Collection of 007 Game Dev Interviews #2

Two more interviews regarding The World Is Not Enough and NightFire this time. Sure, not as much but there's more to learn this time about TWINE PC's development hell and minor stuff like what some of the cut levels were really like in NightFire.

Evan Hanley & Alex Mayberry (2025/03/21)

Evan Hanley:

Were you a James Bond fan prior to EA securing a licensing deal with MGM/EON Productions and publishing Tomorrow Never Dies in 1999?

Alex Mayberry:

I’d say I was a casual Bond fan before joining the project. I’d seen a number of the films, many of them in the theaters. Roger Moore was playing Bond when I was a kid, but I watched a lot of Connery’s films when they came on TV.

Evan Hanley:

Did you also play GoldenEye 64 and use that as a reference point for making World Is Not Enough?

Alex Mayberry:

I played GoldenEye on the N64; it was definitely the high water mark for a Bond game at the time, and we were very aware of where the bar was set in terms of player expectations.

Evan Hanley:

Did you approach Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli and pitch the game to them or was it pitched to the higher ups in EA and then forwarded to them for approval so the game could begin development?

Alex Mayberry:

I wasn’t involved with the green lighting of the project. That all happened before I came on board. I was brought in specifically to build the level design team. We did have to deal with Barbara Broccoli on design approvals though.

Evan Hanley:

Were you nervous about making a high calibre James Bond game?

Alex Mayberry:

We were certainly aware of the challenge in trying to develop a better Bond game than Goldeneye.

Evan Hanley:

Did you and EA feel there were massive expectations for it given how influential and iconic GoldenEye 64 was back then and that it was seen as the blueprint for future first person shooter games?

Alex Mayberry:

Of course. GoldenEye was a huge financial and critical success. It set the bar for a James Bond game, and it’s arguably still the best game adaptation of the character to date.

Evan Hanley:

When did the game begin development? Early 1999? I found an old EA press release from January 2000 announcing its development, it mentions that it would be using the Quake 3 Engine and its release date was Late 2000.

Alex Mayberry:

I don’t know the official date when development began, but it was probably sometime in ‘98 if my memory is right.

Evan Hanley:

Were you given workprint footage, production images, storyboards and the script by MGM/EON to use as reference points when making the game?  

Alex Mayberry:

We did eventually receive the script and some screenshots, but these came well after development began. For many months we were working without any direct knowledge of the film. Even after we saw the film, we discovered that Barbara Broccoli considered the game universe to be separate from the cinematic universe, as we received design feedback that directly contradicted the events of the movie. For example, at the end of The World is not Enough, James Bond kills Electra King, but for the game, we were told he would never do this. This added difficulty to developing the game, as you might imagine.

Evan Hanley:

Were the cast willing to provide their likenesses and voices to the game or were they too busy filming? I know from the E3 2000 Trailer you actually got Pierce Brosnan for it.

Alex Mayberry:

We did not have access to any of the actors for the game itself, at least not while I was there.

Evan Hanley:

Can you recall the proof of concept? Was it the opening of Bond in the Bilbao Bank, Bond chasing the female assassin in his speedboat in London, Bond protecting Electra King from Renard's men when they go skiing together, Bond trying to destroy the helicopters at Valentino Zukovsky's caviar factory?

Alex Mayberry:

My memory is very hazy here — our design was constantly changing in those early days and much of the work was compartmentalized by feature development. We never really had a working concept at that point — at least not in the same sense that modern games do. This was the first time that EA had tried to develop a game internally at Redwood Shores, and to put it kindly, it was a big learning experience for the company.

Evan Hanley:

Which version was worked on first, the PC or the PlayStation 2 or were they both being worked on at the same time?

Alex Mayberry:

Initially the PC was the lead product, but part way through development the company decided to make it a PS2 launch title. This caused significant complications.

Evan Hanley:

What were the big selling points for this game?

Alex Mayberry:

It was the first James Bond FPS to follow GoldenEye. That was the primary selling point really.

Evan Hanley:

Was writing the design document for the game difficult? Was there going to be a lot implemented into the game back in 1999/2000?

