A collection of interviews and messages from developers involved with James Bond games around the EA (and Activision) era that I've archived for posterity. Most of these are from the 007 Speedrunning and Agent Under Fire Reloaded Discord servers. They're much more than they let on! ;)
Just to clear up any confusion. There is actually two different The World Is Not Enough PS2 games. One is a port of the PC version done by EA Redwood/Visceral Games that ended up being Agent Under Fire and the other is a port of the N64 version that was to be done by Eurocom.
Something Awful & Anonymous Need for Speed Dev (2016/11/20)
Scaramouche:
Yeah I was going to say, I didn't work on these games, but I did work adjacent to them, since I was on the NFS team at the time. It was really weird and formal how the code and assets had to be handed over; it wasn't like a Nightfire guy could just come up to us and say "oh hey can you give us the Vanquish V12 meshes because that's in our game too". Instead they could only officially get certain things at these odd ceremonial milestone handovers. I'm pretty sure the Vanquish and the DB5 wouldn't have been in the NFS games at all except that they were doing the Bond games too next door, or vice versa, I never really got a handle on how the licensing worked
Liam & Ashley Finney (2018/05/17)
Ashley Finney:
Hi Liam,
Wow, NightFire, that takes me back a bit. I remember this was one of the most stressful games I ever worked on. Lots of overnight programming sessions, 120 hour weeks, sleeping under my desk. It was utter hell. The game however turned out well and we were quite proud of it. What made you pick NightFire for a speed run?
Ash.
Liam:
Hey Ashley, so excited i was able to get onto you, i have legitmately messaged everyones linkedins i could find from the end credits of nightfire, yeah I had always been into speedrunning, but nightfire stuck out to me because the community was always so friendly to me and i got good at the speedrun really fast. I have attempted to reach out to people to learn more about the game
just out of curiousity as well have you seen any of the runs?
Ashley Finney:
No, I've not seen any runs, I'd love to watch one though if you've got any links for me?
007 Speedrunning & Marc Wilhelm (2018/05/17)
Marc Wilhelm:
Hi all! Thanks for the invite. I am Marc Wilhelm, I was a level designer and artist on EoN. Here is more info about my work on the game. https://www.marc-wilhelm.com/pro-work/#/bond/
Liam:
really awesome to see the devs of all the bond games moved on to continue developing games and leading great careers (edited)
Marc Wilhelm:
The game industry is rough man. Most people don't know how volatile a professional career in games has been for most of us the past 20 years.
Ashley Finney:
[Marc Wilhelm] Hey, I was the lead PS2 programmer on NF
I saw you worked on some of the driving levels
Marc Wilhelm:
Yes, I did mostly environmental work (Maya) on NF at EARS, but I did some level-design prototyping work on a level that got cut. Were you in LA, EARS or EAC?
Ashley Finney:
[Marc Wilhelm] lol, I was as Eurocom, you know the guys that did all the shooting levels, intro, outro, menus etc.
Alpine/Sheldor:
Hey, are you able to remember/disclose what that level was?
Marc Wilhelm:
It was a long time ago, but I remember it was like for an ultralight flying through a bunker/ tunnel? I remember a producer worked with me on it for just a few weeks.
007 Speedrunning & Ashley Finney (2018/05/17)
Ashley Finney:
Hey all!
Matimbre:
Hey [Ashley Finney] welcome, nice to have you here
Ashley Finney:
My pleasure, I'm not sure what I can contribute but I'm pleased to see one of my old games still being enjoyed.
Matimbre:
It is still pretty active as a speedrun we're a few running it at the moment
cram:
Welcome [Ashley Finney] ! Thats some good ol' the day the earth stood still right there 😃
Ashley Finney:
Yeah, my fave film
So, let me introduce myself.
I'm Ashley Finney, I was a programmer at Eurocom.
I started Eurocom at age 16 and worked my way up to become one of the engine programmers
I was lead engine programmer on the PS2 version of NF
But I helped out in other areas also
Alpine/Sheldor:
What's it like seeing a game you worked on be so exploited?
Ashley Finney:
Yeah, funny
And sad to see some bugs still got through
Alpine/Sheldor:
Well hey, if it's still this active almost 16 years on...
Ashley Finney:
16 years! OMG
Now I feel old
I was 24 when I wrote that game
Alpine/Sheldor:
So, Ashley, how long did you work at Eurocom for?
Ashley Finney:
Well, technically I'm still working for them
Eurocom folded and became EightPixelsSquare
so nearly 25 years
Alpine/Sheldor:
Have you worked on any other Bond games in that time?
Ashley Finney:
All of them in one way or another
NF was the one I had most input into
I was tech graphics lead for legends
I was around for TWINE and even ported it for PS2 before working on NF
But that never saw a release on PS2
Alpine/Sheldor:
Didn't that become Agent Under Fire?
Ashley Finney:
No, my port didn't make it out of my room
Alpine/Sheldor:
Welp
Sorry for asking a lot, but may I ask what input you had on Quantum Of Solace and GoldenEye Reloaded?
Ashley Finney:
QoS - Lots of my engine code was used for this game but I didn't have any game input
Reloaded - I was engine programmer for this title. I lead a team of graphics programmers to produce the engine.
I did most of my work on the PS3 code but did shape lots of the visuals for the team.
I lot of late nights and blood, sweat and tears went into that game
Alpine/Sheldor:
That's so cool! I've put a lot of time into both, especially Reloaded, it's such a fun game, one of my favourite 007 games really
Ashley Finney:
It wasn't received very well from what I remember
Reloaded that is
Alpine/Sheldor:
To be fair, people were always going to compare it to the original
Ashley Finney:
Ah, sorry, I'm thinking Legends
Alpine/Sheldor:
Yeah no Legends is a mess haha
Ashley Finney:
lol
Looks good though
I spent soo long getting the frame rate up on Legends
So many factors come into it when making a game.
Time management is key.
Legends had so many people thrown at it towards the end it was a mess.
Some really talented people on that game, but things got in the way and we couldn't do what we wanted.
I'm not at liberty to give you all the details but there were external pressures
Soon after Legends was done Eurocom collapsed.
It was a horrible time.
Matimbre:
Do you appear In the cutscene after equinox on nightfire right before the credits ? :Kappa~1:
The one that showcases the devs
Ashley Finney:
Probably, do you have a link I could watch?
I remember we had loads of photos we used to sneak into many games
Including one of our boss when he was 12
That always used to piss him off when he found out it made it to production.
Alpine/Sheldor:
Which game(s) does that feature in?
Ashley Finney:
Off the top of my head, we put them in DukeNukem64, Jungle Book and Chamber of Secrets
Heh, so, sitting next to me right now is Ian Denny
I've just watched the FMV before the credits
I'm not in it
But great memories of the team.
So, in one shot you can see a rack of guns, that's actually mine and Simon Mills collection of guns
We had that rack in our room while writing the game
They moved it out for filming of that section
Alpine/Sheldor:
How long did NightFire development take?
Ashley Finney:
I seriously can't remember how long it took to develop
I was pulling some crazy hours there
120 hour weeks
36 hour shifts
I remember one junior programmer had broken the menus and got into a right mess
He was stressed so I told him to get some sleep
I spent all night fixing his code
When he woke up at 6am I'd cleaned it all up
The dancing girl on the pause panel - this was a late requirment
like a few days before we shipped
I had no memory left for the animation and no memory to display it
So I wrote a bespoke compressor overnight and ran it in sync with the frame rate so I didn't have to double buffer it
You can see it tearing if the frame rate drops and you press pause
I hope this is all fun facts for you and I'm not boring you all?
Alpine/Sheldor:
I think it's really interesting! I love stories and these little things during development
Ashley Finney:
I have to go now, dinner break is almost over. I'll pop in here from time to time
Nice talking to you
Alpine/Sheldor:
Nice talking to you too! o/
Liam:
hope you enjoyed my run lol
Matimbre:
Have a good one !
Marc Wilhelm:
You guys know about mobygames right? You can see the complete credits there too: http://www.mobygames.com/game/ps2/007-nightfire/credits
Ashley Finney:
I'm all over MobyGames.
It's a shame now that I'm doing mobile games, we don't tend to put credits in them anymore
It's not the same as seeing your game in a box on a shelf
FitterSpace:
Welcome to the server [Ashley Finney] ! It’s cool to talk with someone who spent that much time developing Nightfire.
I have one question about nightfire development at the moment. I don’t really know how making one game for multiple consoles works. Do they design the game to be played on one console (PS2, for example), then port it over to other consoles? I’m wondering if one version in particular was designed first then porter over to other systems.
The reason being is because the PS2 version you worked on is really different than the GC/Xbox version for speedrunning because some of the glitches don’t work. So something about that version is different than the others.
Ashley Finney:
Yeah, it's because I'm a better coder than the other 2 guys
Alpine/Sheldor:
So your code is why PS2 is less weird?
Ashley Finney:
Neah, seriously there should be no reason.
The PS2 was the lead version and a lot of testing went into it
I think because it had the most market at the time
I seem to remember that the GC version came later into development as a bit of an add on
But generally how it goes is that most of the game code is shared between all versions
and where the hardware is different you have specialised coders that work on each platform
All the graphics and levels etc are shared except when they might have been cut down for frame rate issues
For example, the PS2 had crazy overdraw capabilities, and so did the XBox, but the GC couldn't keep up with it so some of the smoke effects were turned down
The glitches you might find like getting out of bounds are probably down the the difference in how the CPUs handle floating point numbers.
These introduce inaccuracies that can lead to bugs
Liam:
[Ashley Finney] i want to know how equinox works, Drakes hitbox, how does it work
and is it at all possible to kill drake early do you know?
Ashley Finney:
I can't remember any Drake cheats I'm afraid, sorry.
Liam:
would you say creating lag could cause clipping issues in vehicle levels?
ie particle or smoke effects from torpedos in deep descent?
Ashley Finney:
I had nothing to do with the vehicle levels, that was an external company.
Liam:
are you still in contact with people who made the vehicle levels?
Ashley Finney:
I was never in contact with them!
Alpine/Sheldor:
Would it be possible to do anything similar on-foot?
Ashley Finney:
Theoretically possible, if you could make it lag enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKAYDg9Rswk
Typically in game of that era all collision was discrete, so if you create enough lag you can go right through things
Liam:
yeah right, were the on foot levels done on an engine you guys created yourself or what, i was told the game used id tech 3 but thats only a rumour
Ashley Finney:
I wrote the engine
I was an engine programmer at that time, I did the engine for Duke Nukem 64, 40 Winks, NF
Then my engine code for 40 Winks became the in house engine that was used on all of that generation games we did
Later I worked on the graphics engine for PS3, Wii and WiiU that powered every other game we did
FitterSpace:
Did you have anything to do with Goldeneye: 007 for Wii?
Ashley Finney:
[FitterSpace] just the engine
Liam:
when you find the time, i'd love to have you on my stream with me
Ashley Finney:
[Liam] My pleasure, thanks for reaching out
FitterSpace:
That’s cool. Do you know if that engine was used for any other games besides dead space: extraction?
Ashley Finney:
All of them
All of Eurocom games
Of course I can't take all the credit, there were many people that worked on the games and engine, at one point Eurocom was 270 people strong
Alpine/Sheldor:
It's a shame Eurocom folded, even if it is Eight Pixels Square now
Ashley Finney:
Yeah, but the market for console games dried up
There just isn't any money in it anymore
You can only make it if you're one of the big developers
We're doing great now as EightPixelsSquare
FitterSpace:
Do you know if the Missiles in equinox are on a timer? Basically, speeding up Equinox is something we’ve always wanted to do, but the missiles seem to activate at the same time no matter what.
Ashley Finney:
More than likely that's how it would have been coded. If I get time I'll review the code for it.
FitterSpace:
Thanks! I appreciate it. Speeding up that section even by one second would be legendary.
Ashley Finney:
You speed runners are nuts!
FitterSpace:
The world record for that level has been 3:36 for at least 2 years from what I can remember. It’s only possible on the PAL version!
For whatever reason, the PAL version can get 3:36 is you kill drake within a 1 or 2 frame window. But the NTSC version gets 3:37 no matter what. I think it’s because the PAL version runs at 50Hz, which could make the in-game timer less accurate
But if there’s a way to speed it up, then an American could get that world record for the first time in years 👀
Unless a PAL player gets it first :Kappa~1:
Ashley Finney:
PAL vs NTSC
Yuck
Always hated having to handle that
We'd always write the NTSC version first
then worry about PAL later
FitterSpace:
Nightfire doesn’t rely on the framerate very often so both versions are mostly the same for speedrunning
Ashley Finney:
Glad to hear it
Right, I really must go now and do that "work" thing
Catch you all later
FitterSpace:
see you later
007 Speedrunning & Ashley Finney (2018/05/25)
FitterSpace (2018/05/24):
I've been playing around with the OoB cheat code in Equinox and I found this weird fire inside a part of the shuttle. I take lots of damage when I touch it, but it doesn't seem to do anything else.
