My pipe dream pitch for the return of Bond games!

seeing whats happening with Star Wars et al now… i think the last thing Bond needs is EA (or Activision for that matter) - the best outcome is honestly Sony gets the movie rights again and EON and Sony allow one of their first party developers to treat it as a Playstation exclusive original game like Insomniac are currently doing with Spiderman. Maybe Sucker Punch after they were done with Ghost of Tsushima - which would keep it free of loot boxes and pay to win multiplayer - but really the days of the film tie in games are gone and I doubt a real Bond game beyond a mobile game will be on the cards for a long time

I’d like something that gives a balanced representation of Bond’s world that isn’t just running and gunning. I think Everything or Nothing had the perfect template. Their main hook was rappelling down buildings, mixed in with a decent hand-to-hand combat system, gunplay, vehicles and gadgets. If I were in charge of things though, I’d get Timothy Dalton on board (scan his likeness and use his voice) and create a new story. Imagine that.

I like the Sucker Punch idea. I always thought Naughty Dog would do a great job, especially something in the vain of Uncharted 4 with the semi-ish open worldv very story driven, high production values. For a time, I had a suspicion that Rocksteady’s mystery project was a Bond game (which would be amazing), but alas it isn’t. My dream game would be an Uncharted-like adventure complete with top-notch visuals, mo-cap, driving, and a good mix of stealth and gun play.

Though id bring this thread back up as it occured to me - new book out tomorrow, we had a new radio play a few weeks ago, a good stream of graphic novels/comics from Dynamite and a confirmed Bond 25 from Danny Boyle. What we dont have, what we have not even a whisper of, is the return of James Bond video games. Been 6 years since we had a proper game. Longer since we had a good one. Who would people like to see approaching a Bond game and what sort of style?

The one rumor that wont go away is telltale doing a Bond game, which means we’d get a great story, but super glitchy. That said, I’d take that as it would be something…

I’ve given up hope of another game. Games like Hitman satisfy my spy fix these days. Hopefully a new Splinter Cell game is announced soon for PS4.

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Supposedly ubisoft are going to reveal it at e3.

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Hitman is awesome, really looking forward to a s2. In regards to Splinter Cell, it was a shame that it petered out as a series, hope the rumours of an E3 reveal are true. Speaking of - Ubisoft, of all the AAA studios, seem like the best fit for Bond,with their open world, yet still very story driven, games often containing all the things you’d want in a Bond game - espionage, gadgets, 3rd person shooter mechanics, luxury vehicular action, mini games like poker, large set pieces and even prominant alcohol drinking as gaming (Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed give a wave)

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It’s Batman games were a HUGE step up in that regard, and I’d assume that’s the sort of thing they’d go for with Bond, so I’d be ok with them taking a crack at it.

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Are you sure you want to continue this old conversation?

Yes. Yes I do.

Telltales demise has put an end to the rumour once and and for all.

My question is, what do people think of IO Interactive taking a crack at it? Hitman as a series has dozens of Bond loving Easter eggs, and it goes into over-drive with the appearance of Sean Bean as the first elusive assassin (Goldeneye is far and away the film that gets the most references) so I imagine it’s something they’d be interested in.

Honestly, I’m not sure the telltale rumor would have ever panned out. They had some real money making properties but only ever were interested in their Batman and Walking Dead games. They couldn’t even get their Game of Thrones game continued. I’m not hopeful that we’ll ever see another Bond game. We haven’t had a proper one since 2012 (there was some crappy mobile game a few years ago). Alas, video game Bond is dead.

Yeah I think if EON maybe loosen the noose around 007 - take the Marvel Games approach and let the right people make the right games - we could end up with a 007 game on the same level as Spider-Man was on PS4.

The problem for 007 games has always been and unfortunately forever will be their everlasting comparison to Goldeneye, which while a great game (for almost 25 years ago) is unattainably perfect through nostalgia goggles and nothing will ever match up to.

The problem more than anything is that EON and probably MGM want too much money for the rights, so its not worthwhile to any worthwhile developer to make a Bond game instead of their own IP. I’m sure Ubisoft or a Sony studio could do a nice job with a Bond game given the right opportunity, but we need only look at what EA has dragged kicking and screaming, begging for money to market for their Star Wars licence to realise that maybe 007 is better off out of games right now

Agreed. Everything or Nothing is a much better representation of Bond’s world. By making the switch to third person the gaming franchise moved on for the better. Games like Hitman excite more in how they emphasise stealth and reduce machine gunning like Arnold Schwarzenegger. If the series comes back at some point I hope that’s what they do. The Goldeneye template would be regressive.

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Yeah - EON was really good, Nightfire was even better than Goldeneye imo - had some stealth, vehicle sections etc…

I think where games are getting with storytelling and visuals (especially things like Sony’s games - Uncharted, Horizon, God Of War, Spiderman + upcoming games like Ghost Of Tsushima, Last Of Us 2 + Death Stranding which stars Mads Mikkelsen and Lea Seydoux, which reminds me a Kojima 007 game would be interesting) - you could make an excellent James Bond original game - It will be interesting to see how the new Star Wars game turns out - Jedi Fallen Order is a third person action adventure supposedly single player so it might provide the best template for Bond to follow as a licenced game

I suspect MGM get very involved, given how prominent the MGM interactive logo has been placed on the games.

I do agree that, should Bond come back in video games, something entirely original would serve it best. EON and Bloodstone were big steps in the right direction with their Bond 20.5 and Bond 22.5 respective approaches, but I think they need to go further. Be what the films are to the books, and what the Dynamite comics have been to both. Unquestionably James Bond, but not IFP or Eon James Bond.

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I agree with all of that. What killed the Bond games was corporate greed trying to pump these things out as fast as possible and what we got was poorly made Call of Duty clones. 007 Legends never should have seen the light of day. I still lament what Raven Software’s cancelled Bond game might’ve been. To get a truly great Bond game, I think we’d have to see something like what a marvel did, go to Sony or Microsoft and tell them we want you to make us a new James Bond game and treat it like a first party title. It’s how we got the excellent Spider Man.

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Risico…It’s test footage looked so promising…

I’ve seen the footage. It definitely looked promising, but of course, Activision can’t see past Call of Duty and so Bond was both Call of Duty-Ified and then abandoned all together. It also didn’t help that Blood Stone sold terribly. But part of that was Activision’s fault as they didn’t market Blood Stone.

was very weird - they did the Goldeneye remake/reboot (on Wii exclusively to start) and seemed to promote that very heavily (Scherzinger theme, David Arnold etc…) and BloodStone just seemed to be dumped out with nothing. But that was likely the state of Wii vs PS3 at the time - the PS3 was a real failure at least to start, so I can see why they promoted the Wii game over it.

Interestingly, I have the Quantum Of Solace PS2 game (came out around the same time as PS3), while the PS3 game was the first COD clone Bond, the PS2 game was a fairly good 3rd person shooter as I recall, more like a 3rd person Nightfire/Agent Under Fire developed by a different team

I agree with that. I have very fond memories of Nightfire.