Alex Mayberry:

It was absurdly challenging. We went through two creative directors prior to me, who had no experience making FPS games. There was no internal familiarity with the Quake 3 engine, and there was a general overestimation of the PS2’s capabilities. Lack of experience combined with unrealistic expectations resulted in a bloated design that couldn’t be achieved. Ultimately, this is why the game was eventually reduced in scope and turned into Agent Under Fire. But by that time I had moved on.

Evan Hanley:

What was it like working on the game? Was it stressful? Was it enjoyable?

Alex Mayberry:

It was enjoyable and it was stressful. I learned a lot from the project and I made some lifelong friends. But ultimately it was an effort in frustration that I still view as a failure.

Evan Hanley:

Can you remember anything about the missions and weapons? Were we shown film footage or was everything presented through in house cutscenes?

Alex Mayberry:

I remember very little about those things. At that point we really only had a few weapons working in the game. Much of what we showed to the public at that time was a lot of smoke and mirrors.

Evan Hanley:

Was Multiplayer Mode planned very early on?

Alex Mayberry:

More like assumed — we knew we wanted it to be multiplayer, but it was on the back burner as we tried to figure out the main single player experience.

Evan Hanley:

What was development actually like on the game? The game turned into Agent Under Fire and that had a rocky development too.

Alex Mayberry:

We had about a hundred people working on a game without a finished Game Design Document and Technical Design Document, based on an unreleased film that we didn’t have the script for, using an engine that had to be ported to a brand new game console. It was a lot of chaos and strife.

I don’t know if you can find the archive, but there was a site called "Fat Babies" that chronicled our troubles based on anonymous internal sources (we never did figure out who was leaking); if you can find it, I’m sure it will be revealing.

Evan Hanley:

Did you actually show off the game at E3 2000 or did someone else from the EA design team?

Alex Mayberry:

I was there on the show floor, along with others from the team.

Evan Hanley:

How far was the game into development? Based on the E3 2000 trailer, most of the footage focused on the missile base scene and that's over two thirds into the film. However, screenshots show the caviar factory scene which is near the very end of the film. It makes me think you were almost finished making it.

Alex Mayberry:

We weren’t even in an alpha state at that point. Everything shown at E3 was pretty much made for the show. And even that barely functioned.

Evan Hanley:

Did you enjoy working on the game?

Alex Mayberry:

I value the experience. I value what I learned from it. I enjoyed certain aspects of it, as well as the people I worked with. But I’m very success driven, and I’m still disappointed in where we wound up.

Anonymous TWINE Dev on Fat Babies

Turns out there's some stuff on their fatrumours section! 7/25 EA's Had Enough

"Apparently last week EA fired 6 folks from their Bond team.  Anyone have any confirmations on this?

In the mean time, EA management has been conducting a “witch hunt” to find out who leaked the information for the “World Has Had Enough” Story by FatHammer we ran back in late June.  After all, it’s always easier to point the finger at the person who blew the whistle rather than take a step back and see that things are broken and need fixing.

Management probably doesn’t realize employee morale is at an all-time low and 99% of the employees were insulted by the meager EA.com stock option offering.  Actually, we take that back.  They probably do realize, we just don’t think they actually care."

There was a report on the Bluesnews website that mentions layoffs did happen.

Found this on the fatmusings page! 8/8 EA's Bond Team

Hear us now and believe us later.

Anyone who has claims EA has not been letting Bond team members go is dead wrong.  Just try e-mailing folks you know at EA who used to be on the Bond team (or who you still think is on the Bond team).  Then enjoy the bounced e-mail you’ll receive with “user not found.”  Have fun with it.  Great at parties, too!

Evan Hanley & Kevin Harrison (2025/06/05)

Evan Hanley:

(I first asked him was he a James Bond fan.)

Kevin Harrison:

As a kid, I was a massive James Bond fan. World Is Not Enough was awesome. Working with the Bond license makes you need to have rules to keep you grounded so you'd need to know the market, the target audience and other stuff in game development. I watched everything Bond. I look back on it with rose tinted glasses. Some of Moonraker is great whilst some it is terrible. Boring and makes no sense. The gondola chase and the close up of the pigeon are lowpoints. The Living Daylights is amazing! I appreciated the later films and don't really look back fondly on the old ones. I changed my tune so me and Bond are friends again.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him if any of the WINE team spoke to him or the other Nightfire devs about their experiences making it, working with EA and the Bond license.)