The black dots on it are from me shooting at it. It can be shot but it doesn't affect anything as far as I can tell. It looks like the fire from one of the missiles
Ashley Finney:
It's probably an object pool
So, instead of creating objects on the fly then killing them we pool them, we put them in a part of the map you can't see and when we need them we move them into position
This is quicker than creating and destroying for the CPU
Normally we'd turn them invisible though.
007 Speedrunning & Ashley Finney (2018/07/26)
Ashley Finney:
Sorry guys, looks like it's totally random
[Illegal Stuff ;)]
It looks like it's pre generated at the start of the level, you could write something that access console memory and pulls the values out.
Hmmm, some more info...
So as you probably know, computers use pseudo random number generators
Looking at the code, although there are 4 digits, there are only 512 possible combinations due to how the random numbers are set up, and possibly many of these will be duplicates.
Here's the kicker, if there are more than 1 keycode panels in a level, and depending on the order, if you've cracked the first one there might only be a handful of possibilities for the second one and if there is a 3rd then there is probably only one code
Heh, looking at it some more it's even better than that!
All the key codes are created at level start (or restart) and are all stored in a single block of memory.
Each keypad has an index into this memory
So it would be easy to read this memory out and know the codes for all the key pads
[More Illegal Stuff ;)]
Digits are stored as ASCII so finding this block would be quite easy
007 Speedrunning & Ashley Finney (2018/10/01)
Liam (2018/09/24):
[Ashley Finney] if you have the time do you think you could take a look at the code for how drakes ai spawning/ spawning triggers work in equinox?
Ashley Finney:
[Liam] Yeah, I'll take a look. Anything specific you'd like to know?
Liam:
just what makes him spawn and if his hitbox exists before hand
Ashley Finney:
It'll take me ages to work out if there are any hitbox quirks but I'll have a look.
Liam:
yeah cheers
Ashley Finney:
Wow this code is old
It's also a really old way of doing things, we've moved on loads since then and now use data driven AI and scripting
So it's quite hard to follow
I've found the code that spawns "SpaceDrake", he becomes active when SC13 is set
but the code reads it's SC10. SC = Switch Channel which is like a global communication piece of memory
In theory, you could poke a 0x00 into that memory address and he'd appear immediately, does this all make sense or am I looking at the wrong level?
Alpine/Sheldor:
So being able to trigger 0x00 would make him appear immediately, we'd just need to trigger that somehow?
Ashley Finney:
Yeah, that's right. I can't find any other ref to SC10 though, so I'm guessing that this is encoded in binary data somewhere
Some of the AI had simple triggers, like when you destroyed something it would set a value in a SC
This was all edited in "Euroland" our inhouse 3d modelling software
The data that this output is in binary format, and I don't have a copy of EL that run anymore!
The thing is, if you wanted to hack memory you could trigger him whenever you liked
FitterSpace:
So you can confirm that the Drake model standing inside the cockpit is not the same one you fight?
Ashley Finney:
[FitterSpace] Oh, not sure about that, there are a few "Drake" instances...
Drake
Drake_spacesuit
Drake_spacesuit_burnt
Drake_suit_a
Drake_suit_b
FitterSpace:
Interesting. I assume spacesuit_burnt is the one during the cutscene where he dies. But that leaves only one Drake_spacesuit left.
Drake_suit_a and b are probably the The Exchange and multiplayer
unless it's referring to a space suit. But I'm not sure.
Alpine/Sheldor:
His suit is different in multiplayer?
Ashley Finney:
Yeah, I think all the multiplayer objects were a little lower poly
I normally archive all the tools needed to rebuild a game, but I don't seem to have an Euroland, so I can't load the models up
Real shame
I do still work with the original programmer of the Euroland tool, I'm sure he could rebuild it from source....
I've got all the models and music, SFX etc.
FitterSpace:
what are the music files like? We've been able to rip music from the game but we can't get much better than .wav files spliced together.
Ashley Finney:
Not looked too closely, but it looks like it's all in the PS2 proprietary format
Sorry I can't be more help
Got to go now, should be working...
FitterSpace:
It's all good. Thanks for looking into it
FitterSpace & Ashley Finney (2020/11/11)
FitterSpace (2020/10/13):
Hey Ashley. Do you mind if I ask you a question about game engines? I was talking to somebody about Eurocom's game engines and they brought up EngineX, which was first used for Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy back in 2003. The wiki page for that game says the engine was used for many Eurocom games from there on all the way up to 007 Legends in 2012. I've read in other places that Quantum of Solace, GoldenEye Reloaded, and 007 Legends use the Infinity Ward engine. So my question is, do those games use EngineXT, infinity ward, or a combination of both? How does that work?
Ashley Finney:
Hey, sorry, only just found this message
We never used an external engine. I have no idea where that infinity ward engine idea came from but I've seen it mentioned a few times myself.
Before EngineX, each team would create their own engine, usually adapting it from the previous game that team had worked on. This was ok in the early days when games and consoles were simple but as things got more complex there wasn't time for each team to build their own engine.
So a new team was split off to create EngineX. This was based off the 40 Winks engine that I created. Although I wasn't on the engine team at that time as I was still working on a game.
A bit later on EngineX was deemed unable to support the newer consoles so a new engine, EngineXT was started.
EngineXT was used for all Eurocom games going forward until we went bust.
I was lead graphics programmer on EngineXT and led a team of very talented programmers.
FitterSpace:
Interesting. I'm not sure where people get their sources from when they say those newer games used the infinity ward engine. Do you know if Quantum of Solace really uses anything from Infinity Ward or Treyarch? It feels like it's got some quake in there because things like air strafing and bunny hopping work, but I don't really know the technical side of it.
Ashley Finney:
No, I can categorically state that we NEVER used anything from Infinity Ward or Treyarch.
Evan Hanley & Wright Bagwell (2021/02/18)
Evan Hanley:
Are you a Bond fan? Have you seen the films and played the old games along with GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 and Agent Under Fire which came out a year before Nightfire?
What made you want to work with EA?
Were you involved from the start of development with Nightfire or?
What levels did you design for Nightfire? Paris Prelude, The Exchange, Enemies Vanquished, Double Cross, Night Shift, Phoenix Fire, Countdown, Equinox? Did you also do the multiplayer levels which were taken from various set pieces/locations from the films apart from the Skyrail, Rocket, Castle and Ravine which were part of the story mode?
