GoldenEye 007 Tepid Seat

Q1: I want to know, what were you thinking about when you first started work on Goldeneye? What were you expecting, basically, and how did Goldeneye become the Goldeneye we all know and love today? (Thomas Schaller)

A: We were expecting to finish the game in a far shorter time, for a start. It was originally going to be a kind of Time Crisis shooter on rails, then the project snowballed a bit, took a bit longer, got a bit more ambitious as more of the N64’s features were exploited. Reading the script before the film was out was quite special; at that time, there hadn’t been a Bond film for some considerable time, and it was interesting to see how the series was going to be relaunched.

Q2: What resolution does GoldenEye run in? There’s a pathetically small amount of money riding on this. (Jason R Clark)

A: The game runs in 320×240, but the front end is higher. Hope you win.

Q3: Did you steal the Sniper rifle from Shiny’s MDK? Come on, be honest. And what were the “Terrorist” and the “Biker” originally planned for? (coolguy)

A: You should be careful what you say, since libel can be costly. No, we did not steal the sniper rifle from MDK; at no point does Bond ever attempt to affix a gun to his face. By the time the team saw MDK for the first time, Bond’s sniper rifle was in the game and working fine, thank you very much. The terrorist and the biker were us having fun with character models for the multiplayer mode, though the biker was going to be in the main game. He got dropped when we found there wouldn’t be time to give him a bike, saving him from looking a bit pathetic, all leathered up and nothing to ride. So to speak.

Q4: One of the soldiers has a face like a monster; his teeth stick out, he has a bowl haircut, and I generally tend to pump him with more bullets than I should. Is this creation a foul joke? Or a foul team member? In which case I’ve just insulted him… or her… or it. Oops. (Mana Hero)

A: Yes, it is a foul joke. And also an experiment. It was one of the earliest faces in the game, and stayed in because we never removed it. It is an team member’s face, (un)subtly altered, and that particular person also has a less hideous version in the game. He was considered far too attractive to be exposed to the world uncensored.

Q5: Why was the decision made to variate from the tradition of many inferior, simplistic first-person perspective games produced by shoddy, fly-by-night developers who pale into insignificant fungal infections ‘gainst your good selves (creep creep), and make people actually work for the ‘cheats’? That is, as opposed to entering some stupid combination of buttons and becoming God. (BindyBandy)

A: The team believed that ‘rewards’ were better than ‘cheats’; this dovetailed nicely with the need to emphasise the different style of gameplay in the single-player game. If an invincibility code had been available via the net a few hours after the game went on sale, how many gameplayers would have taken the time to go through the game as the team intended, being stealthy? They’d have gone in with guns blazing and would, we reckon, have been disappointed.

All of the 23 cheats or ‘rewards’ are there, on the list, for you to earn. There are no more in the game extra to those displayed on the list. There is no 24th cheat. If you mess about with a GameShark you might be able to access the ‘line mode’ debugging tool. This is not a cheat. It has no inherent gameplay value.

Q6: How did you choose the bonus characters (Oddjob, Jaws, etc.) and who came close to being included but were not? (Neville Wilkinson)

A: We looked at the Bond villains to see who particularly stood out. Jaws was a bit obvious. Baron Samedi, similarly, was a favourite, and a lot of work went into making the models of the villains. But it finally came down to who we had good enough photos of to make face textures from.

Q7: I’m really interested in being a programmer, and I think that’s what I wanna do when I get older. But, I have no clue on how to get started… Do you guys have any advice on what I could do to start me out? (Nick Blumish)

A: The ‘traditional’ way is to do a degree in Computer Science, while having a strong grounding in Maths. Some universities are starting to offer courses in games programming and related areas, which may be of interest to you if you live in Britain. We’re not so sure about the situation in the States.

Q8: Why did you guys take away the real names of the guns? (RealBond2)

A: There was a legal ‘grey area’ concerning the gun names; in the end we decided it was not worth the risk of incurring the wrath of people who by definition would have guns easily available to them. It was also felt that we should avoid encouraging people to seek out particular firearms in the real world… guns cause more problems than they solve.

Q9: Will Perfect Dark have any of the following?: Cheat codes that you have to earn, a multiplayer deathmatch mode, a Mission Mode where you can have 1-4 players simultaneously, an All Guns/Weapons cheat, use of Rumble Pak, customizable controller configuration? (Ross)

A: Answering some of those questions in either a positive or negative way would force us to publically commit to a series of options which may not, in the future, be correct; we don’t want you coming back and complaining if we have to remove a feature we said we’d put in, so we’ll have to keep certain things under our hats for now. As a general rule, details are released as they are confirmed to be in the game. To answer the questions to which there is a definite reply: yes, the Rumble Pak compatibility will not be removed for Perfect Dark, deathmatch and objectives likewise.