Kevin Harrison:

DANJAQ had the Bond license. They had this massive book of Bond rules which we would read. For example, in WINE, in the Underground mission, one of the bombs was originally supposed to placed in the women's toilet. This was vetoed by them. Women and children don't exist in the Bond world. You couldn't show war or people dying in a war styled imagery. These were more worldbuilding rules we had to follow. DANJAQ were very clear with what they wanted for Bond. He was a SAS and a cool dude.

EA had no clue what they wanted and they were very controlling. They wanted a Roger Moore style slap for Bond's punch animation. It didn't suit him so we went with the more forceful punch.

WINE didn't have the Bond music as we didn't pay for it. We had two different relationships. DANJAQ would give us storyboards of stunts to use as reference points for the game. So we would design from Point A to Point B and a half for the missions and use that as a guide.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him when did it begin development as the old behind the scenes videos say it took 20 months to make. (Released in November 2002, so go back 20 months and it would be dated March 2001!))

Kevin Harrison:

We actually did full pre-production of You Only Live Twice. We had prototypes of tech and ai. EA wanted us to do Moonraker but we refused. Some things we tweaked such as Tiger Tanaka and the Japanese Secret Service and there was more emphasis on satellites and hacking. 6 months of work was done. The full story was done. We did the original story until EA changed it. Overall, I think it was 2 years with an additional 6 months.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the Phoenix Rising name.)

Kevin Harrison:

I don't even remember that. It may have been an internal codename. It may have been that for some time, I don't know.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him if Raphael Drake, Alura McCall, Dominique Paradis, Rook, Kiko and Alexander Mayhew had earlier names.)

Kevin Harrison:

Alura was a last minute addition. She wasn't part of the story. Raphael Drake was originally much younger early on. He was the worlds first international citizen. His parents were super rich millionaires. He was like a younger version of Bond but a real douchebag. He wanted to own the world and became corrupt so Bond had to stop him. Rook was a big tall dude and originally more like Tombstone from the SpiderMan comics. He didn't really have a name early on. There was a scrapped character named Risky O' Daire, who was an Irish spy who helps Bond on the Alps. (Not sure which mission he is talking about here?) He kills her. I think Armitage Shanks was his name. Check the manual and it should tell you.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the proof of concept.)

Kevin Harrison:

We actually did the whole game but over 2 thirds into development the racing levels were added.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him what he designed.)

Kevin Harrison:

I did the first level. I created the disruptor you could use on doors. I also did Chain Reaction. Equinox was made at the VERY END of development. It was made in TWO DAYS. It's a scripted object with a lot of bells and whistles. One of the executive producers from EA wanted it to be bigger. We shot it down as we weren't willing to change the code and add more at that stage.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked were there massive expectations given DAD was coming out back then, Bond celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2002 and Agent Under Fire sold really well.)

Kevin Harrison:

Yes. EA spent a lot of money on the Bond license. There were 3 or 4 producers overseeing us. It was high pressure and lots of hours work.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the E3 2002 Demo footage which Wibnack has.)

Kevin Harrison:

We used what we could for the demo. We wanted to get Pierce's voice and likeness but that didn't come until much later in development.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the E3 2002 Double Cross footage.)

Kevin Harrison:

It was possibly a placeholder. It was based on You Only Live Twice. It didn't look like a proper Japanese house originally so an architect came in and designed it. It had to be made filmic. You may notice in the final that there is a high quality sink prop within in the house that has detail to it. The house was changed again.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the cut Q training mission before Paris Prelude.)

Kevin Harrison:

It was just a greyboxed room. All of Bond's stuff was in it essentially. We didn't do much for it.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the other cut missions like Hidden Agenda, Streets of Tokyo, Atoll Infiltration, Island Caves and River Gauntlet.)

Kevin Harrison:

Island Caves was one we started but didn't finish. Me and the lead designer had loads of ideas. When we worked on YOLT, one of them was based on the Little Nellie scene. We had this massive design document and EA took some of our ideas for Agent Under Fire. I remember the Streets of Tokyo level. It was a car chase in Japan. The ending had Bond meeting triplets and they wore different dresses that made the Union Jack flag. It was scrapped. These were really greyboxes.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the original Equinox opening.)