What software did you use to create the levels and how long would it take to finish one?
What was it like working with the team on the game? How long would you work for? Was the old EA Redwood Shores studio nice? What were the higher ups in EA like during development?
Was the Story Mode originally going to be longer than 12 missions? I found some heading text names in the games files like Training, Hidden Agenda, Streets of Tokyo, Island Caves and River Gauntlet. Can you remember anything about them?
Was there more multiplayer maps planned too? I also found names in the games files like SpaceStation and Facility. Can you possibly remember these?
What was it like working on the game behind the scenes?
Did you enjoy working on the game?
Do you possibly have any level concept art or design sketches left over from working on Nightfire? Possibly any other assets too?
Wright Bagwell:
I like Bond films, but I wouldn't call myself a huge fan. I just enjoy the challenge of building games that give people great experiences.
Nightfire: I worked on the PC version, and only jumped in to help Gearbox with a couple levels. I have no assets at all from that production, and it was really a blur. I don't recall very much at all. Spent a summer on it if I recall correctly. I made one multiplayer map, and two other designers helped as well. It was fun working with a tiny team. I don't recall which engine was used for the console version, but the PC version used the Half-Life engine.
(Everything or Nothing)
Evan Hanley:
Were you excited to see the Bond cast in their own game, which was this one? Did you talk to Pierse Brosnan, Judi Dench, Richard Kiel, Bruce Fernstein or John Cleese in any free time you had? If so, what were they like?
What was it like working on this game compared to Nightfire? Better, worse, more time or less time, more work or less work?
What was it like working with the team again? What were the higher ups and director like during development of this game?
Did you use the same software for making the levels?
Can you remember why the Multiplayer Mode was scrapped for CO-OP Mode? I still have fun with Nightfire's multiplayer. It's fantastic to see that game's multiplayer still holds up today apart from the AI.
Someone found audio in the games files on something called "Bond Zone". Can you remember anything about it?
What levels in the story mode for countries like Peru, Egypt and Russia along with Co-Op mode did you work on?
Did you enjoy working on the game?
Do you possibly have level concept art or design sketches left over from working on Nightfire? Possibly any other assets too?
Wright Bagwell:
EoN: I didn't talk to any of the movie stars. That was the job of a couple producers on the team. We used a heavily modified version of the Quake 3 engine to make EoN. We didn't make a multiplayer mode because it was a tremendous amount of work to do that on a console, so we only did Co-op. That way, you don't have to write network code and run servers. I only worked on multiplayer for EoN, but did help finalize one of the single player levels. I totally forget what it was called! I am really proud of the co-op levels we made for this game - I think there were some comical moments in it, for sure. (edited)
(From Russia With Love)
Evan Hanley:
Did you get to meet Sir Sean Connery?
What was it like working on this game?
What was it like working with the team? Same as before?
How was the combat design done? Using motion capture? Was Judo used for Bond's fighting animations?
How long would recording for combat moves take?
What software was used for the combat?
Did you enjoy working on the game?
Were you sad that it was the last Bond game from EA?
Do you possibly have any assets left over from working on the game?
Thanks again Mr Bagwell.
Wright Bagwell:
FRWL: Also didn't talk to any of the stars. Team was switched around quite a bit for this game. All the teams I worked with at EA were great. We switched engines to make this game, and threw away the code from EoN. That meant we had to re-create a lot of the mechanics from EoN, which meant we had very little time to improve upon them. That made this game a lot less fun to work on. I remember it being a fairly unremarkable game, but I liked the feel of some of the combat. By this time, I felt I had worked on plenty of Bond games, and was happy to move on to new things.
Evan Hanley & Phillip Campbell (2021/03/03)
Evan Hanley:
Are you a fan of James Bond?
Phillip Campbell:
Of course! My Bond was Connery, partly because of my age, and partly because he was the best! Although in the 60s at the cinema I remember not liking “the kissing parts” much..! Now I’d like to see Idris Elba as Bond.
Evan Hanley:
What made you want to make James Bond games?
Phillip Campbell:
Loved the opportunity that EA gave me. Ended up working as creative director on Agent Under Fire and Everything or Nothing, and did some level design etc on Nightfire.
Evan Hanley:
What made you want to work with EA?
Phillip Campbell:
EA was like the Evil empire to many, but I loved my 6 years there. It was cool to work in a professional environment after Domark / Eidos, which was always more “seat of the pants” especially when Tomb Raider took off… - They attracted a lot of the best talent - quite a few from the movie business like art directors Jay Riddle and David Carson. Got a huge amount of freedom after Bond, on the Godfather. - Great licenses to work on!
(Agent Under Fire)
Evan Hanley:
I know that Agent Under Fire was originally going to be a reskin of The World Is Not Enough for the PlayStation 2 and PC during early stages of development but was scrapped and turned into what it is today. Do you possibly own anything from when the game was being worked on during that period or know why the game was overhauled? There is a E3 video for World Is Not Enough on YouTube. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPdKNnMPvo
Phillip Campbell:
Don’t know anything about this. I joined as a complete overhaul was going on, influx of folk from movie business, and the desire to make a “Vertical Slice” - a single level showcasing gameplay, art, lighting etc. This was, I think just after Jay Riddle came on board. We also had a brilliant concept artist named John Bell, who became a great friend. John had worked on Jurassic Park and many other things. - I can’t remember the timing, but Bruce McMillian and Don Matrick became more heavily involved at this time, looking for something more cinematic. I remember they completely trashed our first level and aimed for more “Bond moments”.
Evan Hanley:
What was the original story going to be? Was it the same during development or entirely different?
Phillip Campbell:
I didn’t really work on the story, it was in place when I arrived - responsibility of Jon Horsley and David Luoto, I think. I basically picked up all the level design and started creating this (I built a couple myself) with a bunch of very raw Level designers we found from the Quake community. The game was built using the Quake engine. These guys could really work in the engine but had trouble with the team dynamic of EA - they had always been lone wolves!
Some turned out well, but I had to painstakingly design and map out every level. A lot got cut out simply due to whoever was working on them. I had two ace level designers on my team - Wright Bagwell and Aaron Halon - both of course have gone on to even greater things.
The reason Wright and Aaron worked out so well on Levels was that they had great visual senses - I found it a lot easier to create with them given that I am a very visual designer. - Each Level Design Pod was run by a producer who worked with me as the creative director at the time. Two of those were Jason Vandenberg and Michael Condrey - who also moved on significantly!
