Will GoldenEye: Rogue Agent be the Return of a Nintendo 64 Classic or The Birth of a New Legacy?

by Louis Bedigian

 

“We knew the expectations would be high and comparisons would be made if we didn't deliver something that could live up to that legacy.”

 

 

Before Halo turned millions of gamers into zombies, a first-person shooter came along that made Nintendo 64 a must-have console: GoldenEye 007.

 

Based on the film of the same name, GoldenEye didn’t invent a new genre or evolve an existing one.  Rare did what few game developers dare to do: they worked their butts off until the controls were perfect.  They spent years making certain that all of the gameplay mechanics functioned properly.  They lost sleep to ensure that the levels would be unlike any that had been seen before.

 

Their hard work and dedication, along with a multiplayer mode that kicked the tar out of everything else on the market, made GoldenEye the number-one game to play with a group of friends.  Online multiplayer wasn’t needed to make this game a winner.

 

Seven years and several Bond games later, Electronic Arts has acquired the rights to the GoldenEye license and is ready to unleash a game that millions of us having been waiting for: GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.

 

 

 

 

Contrary to our assumption, this isn’t a direct sequel to GoldenEye 007.  As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the star of this new adventure is not James Bond, but is in fact a rogue agent.

 

We were all set to buy over-priced suits and explosive weaponry when Chris Plummer, Senior Producer of Rogue Agent, warned us of the dangers of doing so.  We then explained how we always talk about doing extravagant, life-threatening things, then scrap the plans in favor of playing a video game.

 

Chris agreed that that was the best way to go, and decided to sit down with us for an interview regarding one of the most important games of 2004.

 

 

Rogue Agent appears to have the same look and feel of the original GoldenEye.  What did it take to achieve that?  Did you guys play the original a lot?

 

Chris Plummer: We're all huge fans of the classic GoldenEye: 007 and the team is very proud that we were able to capture some of that style with our gameplay. It's no accident. We were very critical of our own work as we iterated through features and content because we knew the expectations would be high and comparisons would be made if we didn't deliver something that could live up to that legacy.

 

At the same time, we're delivering a totally different story with new characters and new gameplay innovations on much more advanced hardware, so there's a completely original style that shines through even with all the familiar elements.

 

 

Move those feet you dancin’ fool,

Dyin’ on the job is so un-cool. 

 

Go over the key elements that will make players say, "This is the GoldenEye sequel I've been waiting for."

 

CP: I hope players don't look at [this] as a sequel because that would be an inaccurate interpretation of the game. Rogue Agent could be thought of as a spiritual successor, but it's not a sequel. It's a high-action first-person shooter set in the Bond Universe with a major emphasis on multiplay, but the easy comparisons end there.

 

For starters, we're playing as a villain this time and taking players into the Bond underworld. This was an important step in delivering a great FPS set in the Bond universe, since James Bond's character has evolved over the years into more of a fast cars and stealth gameplay hero. The style of gameplay we wanted to capture – something more along the lines of the original N64 classic – doesn't model the kind of behavior that is appropriate for today's James Bond. But it's perfectly suited for the villains of his world. It's about time gamers had an opportunity to become a Bond villain. They have all the riches, the women, the firepower, the sinister plots - everything that defines the universe that Bond lives in. Now you can finally step into the role of the villain that all bad guys from any genre wish they could be - and do it in James Bond's world. It's a riot! 

 

Now even though our game is not a sequel, there are some things fans of the original will appreciate. Our focus on multiplayer resulted in over 20 incredible arenas playable in 2-way and 4-way split screen as well as online play for up to 8 players for Xbox Live and PS2 Online. We took the dual weapons moments that we loved from the original and exploded it into the deepest dual-wield system in existence with 16 weapons and over 100 ways to independently wield them in your left or right hand (or both at the same time). Xenia Onatopp plays a role in Rogue Agent as Dr. No's chief Lieutenant. There are many more similarities players can discover as they dig through the game.

 

Playing as a lethal villain means doing bad things.  How dark will the game be?  What evil things will players have to do?

