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Classic N64 shooter GoldenEye OO7 is a “500lb gorilla”, according to Quantum of Solace developer Treyarch.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com in an interview to be published later this week, Treyarch’s Adam Gascoine, the co-design director on Quantum of Solace, said that GoldenEye acts as a “motivator” for the team.
Quantum of Solace, due out at the end of the month, is Treyarch and publisher Activision’s first stab at a Bond game following the change-over in license rights from EA. It’s the game of the first two Daniel Craig Bond games – Casino Royale and the soon to be released Quantum of Solace.
When asked whether it would have been better for Treyarch if GoldenEye, considered by many to be the greatest console FPS ever made, had never existed, Gascoine replied: “I don’t know. I don’t know if it would. I think in hindsight some would say yes, I wish it had never existed. Actually it’s beneficial to us, to be honest with you, because it’s like a motivator. It might turn out bad, you never know right? But it’s a motivator. You’ve always got this 500 pound gorilla in the room. We play it all of the time. We’ve got it up and running.”
Gascoine added that it “might be” time for gamers to get over GoldenEye, released 11 years ago in 1997, and that Quantum of Solace “puts to bed” the issue of comparison with the N64 title.
He said: “I guess in that respect yeah it probably would be nice to have nothing to compare to. But you could also say the advantage is that people will look at this game and say ‘oh my God! They got it! Another GoldenEye!’. And that’s just going to be wonderful for us if we get that. But I think the actual content of our game does put it to bed.”
Gascoine also revealed a number of gameplay features that were inspired by GoldenEye, as well as references to the game, including a train level and a data collection system that refers to “some of the GoldenEye moments”.
“Control scheme,” he said. “With some of the control stuff… we messed around a little bit. There’s also some naming conventions in there. There’s a data collection system in the game and some of that refers to some of the GoldenEye moments. There’s also a level – Train. I think we have a really great train level. There’s a lot of games that have done train levels. Gears of War did a train level. Splinter Cell did a kick ass train level. We really liked ours. But ours, basically, we didn’t have Train in the game. We knew it was in the original script and got cut. Someone actually played GoldenEye and went ‘why aren’t we doing the train?’ It’s GoldenEye and it’s right here. So we did. You may not recognise the two, I don’t know, but it was in our hearts.”
You can check out our hands-on preview of Quantum of Solace right here. Check the site later this week for the full interview with Treyarch’s Adam Gascoine.