Evan Hanley:
Did Zoe Nightshade, Adrian Malprave, Nigel Bloch, Reginald King and Natalie Damascue have different names at one point?
Phillip Campbell:
No idea, names have a way of changing throughout development (I changed a lot of them in Godfather)
Evan Hanley:
The James Bond community and myself know that Andrew Bicknell (a British voice actor) provided his likeness and voice to being James Bond for the game, although there have been disputes about who was really going to be James Bond through getting in touch with EA designers who worked on the game saying that either Sir Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan was going to play him at one point. Can you possibly clarify who was truly going to play James Bond?
Phillip Campbell:
No idea. I know we got Brosnan for Nightfire and EoN, but I guess I just accepted that we had an unknown Bond for the player to inhabit
Evan Hanley:
I found a preview video which was dated four months before the game was released and it had a ton of major and intriguing differences. Enemy vehicles were different colours, the text boxes were different, the Q-Claw came out of Bond’s watch, hostages rescued text was different, John Cleese played R, missions played out differently, Bond wore his tuxedo in every mission and it reused the famous GoldenEye 007 HUD. How come these were all changed and edited so late in development?
System limitations? Hardware problems? Here is the YouTube link for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojomdzJNZ0U
Phillip Campbell:
Hmmm - I think this footage is from longer than 4 months before. The embassy levels, inside and out, are pretty much as I remember them. The outside embassy was the “vertical slice” so it looks more “finished”. I’m sure UI and assets changed. I do know that, if I changed something major 4 months from release, I would get reamed! I DO remember creating some “super-soldiers” prior to release, and fighting over them - but now I can’t remember if they got in or not!
Remember also that all the driving levels were created by a different team, EA Canada, so it's likely there was UI differences between the two at some point.
Evan Hanley:
I then found more beta footage dated two months before the game was released with most of the same differences as what I have linked above but the Multiplayer mode had the GoldenEye 007 HUD. How come this was also changed? Here is the YouTube link for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA8KdHx8MnE
Phillip Campbell:
Again, this is pretty much as I remember it. The Exterior streets around the Embassy was the first to be fully developed, and in fact was practically finished when I got to EA. Cleese was already in there.
Evan Hanley:
How come John Cleese didn’t play R in the game? Was their legal problems in getting him involved? He did play him in a commercial and appeared in the preview video for the game. I also found gun sounds and Zoe Nightshade’s voice actor was different too. Here is the YouTube link for the commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LRRyY-87VY
Phillip Campbell:
Wow, that takes me back! I hardly even remember the trailer. I think Cleese did one for EoN too?
Evan Hanley:
I also found very early screenshots and footage that showed Bond using his gun barrel image as his health bar and two levels which were the Botanical Factory and Dangerous Pursuit were very different. How come these were changed? Here is the YouTube link for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlEpAdy4Gw8 (This also links in with Question 6)
Phillip Campbell:
Of all the levels, the first couple changed the most (see above). Mattrick and McMillan were not happy with a series of versions of Level 1, and in fact I remember McMillan sitting down with us and going through the Level beat-by-beat. There were a lot of arguments over this, and we felt progress was being dangerously solved down. The pontoons level also changed a great deal…
Once I started mapping them out (including Oil Rig, Alpine, the ship) they didn’t change much between map design and implementation. Wright Bagwell did some great work on the boat - we never quite got it finished successfully. IMO the best build was the Oil rig exterior and I liked the gameplay - I designed a couple of alternate routes which I’m not sure everyone saw. My boss, Jon Horsley thought the oil Rig levels were too hard, and we had team challenges for speed completion.
Evan Hanley:
Do you possibly have the design document or development assets left over from working on the game? I’d like to possibly see them.
Phillip Campbell:
I have tons of stuff for all my work - mostly big 11x17 pages hidden somewhere in my basement!
There is a bunch of stuff for all my games on my website
Evan Hanley:
Did you think of and work on the gold/platinum unlockables for the missions and Multiplayer mode and were they different at one point/was there going to be more?
Phillip Campbell:
Can’t remember, I think the unlockables were all David Luoto. I didn’t work on the multiplayer.
Evan Hanley:
Was there going to be more Q-Mods that you could use in Multiplayer?
Phillip Campbell:
No idea - I do remember, once the train / suitcase thing seemed to work, we wanted more unusual multiplayer modes.
Evan Hanley:
What are your thoughts on this game and did you like working on it, as it was the first Bond game for the Sixth Generation and would get better from there? I play it from time to time. Do you play it along with the other games at all?
Phillip Campbell:
I would love to play it again, but all the Bond titles have not been made forward compatible.
Neither has The Godfather. - I think AUF has some weird life online as it was so hackable? My students tell me this. - The game had its moments! The Oil rig IMO is still one of my own favorite designs, and the engineer/designer combo we had on it were in tune!
Evan Hanley:
Did you like working with the team?
Phillip Campbell:
Yes of course! It was my first project with EA and Horsley, Luoto and I formed a pretty strong partnership for a while… A lot of people on the team have gone on to great careers in the games business...
aleckermit & Andrew Lacey (2021/07/18)
aleckermit:
?
Andrew Lacey:
Hello Alec,
That's an interesting video! I think you know more about AUF than I do. It certainly brought back many memories for me and some of them are pleasant. ;-)
IIRC there may have been something special regarding sharks swimming around a submarine....although I'm not sure if that was the sequel.
Anyhow I'm happy to answer your questions.
Cheers,
Andrew
aleckermit (w/ Evan Hanley & FitterSpace) & Andrew Lacey (2021/07/20)
aleckermit:
What were your responsibilities while working on the game? How was your overall experience during development? Was it as time constrained as we imagine?
Andrew Lacey:
I was Lead Engineer. It was a life-changing but very stressful project. I did a lot of all-nighters. I was on the project from the outset. As soon as I joined EA, I started porting Quake to PlayStation2. The most challenging time was just before E3 the first year when we decided that we had to throw away Quake's renderer and write our own. We had six weeks, which was crazy.
aleckermit:
Did you work on the game while it was still The World is Not Enough (TWINE)? Can you provide details on the development migration? Game journalists at the time suggested that staff layoffs were responsible for the cancellation of TWINE for PS2/PC.
