Quantum of Solace's Garrett Young speaks

Garrett Young, producer on the upcoming Bond game Quantum of Solace, isn't someone short on words.

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While most producers feel duty bound not to give any opinions, insight or anything that can be spun around and thrown back in their face, Garrett Young doesn't work that way.

Here's our interview with Young on previous Bond games, Daniel Craig and what he thinks of a certain new rival in the spy videogame genre...


What lessons have you taken from EA bond games?
We've taken a fair number. But the biggest one I would say is don't try and do too much. It might sound a bit weird but don't try to do everything. A lot of people will tell you Bond is everything, right? Especially the old ones. Not so much Daniel Craig but he's got these gadgets and he's got this and he uses that and he flies and he's by land, by sea, by air... and if you try to do all of that in your game, you end up either taking four years to build your game or you end up doing none of it very good.

It's like the saying, jack of all trades, master of none. To make a great game, you don't try to do everything. Do your stuff that you do and do it really well and people will love the game. A game like Call of Duty 4, great game, but it's not... crazy new. Right? Bioshock had a completely new artistic style but the game at its core was still a first person shooter. It added the plasmids thing, of course, but fundamentally you're still... I'm here, I'm casting something at you, as far as the game goes. Halo isn't super innovative but it's really fun, you know? It's the same thing with Call of Duty 4.

So our focus is not trying to do everything. