licence to thrill
how rare adapted a Bond Movie for Joypads
k arl Hilton can still remember when Martin Hollis popped the question. “He opened with, ‘Do you like James Bond?’” chuckles Karl, who was the first person to join Martin on the team as lead artist. “I was a big Bond fan and it sounded great fun but I was definitely worried about the reputation that movie tie-in games had back then. I’d just started at Rare and knew they didn’t release bad games but I do remember looking at Blast Corps, which was being made next door to us, and thinking it would probably be much more popular than the movie-tie in we were starting on.”
Given some of the licensed dross released prior to Goldeneye, Karl’s concerns were understandable, though at least with their game they had some support from the production company. Visits to the studio allowed much useful photography of sets, props and costumes to be taken and the team received a draft of the script. “We weren’t given any strict guidelines on what we could do so we immediately started ‘padding’ out the story to generate more content,” explains Karl. “We wanted to visit all of the major locations even if Bond doesn’t go there in the film. Plus we could use almost anything from the Bond universe.”
Karl saw the potential for drawing on the older Bond films he had grown up with, particularly those starring his favourite Bond, Roger Moore. He initially wanted to include the Liparus submarine base from The Spy Who Loved Me but realising this was too complex, he instead opted for the Drax shuttle base from Moonraker. The many nods to the wider Bond world and the clever way the camera flew into the back of 007’s head at the start of each level really helped players feel like they were morphing into the suave secret agent. “We wanted to emphasise that the player was James Bond but in an FPS you rarely get a chance to see yourself,” Karl says. “This seemed like a perfect way to remind the player. Roger Moore played Bond, Pierce Brosnan was playing Bond at the time, now you can step into Bond’s shoes, too.”
Subtle touches, like the cinematic curtain of blood that descends the screen when you die and the cuff of your tuxedo clearly visible when you check your watch for important mission information, all added to that authentic Bond feel. The watch also served another purpose, explains Karl. “We all agreed that keeping screen clutter to a minimum would give you the most immersive feeling and the watch helped you feel like you were 007 and not a generic FPS player. Although we did always joke about how short-sighted our Bond appeared to be, staring at his watch so closely.”
Which brings us to our key question: just how important was the licence? The game was undeniably an exceptionally well-crafted shooter, with many innovative features, but without Bond, would it have had the same critical and commercial success? “What could have been construed as a violent first person shooter was opened up to a much broader family audience because, culturally, James Bond is allowed to kill people and not be seen as bad,” argues Karl. “It meant children could ask parents for the game! I hope it would have done well anyway that but I doubt it would have had the penetration into popular culture that the James Bond link gave it. I think Perfect Dark supports this to some degree. It was, in almost every way, superior to Goldeneye, as we’d learned so much from our first gamemaking attempt, yet it sold less than half [the copies]. The chance to play as James Bond is a great selling point.”
“We Wanted to emphasise that the Player Was james Bond” Karl Hilton