Andrew Lacey:
I do remember the change away from TWINE. The EA management made the great point that when you are tied to a movie IP, someone outside of EA can decide to delay everything six months. So we were given an extra year (almost) and a different design. I don't think layoffs had anything to do with it.
aleckermit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrTDOvAy9CU This is footage of a build of AUF from August 2001. It shares many aesthetics to Goldeneye 007 (N64) such as the health bar HUD, the watch operating the gadgets (vs a motorola phone), and the lack of bullet tracers. Why the shift in design?
Andrew Lacey:
I don't know much about design decisions but I remember we all liked Goldeneye.
aleckermit:
Were efforts made to reduce the mature nature of the game at some point? The Jackal (boss woman that falls into the spinning fan blade) originally sprayed blood when she died and guns seemed more realistic in the early builds. The early builds also appear more challenging and less linear, any truth to that?
Andrew Lacey:
Any Bond IP has to learn the difference between sexy and sexual and that gore should be minimal. Consistent with the movies in other words. We cut a small number of minor things along the way because we couldn't get approval.
aleckermit:
How closely related is AUF to Quake 3 Arena? It uses the same engine but there are also design similarities like rocket jumping and a very similar multiplayer experience (which is super underrated by the way! Did you work on it?).
Andrew Lacey:
We all liked Q3 Arena but didn't really use much gameplay code directly. Amusingly 14 years later I started working on Call of Duty games and immediately recognized some of the Quake source files like q_shared.h.
aleckermit:
The most puzzling design choice in the game has to be the small unused area with a functioning transition door behind the hallway load zone in mission 1, Trouble in Paradise (can be seen in my secrets video you watched). I can't guess a single reason why an invisible load trigger was put in the hall to deny access to it. Any insight?
Andrew Lacey:
Small, weird areas might have been tied to areas that were cut. Most games I've worked on have at least one level that didn't quite make it. When I ported Gex from 3DO to PlayStation we found three unfinished levels and one looked finished!
aleckermit:
We know some aspects of the game went unfinished. The last level, Evil Summit, has the most amount of bugs and a pretty anticlimatic ending sequence, and we found things like a multiplayer profile save function and built-in cheats in the main game file (bond.elf). Do you recall any other things left undone? By the way if there's a way to activate the cheats we don't know about it.
Andrew Lacey:
I don't remember the specifics of what was unfinished. Not too much is my vague recollection.
aleckermit:
Do you have an early or fully disassembled version of AUF (or TWINE PS2/PC) sitting on your PC desktop ;P? Any chance one is in EA's vault or is floating around out there?
Andrew Lacey:
I never keep old builds around - I don't want to be the person who accidentally leaked source code!
Andrew Lacey:
I heard a rumour that it's possible to "give me sharks with laser beams"......
aleckermit & Andrew Lacey (2021/07/29)
aleckermit:
?
Andrew Lacey:
LOL I hadn't seen that! I was sworn to secrecy but what the hell. Some of the people involved are now in very high positions in the industry!
When I go to the US (I live in Australia) I always catch up with people from that team. Next time I go (damn virus) I will ask if there are any other secrets. I do know that in the Nintendo GC version, a certain player ID would get them a terrible accuracy rate . Someone wanted to make sure they could beat someone very close to them.... ;-)
FitterSpace & Ashley Finney (2021/??/??)
FitterSpace:
Hey Ashley, I've got some more questions for you if you don't mind. A couple of us were wondering what involvement Eurocom had with the PC version of Nightfire, if any? Gearbox worked on it but I was curious how much input you guys had on that version of the game.
Also, do you know much about the cancelled PS2 and PC version of The World is Not Enough? Did Eurocom work on that? The PS2 version went on to become Agent Under Fire and the PC version was totally cancelled, from what I've heard. But there isn't a lot of information about it online.
Ashley Finney:
Hey, sorry for the late reply. I don't come on discord often
Regarding Nightfire PC, I don't remember how much involvement we had with Gearbox. I guess they must have seen our game in development because we got to see theirs.
I have no idea why another company were contracted to make the PC version, our game was developed on PC so everything was running perfectly on PC and we could have (with a little bit more work) released it ourselves.
TWINE was interesting...
I was given one of the first PS2 in the company to have a play with, this must have been at around the end of development of TWINE N64
I had already done a few games on N64 so knew my way around it so as a tech demo I ported TWINE to PS2 in about 3 weeks.
I was called into a meeting with my bosses a few days later and they said they'd been approached to do TWINE PS2 and it was required in a crazy time period, I think they wanted it in 2 months.
I said that we'd do it, but we all want Farrari's
They declined and it didn't happen!
FitterSpace:
They ended up doing something with TWINE on PC, and there's some video of it, but there's not much info about it online. Do you know where they ended up going with that after they talked to you?
Ashley Finney:
No, I don't remember any more talk about it.
aleckermit & Andrew Lacey (2021/09/23)
aleckermit:
Andrew Lacey:
o great! Not sure what is more painful: low-res textures, low-res models or bugs galore! I think I remember a couple of those.....
BTW the screen flash was controversial before we finished! At one point we had blood pissing down the screen. I spent some time making blood spout from wounds but that's too gory for Bond....
Evan Hanley & Joel Wade (2021/12/24)
(Early Producing/Agent Under Fire)
Evan Hanley:
How did you get involved with EA in the first place? Was the gaming industry the first idea that came to you? Did you have a passion for games growing up? Did you have experience working in businesses prior to EA and found they had a vacancy for a producing role and you decided to go for it?
Joel Wade:
My formal degree was in Studio Art, but I had always had a huge passion for technology growing up in the heart of Silicon Valley. I received an Apple II+ when I was in elementary school and taught myself BASIC programming and started writing simple games as a hobby shortly thereafter. After college I lucked into a position with Playskool (a young kids toys company owned by Hasbro), who were experimenting with developing children’s edutainment games (Tonka, Mr. Potato Head, etc) prototyping and designing the experiences. When Hasbro moved their development to Connecticut, I worked briefly doing contract UI for Apple and Industrial Light and Magic, while wooing a contact I had at EA for a job. I had fallen madly in love with Road Rash for the 3DO, so I took him out for lunch every month for a year until he relented and gave me a track designer / assistant producer role for the next Road Rash game.
Evan Hanley:
How did you acquire the James Bond license from MGM to make the games? Did you buy it off them for a nominal price or they approached you about a James Bond game deal and you accepted it?
Joel Wade:
Can’t discuss deal terms unfortunately, but when the license was acquired EA wanted to take full advantage of it as quickly as possible, so we transferred staff from other games (Road Rash and others) and immediately started working on an 1st person/3rd person engine that would be optimized for Bond-style gameplay.
