Post by Blade Runner 07 on Feb 13, 2013 15:43:53 GMT -5
How exploiting a milti-million dollar franchise as a cash-in destroyed a game developer, permanently tarnished a successful publishing company's reputation and left thousands of gamers with no hope for the future of the James Bond video game franchise. Fair warning, this is going to get heavy.
I am 25 years old. My first experience with James Bond as a character was in 1998. I was 11 years old and a friend with an N64 had Goldeneye 007 and after an hour of playing pistols only on faciltiy I was hooked for life. Two months later I had scrounged up every cent I could find and got Goldeneye 007 for the N64 and it is still my favorite FPS game of all time.
Why is this? Well, anyone who takes the time to set up an N64 or a modded whatever and play Goldeneye 007 from start to finish will be surprised at how well the look and feel of James Bond is represented. It's not all the quick theatrical bangs, pops, smoke and mirrors that we see in today's bond games. You are an agent given objectives to complete any way you see fit. Minus the killing of civilians of course.
Goldeneye 007 represents interactive old school James Bond action in it's purest form. By old school I mean the pre-Tomorrow Never Dies Bond. The man that uses a P99 and wrist watch before trying to ram his body through a wall and practice his martial arts on some sharp dressed thug. The man that doesn't literally have a bug in his ear with some woman back in London barking orders at him in real-time.
Goldeneye 007 is great. Ill give an example. First impression. The first level, the Dam. It felt overcast, cold. The music made me feel I was in a Russian military base. The music made everything feel solid to match the cold overcast sky with it imitating the sound of the truck you were fallowing and the high pitched tones representing the might of the Soviet Army. You were alone, you had to shoot your way out. It was great.
Oh I found a happy place and now it's gone...
Now, a history lesson...
Three years after Goldeneye 007 raised the bar for modern first-person shooters Perfect Dark came out on the Nintendo 64 and people were downright spoiled with this great game from Rare. It played like a dream with a refined Goldeneye engine and was all but deserving of it's namesake . But where was Bond? Well by this time Nintendo's license to publish said games had expired and EA Games had bought the rights to publish video games for the Bond franchise.
Later that year, The World Is Not Enough came out and while it played a bit different, it took alot of influence from the Goldeneye engine. It took some getting used to, but it looked and felt like a Bond game. We played it because it was Bond but were still in love with Perfect Dark and Goldeneye and TWINE would eventually become another collection collecting dust while Goldeneye and Perfect Dark tag teamed the N64 for the rest of it's life.
In late 2001 a game known as Halo: Combat Evolved came out and practically replaced Goldeneye/Perfect Dark as the console shooter to have. It was a shooter for a new generation of consoles and it played quite different from Goldeneye with no Auto-Aim and a regenerating shield making the "health meter" an after thought.
By this time EA was releasing a Bond game every year and between TWINE's Goldeneye-esqe FPS engine and Halo's popularity, we were eased into a new standard in FPS gameplay. The age of Halo and "Halo Clones" was upon us.
We simply accepted that all popular console FPS games would feature regenerating health or at least control like Halo. This acceptance was easy because the Bond FPS formula was already in flux before Halo came out so branding for example, the 2002 title Nightfire, a Halo Clone never crossed our minds.
This went on for roughly 6 years and the Halo franchise ruled the console FPS scene. At some point during this time Activision acquired the publishing rights to the James Bond video games from EA and the future of 007 as a game franchise was uncertain.
In 2007 Halo 3 and Modern Warfare came out. This marked the end of the Halo Trilogy and the beginning of Activisions dominance in the FPS genre.
This is when all hell broke loose. Modern Warfare and Halo were competing for the same market and yet, both played very differently.
At this point we were used to a Bond game playing something closer to Halo. With no sprinting, AimDownSights, and more emphasis on gadgets, cars and everything that the Bond we came to love was composed of. It also didn't have regenerating health or shields. It stood as it's own thing in it's own section of the genre it belonged to. For the most part, fans of Goldeneye 007 were content with the state of James Bond games.
Then Quantum of Solace came out in 2008. It was the first in a series of Bond games published by Activision. At this time everyone had played what was to become all the rage in the FPS genre, Modern Warfare and it was painfully obvious from the very start that it looked and played like Modern Warfare. I mean really.
Even to a person who has no idea who is publishing and developing it was clear that not only was this a Modern Warfare Clone, these games were related. They used the same engine. Since then, Bond games have been tainted by Modern Warfare and were never the same.
End History lesson.
I can appreciate any good FPS but us nostalgic gamers have this philosophy Ill share that with you below.
Quantum of Solace is a prime example of what happens when you take a franchise and change it up too much to resemble current genre trends. I have one thing to say to the developers that do this and that is:
If a sequel in a highly successful franchise plays more like another game in the same genre than it's own predecessors than you have missed the whole freakin point of a sequel.
THE WHOLE FREAKIN POINT!!!
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I'm not playing a Bond game because I want more Bond in my Modern Warfare gameplay. I'm playing a Bond game because I liked previous Bond games and want more of that with improvements where needed.
This is why Modern Warfare 3 is the most played game on Xbox Live. They get criticized for releasing the same thing every year but they are smart enough to fallow the Bungie pioneered "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" formula. SMART!!!
When I played Quantum of Solace if felt like Modern Warfare with a Bond skin and I have never been able to enjoy this type of gameplay in a Bond game. I blame it on the Aim-Down-Sights and sprint mechanic mostly. Bond felt like a soldier and not a spy.
In goldeneye you felt like a spy. There were lots of gadgets and if you were careful you could get through a good portion of any given level without alerting guards.
I guess people just want games that fallow the source material much closer. You can't watch the movies and then replicate some of the stuff you saw on screen in a video game anymore. Everything is so linier and enforces a loose notion of "realism" that has you behind cover 90% of the time and in quick-time events the the other 10%.
Finally, we get to what all of this has lead to?
The latest Bond game. 007 Legends was met with terrible reviews, sales, and a cold reception overall. WHY did this happen? A combination of things but overall it was ACTIVISION! Eurocom was given less than 12 months to develop a game based on sections from 6 different 007 films.
When release date came it delivered a piss poor excuse for a competent shooter. What did Activison do about this? Cut Eurocom off like a vestigial appendage! They cut there funds to the point of forcing Eurocom to fire 75% of there employees and reduce the Nightfire developer to a developer that "will be focusing mainly on mobile opportunities moving forward."
So today I can say that the Bond video game franchise is in it's darkest place, but at the end of this tunel I see a glimmer of hope. Sadly, not for Activision or poor Eurocom but for 007. James Bond will Return.
It seems activision had all but given up on trying to cash-in on what was once considered a AAA first-person shooter franchise. The license expires next year and Activison hasn't communicated any plans to release a Bond game in 2013. The nightmare just might be over. In any case. Bond will soon be in a better place.