Q10: My friends and I feel the game was better than the film and that it was unnecessary to have a licence with such a glorious game. In retrospect, do you think it might’ve been wiser to have made the game stand alone on its merits – away from the 007 licence? (Michael Hartney)

A: We’re quite happy with how GoldenEye turned out. The film licence helped in its own way to make the game what it was; for Perfect Dark, we’ve got more creative freedom, and there are no regrets about it or desires to do more film licences just yet.

Q11: Why didn’t you guys use the jungle and Siberia snow levels as multiplayer maps for Goldeneye? They would have been so amazing with all that open space and little cabins to hide in for Siberia, and all the mist and trees in the Jungle level. (Lauchie MacDonald)

A: All of the single-player levels were tried out as multiplayer backgrounds; some, like the Dam or the snow levels, were just too large in terms of memory taken up to be used; you may have noticed some of the multiplayer backgrounds cannot be accessed in 4-player mode – this is the reason.

Q12: I noticed that GoldenEye was at one time a rail shooter, I was wondering if the way characters react to being shot in different places was something that was carried over from that incarnation? That is a very unique feature for a 1st person shooter, but most lightgun games feature it. (Zak Colvin)

A: It was always on our wish-list of features for GoldenEye; we took the approach that it represented the level of interaction we wanted in the game environment, together with bulletholes in walls and objects, the number of interactive objects in the environment, and so on. And I’m not sure most lightgun games do feature this specific ability to the same degree.

Q13: Was the code to play as “The Rare Staff” even supposed to be revealed? It sounds like a special programmer secret that wasn’t supposed to come out of the depths of Rare. (Pelord, the Fish Incarnate)

A: We passed the code to Nintendo, who then released it on their web homepage, so it was certainly intentional. And it is a genuine code, not a debug tool or programmers’ secret.

Q14: Is there any other secrets in GoldenEye that nobody else knows about but you’se? (David Giles)

A: The reply to that question rather relies on our ability to know what other people have found in the game. If you’ve got all the rewards (all 23) then there are the extra multiplayer characters. After that, you’ve got the little things we put in a couple of the levels to keep ourselves amused, such as the glassware on top of the ducting in the Gasplant; this is another form of reward, because it makes it worth looking around a lot more and being thorough. The bottom line here is that you can never second-guess the players. Facts about GoldenEye we thought would take ages to discover were online a couple of weeks after it was released.

Q15: What was your main inspiration when you where recording the yells, screams, and groans for the characters being shot? (Jason Ackerman)

A: ‘Gee, I hope I get paid for this.’

Q16: Hearing that on F-Zero 64 you’ll be able to create your own tracks with the 64DD (if it’s released that is), is it possible for you to create extra multiplayer levels including a version of the Dam so that we may go on loving Goldeneye without losing interest? Or even if it were possible could you be bothered to do it? (Joel Hawkins)

A: It is unlikely that there will ever be extra multiplayer levels for GoldenEye. If GoldenEye isn’t enough for you, Perfect Dark will be coming along to sate you next year.

Q17: Do you practise source code re-use? Could you give anecdotes? (Ian Bruntlett)

A: Do we re-use source code? Yes we do, a bit. But an awful lot just gets rewritten. More than you would expect, we think. Could we give anecdotes? Yes, but they wouldn’t be funny.

Q18: I watched Goldeneye the other night and couldn’t believe how close the game came to recreating the scenery. So, how many times did you watch the film to get the scenery right, and which of the staff would be the Bond mastermind? (Ben Williams)

A: We watched the film an average of 5 times each, and referred to it very frequently. There are a few people on the team who could vie for the title of Bond Mastermind, but everyone else would quite rightly conclude that they were very sad indeed.

Q19: I was wondering how the success of Goldeneye has affected you guys. (Adam Cooley)

A: Everybody hates us now.

Q20: Given the amount of time between Goldeneye and the current project, coupled with viewing competitors’ projects such as Acclaim’s highly anticipated Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, what is the team’s hopes and ambitions to accomplish with Perfect Dark that couldn’t be done in Goldeneye? (Aldo Merino)

A: We are going to be improving the GoldenEye engine, and attempting to put in everything we can to make the game better. As a rule, the longer we spend, the better the game gets; but if it takes too long, people will get shirty with us. As far as competitors go, ignoring their work would be foolish in the extreme.