creature's cloaking device from that - it actually matches the surroundings. But the faster you move, the more it blurs, and the easier it is for enemies to detect you. And on the vehicle side we have cars with flamethrowers, a motorcycle with a flamethrower, stuff like that.
How is the game structured?
Chorney: We have four acts, and within those acts, we have different maps, and so you get a lot of variety. So for instance you might start off rappelling down a building, then you have to chase a train, drive along the canyons of Egypt, catch up to the train and get on. Now you have to use stealth, trying to sneak through without being caught, and then you're actually fighting Jaws.
Beat Jaws and you have to chase after the guy who stole the nanotechnology - the top secret information that forms the basis of your mission - and you chase him by helicopter. So we try to give the gamer a lot of variety. That's just one act. In the next one you'll be in New Orleans, which is much bigger.
So interesting storyline, lots of variety, that's what we're trying to give to the title. You saw the helicopter; there's also a tank, a motorbike, the Aston Martin... You're not just running around. You're going from Egypt to New Orleans to South America to Moscow.
So is story important this time round?
Chorney: We wanted to tell the story because with a first-person shooter, you don't really get to tell too much of a story - it's all about the action. With a first-person shooter, you need time to develop some innovation; we wanted to say: "Hey, let's switch to third-person; we don't have a movie, let's go ahead and make a real story".
So we brought in Bruce Feirstein, who wrote the GoldenEye movie script and the Tomorrow Never Dies script. So he started writing the story, and we thought, well, if we're going to bring in Pierce Brosnan, his face and his voice, why don't we bring in the whole cast?
That way you recognise the characters, you can empathise with the characters; but since we're a game we can do what we want. So we thought, who's a great Bond henchman? Jaws, right?
But no cameo for Roger Moore?
Chorney: Someday, I dunno. I don't know if Pierce Brosnan would actually want that. But we brought in some new faces as well, so our Bond villain is Willem Dafoe, who is wonderful.
He comes out as a great Bond villain. His voice, you'll see in the trailer, how he acts, he's just great. And we've got somebody else as well, doing the theme song, we're not announcing that yet, but we'll be letting people know who that is pretty soon.
It's gonna be Shirley Bassey isn't it? Level with us.
Chorney: Well, we'll see. But it really helps to make the game feel more "real". It's like with the actors, you can hear it in Pierce Brosnan's voice and you're like: "Yes! This is how he'd act!" There'll be some stealth moments where he'll tap someone on the back and say "pardon me"; so it's got that swagger, and you couldn't really deliver that if you didn't have the real deal.
And it's important to match the attitude with what you're seeing on screen - we have over 280 animations just for Bond himself.
What can we expect on GBA?
Chorney: You can actually hook the GBA up to the GameCube version and use it as a gadget - so where you're in a level, in a place where you're stuck, if you're connected the GBA will beep and you can check it for hints.
The GBA version of the game is still related to the console version, but it's original material - you're doing different stuff. The GBA is more of an adventure - there are RPG elements in there, you can develop skills so that you're more accurate with a gun, for instance.
So the console version is an action game, but it's a stealth-action game. First of all, it's going to be hard to shoot your way out of trouble every time. The enemy will beat you, our AI is much stronger, they hide, take cover, all that sort of stuff. But if you're sneakier, you can actually increase your health points capacity, your capacity to carry ammo.
There's areas where you have to be cunning; there's an area later on in the game where you're in a dark cemetary with limited ammo, and a sniper is shooting at you, you don't know where he is. So you have to rely on a flash of lightning to pinpoint his position - that's the only way you can locate him.
And there's a rewards system, so you can get bronze, silver, gold, platinum depending on how well you play through a level, and with the platinum award you'll be able to gain assets that you couldn't get before, or secret multiplayer levels. So there's a lot of incentive there to play through the game skillfully.
Multiplayer mode?
Chorney: Right, there's two multiplayer modes. You have a co-op mode where you have 12 original maps that aren't connected to the single-player game, and it's fairly extensive - you have to work with each other to progress.
Plus there's an arena mode where you can fight a buddy, and there are other things going on, weapons attacking you, Jaws joining in - it's a kind of party game.
We think there's been some criticism in the past about Bond games, that on the surface they do look fantastic but maybe there's a question about the depth. Do you feel you've addressed that with this game?
Chorney: I definitely think so. Because I think one of the difficulties for us was that with the FPS games we were always trying to work so hard, but when you have several iterations of the shooter you lose something on the innovation side of things, and people feel like there's something lacking.
So we thought there's lots of things we can't do with the FPS that we could do in a third-person adventure. We're delivering a wider variety of gameplay - like here, you've got Bond and Jaws slugging it out mano e mano - that's the only way you could do that properly - it just wouldn't work in an FPS game.
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