I've been on about James Bond quite a lot recently. Mainly, it's because of Activision's surprising announcement at E3 that they're redoing GoldenEye 007. Anyway, this entry is not about that.
Most generally, I'm a composer of music. But, over the past two or three months, I've been trying my hand at videogame design.
First, let me dispel a common belief on this point. Game design is not the same as game development. When one designs a game, one creates the plot outline, the characters, the setting, all of the sort of thing that makes for a smashing film. To give you an example, what I've done is to make a plot outline, a screenplay (kind of like a movie script), three control schemes (mapping intended game controls to the most naturally-feeling buttons on the controllers -- in this case, the Classic Controller, Classic Controller Pro, and Wii Zapper), a list of items and their functions (including their strengths and weaknesses), a short list of people I'd like to have playing the voices of the characters, a list of the levels and mission objectives in the game, some limited level design (I just wanted to see some things in 3D... I'll leave most of this step to the developers), and a list of miscellaneous things that I'd like to have the game be able to do.
So, this design I've come up with happens to fall within the James Bond series. The idea came, more or less, out of frustration with the controls for the Wii version of 007 Quantum of Solace. The Wii-Zapper-only control scheme, whilst innovative as far as Bond games go, is too difficult to use for gamers who have become accustomed to controlling Bond with the traditional gamepad and thumbstick. There are other aspects of Quantum which I remedied in my design also, but they are too great in number to list here.
Now, without giving too much of the plot away, it takes place, mostly, in the Kansai region of Japan. An entrepreneur from Osaka has come up with a plan to re-imperialise Japan, whilst simultaneously depressing the economies of every other world power (the global recession does not apply here), putting the world at the mercy of Japan.
I like to think that the potential gameplay here is far superior to that of Quantum or even the more popular ones, like NightFire. Why? I think I've managed to recapture the essence of the best Bond game, GoldenEye 64.
I read an article written by Martin Hollis, GoldenEye's chief director, about how he approached the task of making the 17th Bond film into a videogame. When it came time to create the levels and missions, he played Super Mario 64 all the way through several times to get inspired. What he came away from that gaming marathon with was that players like to explore the game world. Especially after seeing levels like Bob-Omb Battlefield, where the player can move Mario about the place anywhere they desire, GoldenEye was definitely going to incorporate exploration. For example, the Severnaya levels, Surfaces I and II -- just like Mario 64, wide spaces for the player to explore, but also with what would be judged at first glance as being "amateurish" level design: making areas of the level that have nothing to do with the mission (the observatory and the westernmost huts in particular).
So, the point is, players like to explore. Whether a place has anything to do with anything or not, the player will go there. I remember that, when I played GoldenEye for the first time, I would make up my own mission objectives in my head. I approached Surface 1 like a playset, really, where Bond was my favourite toy -- I would pretend to be a guard and walk around on patrol. Other times, I would pretend that the hut with the camera on it was an office. All kinds of stuff.
I think the mistake that other developers have made with the Bond series is that they will typically play the previous game in the line and see how they can improve upon it. After GoldenEye, Eurocom developers played it to figure out what to change in The World is not Enough. Whoops, missed something -- meh, we'll make it better in Agent Under Fire. Okay, Agent Under Fire failed spectacularly... better play T.W.I.N.E. again. Hey, that was interesting -- now, let's change the viewpoint to 3rd person.
Amidst all of that "improvement", they never stopped to think about what really made GoldenEye great. Sure all of those games had GoldenEye-like multiplayer modes, which was a good thing, sure. But look at it from Martin Hollis's viewpoint again -- he didn't have anything to compare his project to (perhaps Virtua Cop, though), so Rareware made GoldenEye based on inspiration from all of these other sources, like Mario 64. No one's ever stopped to think about how much of the Bond game series owes its success to Super Mario 64 and Miyamoto-san's love of exploration.
That's the secret to making a really nifty Bond game. In Quantum, you couldn't play however you wished. Sometimes, you'd be under such heavy fire that, half the time, you'd be scrambling for cover, whilst you'd spend the rest of that time trying your damndest to get through the level without being killed. Other times, you'd have a time limit -- usually a very strict one. Or, if you strayed behind to look at that sign some more, you'd fail a mission objective and have to restart. More or less, the game would control the player.
In GoldenEye 007, you knew how many guards there were in a particular area and you knew which guards would come running in if they heard your shots. You knew what guns there were, you could pick them up by simply running into them, and you could carry as many guns and items as you could find. When you aimed at something from a distance, you didn't see another sniper aiming right at you who could kill you in one shot -- you often saw an oblivious, patrolling guard with a pointlessly inaccurate gun with which he couldn't possibly hit you from that distance if he tried. "Not very challenging," you might say. Which would you prefer to play? A game that you can play for hours because you want to? Or a game that you must play for hours because the game has made you so tense that you can't do anything else?
I don't have any really fast action in my design. It's not completely boring, though -- there's enough action to keep one playing for a while, but not to the point where the game reaches out and grabs you by the collar and holds you there until you've finished it.
For the most part, I've considered Mario more than James Bond in the design -- you can explore and fight simultaneously, or you can fight then explore, or you can explore then fight. Plus, there's a rather lengthy list of stuff that you can unlock if you either meet a time requirement or you collect enough points, I haven't decided yet.
Hopefully, Activision will see things my way. None of the normal channels available to the consumer are working, though. I hope to find a workaround before they release GoldenEye this fall. That's the best time to present a new idea, before they can have any ideas of their own.
