James Bond: Blood Stone Q&A Feature

With the continuing uncertainty surrounding MGM Bond fans face an uncertain future.  Thankfully Activision and Bizarre Creations have come to the rescue with the impending release of James Bond: Blood Stone.

TVG recently attended a lavish event to unveil the title, where we met up with the Bond girl Joss Stone and more importantly Neil Thompson and Adam Dickinson from the Liverpudlian developer.  Read on to discover their thoughts on working with the license, Joss Stone and much more.


TVG: Given Bizarre’s heritage this seems to make sense, there’s the cars, and your experience on The Club must lend itself to it; however the fact it’s a big movie license is a bit of a change...

Neil Thompson: There was a couple of licenses we worked on before, we did Treasure Planet in terms of licensed products, but as you say the heritage is racing and action, so it’s a perfect match.

How’s that working out?  Has it changed the way you look at developing the game?

Primarily it’s the license, because it’s Bond and everybody knows Bond and there are expectations for what that would be.  Obviously everybody loves James Bond, I don’t think there’s a man alive who wouldn’t want to be Bond, so we need to make it as cinematic an experience as we possibly can because I think there’s an appreciation from the audience for a Bond title that may not be the same as perhaps Call of Duty or something.  I think it appeals to a wider audience with movie-goers and book-readers as well, and that’s the challenge: creating something for all those people and that’s a tough one.

Obviously the game was rumoured a little while back; I understand that it’s coming later this year. Can you say how long it’s been in development for?

A couple of years now.  I think we wanted to do justice to the title, it was always anticipated to be launched this year.  It’s gone well.

It must be great having the license but also the freedom because it’s not a direct movie adaptation?

That’s the great freedom of doing an original title rather than a tie-in.  It depends on how you look at it... if there had been a movie coming out around November time then that would have raised the profile of Bond.  But then again with the issue we have now without it, and potentially without it for a couple of years, then if you want your hit of Bond then there’s only one place to get it and that’s why Blood Stone is here.

The title that seems to have worked out well: Blood Stone, Joss Stone, blood diamonds - was that a coincidence?

That wasn’t intentional.  You know what, quite honestly that’s the first time anybody’s actually pointed that out.

It seems like genius but now you’re telling me it’s just chance?

Well I’m now going to say it was all my idea.

Adam Dickinson: We actually named it before we knew Joss was involved.

Brilliant, good times, that’s going to work well with the marketing process...

She’s the perfect Bond girl. She’s gorgeous and she can sing, we got a great song from her.

It was a great opportunity this morning, I can tick the box of ‘spoke to Joss Stone’...

I don’t know whether anybody’s mentioned it but the dress she wore this morning is the one she wears in the game.

Oh really, ok you might know something about this: with the diamonds, were they real or rented?

I doubt it, but I have no idea.

With Bizarre, there’s loads of projects going on: Blur’s just finished and there’s Blood Stone - well that’s two - is it closely knitted dev teams working on the projects?

Yes, there are two. There’s an action team and a racing team.  Obviously there’s some cross pollination, certainly a lot of the art department worked on both titles but the core gameplay teams stick to each franchise.  Certainly the lessons you learn with one transfer over to the other.  It’s been quite a busy time launching two titles within the space of six months.

It’s really interesting to see you take on the Bond license. Obviously you’re an Activision studio, do you see that being more so the case in the future?

What with more Bond titles?

Yeah, I’m not looking for you to bite on a news hook...  I guess, would you see this as a one-off or are you happy to work on the Bond franchise?

I don’t know the full strategy behind it, we’d certainly love to do another one as I think this has been a very good experience and we’ve had great fun working on it.  It’s one of those licenses that comes along and you really can’t say no, it’s Bond and for a British developer to do a Bond game that’s a hugely satisfying experience.  So we’d love to do another one.

Well a British developer got it right the last time...

Fingers crossed, I still think Brits make the best games.  The UK industry is smaller then it once was and less dominant from a world perspective but we still have great creative people here.  It’s important that we just keep developing great games.

Need to get those tax credits in...

Absolutely.

The FocusAim system has similarities to things like The Bourne Conspiracy and Splinter Cell: Conviction.  I understand there’s subtle differences, but did you take a look at any of these when coming up with the concept?

I think it’s use is primarily to encourage people to play the game with a certain style, because you’re being rewarded for hand-to-hand combat.  You can play the game in a stealthy manner or you can play it in an action orientated manner, but the more satisfying way to play is the Daniel Craig way, which is to take people down in a gritty, contemporary, urban manner.  You’re rewarded with that in the FocusAim, so it’s a device really to encourage a certain type of game.

When I was watching the demonstration I was thinking about the concept of when Bond is talking to the Bond girl, would you ever think about adding dialogue choices?

I guess you could but would that keep with the cinematic nature? Because it has to be a linear narrative to be that cinematic take on the game.  So if you wade into those RPG elements I think you lose the film-esque nature of the product.  I’m not saying you couldn’t do that, maybe that’s something for the future, but right now what I think we’re trying to present is a very cinematic Bond title.

So the demo showcased Grecko and he has a team of suicidal terrorists...

Kind of, what you saw today was the section before the credits role, so like in any good Bond film there’s a section and then the title song and we’re into the film properly.  The premise of what we saw this morning is where Grecko has a bunch of explosives and he’s transferred them from his yacht to the Acropolis where there’s a G10 summit going on with lots of world leaders and he wants to blow that up.  Bond’s mission is to stop him at any cost, so a bit of run and gun, a bit of a boat chase, a bit of Aston Martin action.  And that’s just the bit before the game starts.

What is the split between action and racing?

About 70/30, the racing sequences are obviously much shorter but they’re extremely intense.  They’re not just racing, there’s a sequence in Istanbul which is a race chase through the city but there’s also stuff that involves more destructive elements with things collapsing all around you.

It looks so cinematic that it’s difficult to say whether the set pieces are scripted or dynamic...

It’s a little bit of both, within the boat chase there’s dynamic destruction as you play such as the bridges.  The ending is scripted in terms of the explosion but what we were trying to get was the seamless integration between the two.  So when you shoot the gas canister at the end it goes straight to the cinematic, which is obviously scripted but it’s all in-game so it’s taking place within the world but with a satisfyingly seamless integration rather than an obvious cut-scene.  It becomes part of the experience so you don’t really notice that you’re now viewing, you’re still kind of playing.

In terms of that cinematic experience and in terms of length and pacing, are you stretching to 12-15 hours or keeping it tighter and shorter?

Definitely tighter and shorter; longer than a movie but not 12 hours.  You want people to play this and understand that they’re going to reach the end within a reasonable amount of time

TVG would like to thank Neil Thompson, Adam Dickinson and all the folks at Activision.  Look out for more on James Bond: Blood Stone soon.