 

CP: Rogue Agent's unique brand of high-action villainy is best described by the Rogue Scoring system, which awards bonuses to players who play like a Bond villain. We keep track of twelve different types of Rogue Bonuses that cover player actions such as expending hostages as human shields, cheap shots (shooting enemy through a wall), throwing an enemy out a window and taking people out with machine traps.

 

A lot of our mechanics are oriented toward cheating and breaking the rules, like our emphasis on wielding two weapons instead of one, and the GoldenEye upgrades, which provide significant advantages when activated. We also built in opportunities to take advantage of everything that makes a Bond film exciting, like generous access to explosives, an effective melee combat option featuring grapples and throws, deathtraps, and gadget-like weaponry. Even our Stunt-Action Physics system is tuned to make each elimination worthy of savoring. Finally, the missions themselves take players into new territory, including assassination, theft, and (my favorite) blowing up Hoover Dam!

 

 

Dual-wielding!

 

 

When and where does the game take place?  Lots of villains are going to be featured – does this mean there will be a long timeline?

 

CP: The game is set in a modern adaptation of the timeless Bond universe. You know the one – where Bond is the same age in 1963 as he is in 2003. That's one of the great advantages of working under this license: there really is no timeline because the universe is timeless and none of the films are sequels to their predecessors.

 

To that end, we hired Sir Ken Adam, the academy award-winner who is credited as the architect for the look of the Bond universe in film, to be our production designer. We wanted to capture that timeless vision of a dangerous near future and make it still feel familiar and accessible in today's world.

 

Some of Ken's film locations that we visit in the game we're renovated by their original master in order to bring them up to date for the game while others were originally crafted with such vision to live on in their original form today. Number One joins our cast of villains, as he provides some continuity between the many of the Bond films from the criminal perspective. It's pretty cool to see all of these legendary characters coexist in the same game. It's the first time anyone has fully leveraged the Bond universe like this and we hope gamers enjoy the results.

 

Are any of the locations taken from the previous games or films?  (If so, talk about what it was like to convert the game/film locations for Rogue Agent.)

 

CP: Many of our campaign and multiplayer locations are directly adapted from famous Bond film sets, including Fort Knox from Goldfinger, Crab Key from Dr. No and the Volcano Lair from You Only Live Twice. In multiplay, you can compete in Scaramanga's funhouse from The Man with the Golden Gun, the shuttle launch bays from Moonraker, the top of the Golden Gate bridge from A View to a Kill and the satellite uplink array from the end of GoldenEye – just to name a few.

 

To pull off these locations, we hired the guy who originally designed the look of the Bond film universe, Sir Ken Adam. As we've discussed, our team worked closely with Ken to ensure the missions were portrayed authentically while at the same functioning as compelling gameplay environments. He was already familiar with the locations and characters in Rogue Agent due to his work on the films and he was able to help us dig deeper into the fiction to more accurately portray the villains' underworld. We briefed him on our AI system and all the little nuances that are required to make the gameplay work and he collaborated with our artists to ensure the locations looked and felt like the Bond universe.

 

For our original locations, we asked Ken to take have no constraints and go crazy with the designs as if there was an unlimited film budget. The coolest part for me is that our original locations feel very much at home in the Bond universe thanks to his vision. In some cases he even reinvented his classic film locations (like Auric Enterprises) just for the game because now it could be portrayed with unlimited scope.

 

 

Power!  Power!  What wonderful power!

 

 

How many playable characters will there be for the multiplayer mode?  Will James Bond be one of them, perhaps as a secret character?

 

CP: There are 17 playable characters in multiplay if you're good enough to unlock them all. We focused the multiplayer experience on the villains exclusively, although we do include a US Commando because a lot of guys here like the commando uniforms for team play. We have a good mix of unique characters and uniformed characters you can unlock and use in multiplayer matches, including Oddjobb, Xenia Onatopp, Dr. No, and his paramilitary forces.

 

Rogue Agent features unique modes like a deathmatch-style simulator and objective-based war games.  Talk about these and any other mode featured in the game.

