IO Interactive’s 007: First Light is just around the corner, brining James Bond back to video games for the first time in over a decade. While many look to Rare’s Goldeneye as the ultimate Bond game, many grew up with EA’s successors: Nightfire, Everything or Nothing, and From Russia with Love.
Speaking on an upcoming episode of the FRVR Podcast, EA’s former Bond producer and Dead Space producer Chuck Beaver explained that the trilogy of Bond games were “a challenge” to make. Coming off of Goldeneye 64, EA’s titles were largely different with two of the three being third-person shooters while Nightfire stayed in the first-person ballpark.
“James Bond films are not always a good match for single player missions because a lot of this stuff is happening very subtly.”
Chuck Beaver on James Bond game adaptations
“That was the Wild West of games at the time,” Beaver said. “That was like 2002. You didn’t have to come from like Hollywood to have input on level design. So, I was helping pitch level design with people like the crazy tower that [Nikolai] is in at the end.”
Beaver explained that working on James Bond games that didn’t have a film counterpart allowed a lot of “creative freedom”. “Not having to do an actual movie means you can invent a lot of solutions that otherwise you weren’t allowed,” he said.
EA’s last Bond title, From Russia with Love, was a loose adaptation of the movie of the same name, featuring a younger Sean Connery as the iconic spy. There were many changes—including changing the iconic SPECTRE organisation to OCTOPUS due to rights issues—and it proved challenging to squeeze the 60s spy flick into a video game form.
“[From Russia with Love] was such a challenge to adapt from the screenplay,” Beaver said. “Because the James Bond films are not always a good match for single player missions because a lot of this stuff is happening very subtly. It’s not all gunplay, you know what I mean? It’s all spy play and not all of that is on the controller… that was a challenging one to do.”
After From Russia with Love, the rights for James Bond games shifted to Activision who released four games: Quantum of Solace, Goldeneye 007, Blood Stone, and the abysmal 007 Legends. After the Bond license was taken away, Beaver remembered seeing Rocksteady’s iconic Batman: Arkham Asylum and thinking that game held the formula for the perfect Bond title.
“We gave the license up to Activision after From Russia with Love and we were like, ‘Oh, sorry, we would have loved to perfect it. And then, I remember Arkham Asylum came out, not shortly after, but after, we were like, ‘Oh. That’s exactly what we should have done for that [Bond]. That was so good. But it was like, Batman is Bond in a cape and cowl. It was so fun to watch them nail the essence of that.”
Beaver explains that “it wouldn’t be hard to make a 007 game now because you have a lot of good examples of how to, gameplay-wise, do what happens in those movies. I thought Arkham Asylum was like, ‘Oh, that’s it. That’s it. That’s how to do that. And then now, they’ve got even more to go with. You could pull in, you know, Snake from Metal Gear Solid kind of gameplay.”
IO Interactive’s upcoming James Bond game, 007: First Light, isn’t looking to Arkham Asylum for inspiration, but is instead a fantastic-looking mix of Uncharted and Hitman. Nevertheless, it’s easy to see how Rocksteady’s work on Arkham could make for a great James Bond game. Combine the stealth and brutality of Batman’s combat with the social stealth we see in IO’s upcoming game, and that would be yet another brilliant Bond title.