Evan Hanley:
What made you change from Black Ops Entertainment working on the games (they made Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough for the original PlayStation) to EA Redwood Shores who created the later Bond games? Did you not like the games? Were they not to the company's satisfaction?
Joel Wade:
Black Ops had a mature working PS1 engine and had worked with EA in the past, so while internal resources started working on writing our own engine (every game had a bespoke engine in those days- the basic components of rendering, physics, etc), we quickly hired Black Ops and later Eurocom to develop those first games for us. The hope was that we’d be able to alternate back and forth between internal development and external development as total dev times were rapidly increasing from less than a year to 2-3 years as they became increasingly complex.
Evan Hanley:
After these games were released, there were plans to port The World Is Not Enough for the PlayStation 2 and PC and release them in late 2000. Some footage of the game exists in the form of a E3 2000 Trailer thanks to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPdKNnMPvo
This version of the game was infamously cancelled due to rumours of staff turnover. This has moved around the gaming industry and gaming circles for many years. Was this actually true? One person who worked on the game from very early in development confirmed this along with executive meddling which forced the game to be completely restarted from scratch and to be completely overhauled. Is this also true?
Joel Wade:
During that time I was focusing on the external games (Black Ops/Eurocom) but my memory is that the reason this was quashed is that the engine simply wasn’t ready. EA had licensed a version of the Quake PC engine, and was desperately trying to update it for both PC (which it was written for) and the PS2. The two architectures were so different however in how they handled memory and efficient rendering that progress was slow and painful. We ultimately had to abandon PC and re-focus exclusively on the PS2 in an attempt to get out a polished game in time for the next critical holiday season.
Evan Hanley:
How did you feel about the game being reworked on? Were you disappointed? Did the original game work well in the state it was in when you played it?
Joel Wade:
Ultimately I think it was the best decision - spend more time making a polished game for a single platform rather than a mediocre rushed game for two. It also helped us make an important pivot in our relationship with MGM and Danjaq. Danjaq wasn’t particularly happy with GoldenEye 007 as a game - the gameplay had far too much shooting, and none of the dialog, driving, gadgets and stealth/use of wits that was the core of the movies. With games based tightly on a movie like TWINE, it was critical to the licensors that we try to replicate all of the grand stunts from the movies in the game, even if the visuals / gameplay / and engine couldn’t really handle it (see the paraglider mission in TWINE). With Agent Under Fire, we were able to break from the strict constraints of the movies and create our own Bond fiction with missions and mechanics that both gave alternatives to shooting. They could also be designed in tandem with the story to ultimately create more interesting gameplay that suited the strengths of the engine we had available. We were also granted close access to some of the film execs to make sure we kept the themes appropriately safe within the Bond universe and canon. This trend continued over the next several games.
Evan Hanley:
Was Agent Under Fire always the set name for the game or were there different names at one point? I know Danny Bilson wrote it. Did you throw any names around?
Joel Wade:
Oof - can’t remember - as I said I was deeply focused on the external games during this timeframe. However I can’t remember a single game I worked on where there weren't significant battles and controversy over the name.
Evan Hanley:
When Agent Under Fire was beginning development whilst using The World Is Not Enough design work up to a point, was Pierce Brosnan and the rest of the Bond cast from that film approached to reprise their roles or was there not enough time to get them on board? Some early artwork shows that they were scanned and how they looked thanks to a Bond fan: http://secretagentlair.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-world-is-not-enough-seventeen-years.html (Adrian Malprave and Nigel Bloch are essentially Electra King and Renard anyway.)
Joel Wade:
Ultimately we couldn’t come to an agreement with Pierce for his likeness, and in those days digital rights hadn’t been covered in the film contract and had to be negotiated with each actor one by one. We didn’t actually use much scanning of the actors until Everything or Nothing - most of that’s simply good-old fashioned character artist talent at work. We had a pretty amazing art team, led by lead character artist Darren Pattenden.
Evan Hanley:
What was the plan for James Bond himself after Pierce couldn't play him again? Old PlayStation 2 magazines said that Sir Roger Moore was going to voice him at one point but that fell through. You got Andrew Bicknell (a British voice actor) to provide his voice and look for Bond. This story has been disputed for so long and has never been truly confirmed. Can you somewhat recall the actual voice and look process for James Bond?
Joel Wade:
I don’t remember any discussions with Moore, but once we couldn’t come to an agreement with Pierce, we needed a proxy Bond that would feel like someone who could be cast in the role - good-looking and debonair, but rugged enough to hold his own. We also needed a likeness that both MGM and Danjaq would sign-off on. Thus the “generic Bond” we used and the faceless/ in-shadow image on the cover. As a first-person shooter we didn’t feel this was a major issue as you’d end up spending more time looking at the character’s hands than their face, cutscenes notwithstanding.
Evan Hanley:
Did Zoe Nightshade, Adrian Malprave, Nigel Bloch and Natalie Damascue have different names at one point?
Joel Wade:
I’m sure they did, but can’t recall. Everyone has opinions about names.
Evan Hanley:
The game was radically different halfway through development and looked much more like GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64. Here's some footage for the game from E3 2001: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVzA2SlPHXg (You'll see the GoldenEye HUD, different text and watch for the Q-Claw) Why was all of this changed?
Joel Wade:
GoldenEye 007 was clearly a big inspiration for us - it was a fantastic game and we always aspired to try to match if not beat it for gameplay and graphics. It's not uncommon for game visuals to shift dramatically during the first half of development. We were trying to polish a single level - what we called our “X” - up to shipping standards while the engine and tools were still in the middle of development themselves. If we could get to quality and frame rate/performance on a single level, it was much easier from that point on to build out the rest of the game in approximately the same amount of time as that first level.
Evan Hanley:
This very early trailer from a Bond fan primarily shows off the first set of levels for the game from before halfway through development but these were completely different from what they became in the final game. Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BZfttj23bw (According to Philip Campbell, the Botanical level and BMW level were constantly changing all the time due to the designers not liking them.) From your perspective did you like them and did you want to keep them the way they were or did you want them changed too?
Joel Wade:
I need to defer to Philip here as I was busy on TWINE and Nightfire so don’t have much to add. Iteration however is really the “secret sauce” to quality. It’s not terribly efficient, but noodling with something after it could be called “done” is how you make a game better and better- if you can afford the time before you need to ship.