 

CP: Showdown is what we call our deathmatch-style mode. All of our 20+ multiplayer arenas are playable in this mode and you can fully customize the experience to suit your style. You can tweak everything down to the weapons and power-ups available to a several rules and game mods. Team Showdown is a variation that lets the participants split up into teams before going at each other.

 

Our objective-based team games come in three flavors. The first is Tug-of-War, which is our version of capture the flag, where both sides fight to move a bomb to their base. But you can't pick up the bomb; you have to activate a transport that carries the bomb to the next station in a series of stations that connect the two bases. Through this mechanic, we keep the battles focused in one area, but that battle moves back and forth throughout the map as the teams compete to move the bomb closer to their goal. I really love this mode because it doesn't require a lot of group coordination in order to have a successful team experience. Everyone knows where the bomb is heading next, so the cooperative shootouts become more important than coordinated strategies.

 

The second objective mode is called Domination, where both teams are fighting to control strategic locations throughout the map. The more locations you dominate (and kills you rack up), the faster your enemy's score drops. Your team wins if the other team's score drops to zero. The final team game mode, Countdown, is playable exclusively online and involves both teams fighting to control a single objective, like the launch control room on the last Moonraker map. Countdown scoring works like Domination reversed, so controlling the objective will make your team's counter tick down faster. The first team to Countdown to zero first wins.

 

You can 2 and 4-way split screen on all platforms or up to 8 players online with Xbox Live and PS2 Online. You can set up map lists with looping rotations regardless of which game type you're playing. Some of the maps have higher resolution versions that are loaded during full-screen online play too.

 

Online gameplay is something GoldenEye fans have wanted for a long time.  Was this the biggest challenge for the development team?  Were there times when you thought it couldn't be done without losing something in the process?

 

CP: Online play was definitely the biggest production challenge from my point of view. The split-screen magic was already happening late this Summer and was in the process of rapid iteration and improvement, so that drove us to set a very high bar for our online experience in terms of gameplay, scope, and performance and even just a few months ago it was hard to imagine how it would all come together so well in the end.

 

After long months of hard work, optimization, and team dedication, I'm very happy to say that we didn't have to lose anything. In fact, we added features and functionality for online play that aren't available in any other mode. In fact our online play really takes on its own personality that stands out compared to the split-screen tempo. We still play online every single day just for fun.

 

 

Explosive gameplay for multiple players.

 

 

Now that Rogue Agent is released, tell us what we'll get the first time we go online with the game.

 

CP: What you get when you go online really depends on what you managed to unlock in the single player campaign. Most of the characters and game mods and several of the best maps are tied to our campaign's Rogue Scoring system, so there's definitely an incentive to master the campaign if you're interested in uncovering all the multiplayer content. Then again, when you go online, you're bound to find someone who's already unlocked a ton of cool stuff and you can join their games too. You just can't host maps and modifications (or assume a character) that you haven't unlocked yet.

 

In addition automatic game-finding features, you can browse through all the open games in your region or use our EA Messenger system to invite friends into your own game in addition to accepting invitations to join games from other players you know. When you've had a few successes, you can check out your stats and see how the best players are performing as well.

 

How do you end a game where the goal is to take over the world?  Do you really get the chance to rule the world, or is there a 00 agent determined to stop you...?

 

CP: Without spoiling the real plot, I can clarify that the win condition of the campaign is not about personally taking over the entire world (yet), but that's an accurate way to characterize the aspirations of our protagonist and the supervillains of the Bond underworld. By the end of the game, GoldenEye will be a significant player in that world on a career trajectory without bounds. By contrast, Bond is always out to save the world.

 

Finally, is Rogue Agent the beginning of a new series?  Or would you prefer to change the perspective (and create another new character) for the next 00 game?

 

CP: We worked very closely with MGM and Danjaq (the owners of the Bond IP) to create a new character – a star villain – that could hold up to the test of time. GoldenEye: Rogue Agent will give the world an opportunity to step into those shoes and play in Bond's world from a different perspective. As for the future of the rogue agent…we haven't announced anything.

 

But that doesn’t mean you’re not already thinking about the future :)

 

Thanks for an awesome interview Chris.