Kevin Harrison:

I can't remember. I do remember there was a proposal from EA with Blofeld in the mecha exoskeleton from Aliens or using a mecha crab to fight Bond in the final level. It was vetoed.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the cut Spacestation and Facility maps.)

Kevin Harrison:

Multiplayer was done at the end of development. I made the Skyrail map. I don't remember these.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the six cut multiplayer weapons which were the Q-Pen, Drake's rocket launcher from Equinox, the Flare Gun, the FA1 Clarion, a PDW90 and Claymores.)

Kevin Harrison:

We played huge multiplayer games back then. We played Arena Quake before Counter Strike was even a thing. There was nothing really cut I think. Some of these we just messed around with. I CAN tell you that we had this idea of newspapers covering your weapon so you could do kills more stealthily which was sadly cut and also the briefcase from the Ghost In The Shell was also a weapon I really wanted to put in but was cut as well. The claymores were carried over from WINE. It's a shame I didn't put them in.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about the scrapped cheats, Q modifiers, bot specialties and the Golden Gun mode.)

Kevin Harrison:

DANJAQ were unhappy seeing blood in Goldeneye. We had very strict rules not to put stuff in. The Q modifiers may have been placeholders or just something to showcase. I did think of some bot specialties like originally Baron Samedi had 1000 health points and was unstoppable. The AI would try to take him out but fail so it would be up to the player to stop him. Scaramanga could do one hit kills but his reload time was very slow. We lobbied very hard to put Baron Samedi into Multiplayer. I did the bots and behaviors for Multiplayer. EA wanted the game to have more gadgets and the ability to fly. They had this idea of a Q WASP. We thought these were stupid and shot them down. A footprint gadget was considered in which a pair of arms would come out of your attire and swipe the footsteps behind you. Since the game was first person that wouldn't work as you would always looking straight ahead and couldn't look behind you. You could mess around more with the grapple but we toned it down as the game could break from using it too much. I wanted to modernize the Golden Gun as I didn't like its original design. You would run around the arena, collect the three pieces and then the gun would be yours. I really didn't like this. It was possibly concepted but it went nowhere.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him about more Bond girls like Honey Rider/Suki and Aki/Major Amasova/Kara Milovy and Pam Bouvier possibly going to be playable in Multiplayer along with being bots at one point.)

Kevin Harrison:

No. The characters are very expensive to make. We only had one rig which we used for the females which would be edited.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him were there plans for more Bond villains possibly going to be playable in Multiplayer along with being bots like Dr No/Blofeld/Emilio Largo/Alec Trevalyan and Elliot Carver.)

Kevin Harrison:

Blofeld was originally more hunched. I didn't want him more gnarly and shrivelled. I didn't want him to be compared to Dr Evil either. There was concept art made for him but he was cut for time.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him if there were other tribute arenas considered like Scaramanga's Fun House from MWGG, the Volcano Lair from YOLO and the Golden Gate Bridge from View to a Kill.)

Kevin Harrison:

No. Looking back on it and if we had more time, I definitely would have put in more. The Volcano Lair would have been too on the nose given Austin Powers came out after our lair but we would have worked around it.

Evan Hanley:

(I then asked him did he enjoy working on the game.)

Kevin Harrison:

I did. We were so tired at the end. We had shit food, we had our blinds closed, we were working on the game for hours on end but did our best to get through and get the game out. Around eight of us met up last year. It was good times. It's insane to hear so many people talk about it today.

Evan Hanley:

(I lastly asked him if he possibly he had any assets left over from working on the game and if YOLO assets could still exist.)

Kevin Harrison:

Eurocom is gone a long time so it's hard to tell. I don't think I have anything. I can have a look on my hard drive. I came across my old Predator Concrete Jungle pitch but didn't have any design documents. The formatting was horrible and didn't look great at all but then again it was 20 years ago since I first made it. If I find something, I will definitely share it with you. If the Discord has any questions, feel free to pass them on and I will try my best to answer them.

Evan Hanley: [to SpiderBat007]

They had a wishlist of who they wanted. Time was the reason some of these didn't make it into the game.

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