Evan Hanley:
This is preview footage from PlayStation 2 Magazine from before the game was released but almost resembled the final game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrTDOvAy9CU (It still had all the stuff from the previous trailers but the game was close to release at this point. Was it not possible to keep all the original concepts and designs the same up to release and hence had to be re-edited or cut?)
Joel Wade:
Anything that was cut was ultimately either because we didn’t feel it was high enough quality, or was modified into another moment.
(Phoenix Rising/Nightfire)
Evan Hanley:
What was the original plan for Nightfire? I know the game's original name was Phoenix Rising during the early stages of development but was changed to Nightfire.
Joel Wade:
Nightfire was started with Eurocom for NGC /Xbox /PS2 while Agent Under Fire was still in heavy development (Gearbox software ultimately handled a related but non-port PC version with their PC engine). Eurocom had a great design team, and one of the more impressive engines and toolsets at the time for first-person/rail-shooter gameplay. The original pitch was to redo You Only Live Twice with the Japanese and space themes, but update it to modern day. This was repeatedly rejected by execs as uninteresting to the gaming audience, but we ended up salvaging some of the Japanese settings and final zero-g space themes.
Continuing our push towards more varied and compelling gameplay we also partnered with the 007 Racing team team from EA Vancouver, carving out several missions for them to handle… and we’d then load either the first person or driving engine at the beginning of each mission. This allowed us to specialize, and tackle first person gameplay with it’s complicated character animations and driving with it’s unique physics and world streaming needs separately. Together they started to feel as epic as one of the featured films, side-stepping the technical challenges with the two engines.
Evan Hanley:
Did Drake, Kiko, Rook, Alura, Dominique and Mayhew have different names at one point?
Joel Wade:
Undoubtedly, but no recollection on details.
Evan Hanley:
Whilst you got Pierce Brosnan to provide his likeness this time, he couldn't voice James Bond. British actor Maxwell Caulfield did the voice for James Bond. How come? Was he too busy on Die Another Day?
Joel Wade:
Again we couldn’t get to an agreement on performance rights, Pierce’s time was precious on Bond and his own personal film projects he did between Bond films, but we were able to secure the rights to his digital likeness midway through development (something that required zero time from him), and Max - a ‘sound alike’ that Pierce, Danjaq, and MGM approved.
Evan Hanley:
When the game was in development, it looked exactly like Agent Under Fire. A fan found some E3 2002 footage for the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED8cv7_Vv6U
Was this just placeholders or was the game actually going to be like this?
Here's even more footage of other levels from E3 2002. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wDOw-EQgF0
Joel Wade:
We hadn’t secured rights to use Pierce’s likeness early in dev, so that’s an updated version of our Bond from Agent Under Fire.
Evan Hanley:
Were all the levels set in stone or was there going to be more? Thanks to a fan, he found 6 other missions in the games code along with some mission description texts. There's other stuff for multiplayer and the Vanquish gadgets which are never seen in game and were cut. Source: https://tcrf.net/James_Bond_007:_NightFire_(GameCube)
Joel Wade:
Fine sleuthing there. The story and missions were continually being tweaked to make the gameplay as compelling as possible while also ensuring the plot points connected in a rational fashion. Most of the “cuts” ended up getting folded into previous or subsequent missions. I think the only true mission cut was one of the driving missions in Tokyo.
Evan Hanley:
According to one of the project managers from Eurocom who helped make the game, there was a lot of executive interference from EA which like Agent Under Fire, led to the game being reworked on a lot and almost being unfinished. Can you remember anything about this or was this true?
Behind the scenes videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZuu4_aHYh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loeT8uUPJOU
Joel Wade:
Well there was certainly a lot of pressure on all of us to make the game as good as possible and deliver a financial hit for EA, on-time for the holiday sales season. The clearest example I remember was dropping the YOLT theme early in development for an original story, and joining forces with the 007 Racing team, but I think that freedom ultimately made for a much better game. When you get a bunch of passionate creative people together there are always going to be significant differences of opinion on what is “good” and what is “good enough”, what is “Bond” and what isn’t. Rework is never fun, especially when everyone is crunching hard and tired.
(Everything or Nothing)
Evan Hanley:
What was it like working with the actual Bond cast and crew for this game?
Joel Wade:
They were all very professional and (mostly) extremely nice and happy to bring their characters to a new audience. John Cleese was incredibly charming, later sending me a signed copy of the Fawlty Towers box set that I still treasure today. Dame Judi Dench we met in Vancouver where she was filming “The Chronicles of Riddick” - and she nailed most of her lines in a single take. Pro. Heidi Klum is probably one of the happiest, nicest people I ever had the pleasure to work with- incredibly down to earth. Willem Dafoe had his whole character and accent already figured out when he showed up to record, and was incredibly passionate about making sure his performance was everything it could be, giving subtle tweaks to each line.
Evan Hanley:
Did you or Philip Campbell bring Bruce Feirstein on board to write the game? What was he like?
Joel Wade:
I believe it was MGM or Danjaq’s idea. We only worked with Bruce remotely - Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo worked more closely with us as the design evolved, knocking out most of the major beats and dialog, and Bruce with his extensive Bond experience made sure it all rang true in the final dialog and screenplay.
Evan Hanley:
Why was Multiplayer not put into the game? Nightfire's is still incredible to this day. I never liked that co-op mission mode.
Joel Wade:
We did some early experiments, but we just couldn’t make an interesting competitive multiplayer with the cover and lock and fire mechanics that felt fair. If you’re fighting cooperatively against AI, we could use the same single player mechanics. Creating a bespoke aiming mechanic just for multiplayer would have been a huge effort, and probably feel like two separate games mashed together.
Evan Hanley:
Which was your favourite Bond Game overall?
Joel Wade:
Of the ones I worked on, EON was the most polished, and felt the most “Bond” overall. Meaningful gadgets like the Q-Spider, the RC car and of course the rappel felt like valuable tools instead of afterthoughts. Our cast was top notch, with authentic Pierce, an award-winning villain in Willem Dafoe, and three gorgeous Bond girls. The racing missions felt completely integrated and part of the plot. Even our title sequence and menus were raised to the next level compared to previous games. For me, it’s the game I’m most proud of.
For other games I don’t think you can touch GoldenEye 007. For it’s time it really pushed what you could do on a console with a shooter in 3D with a simple controller, and had a great multiplayer mode.
compiled, retyped, and painstakingly formatted by NotyourusualZero during a hyperfixation.
i did move around some chat messages so the flow of the conversations made sense.
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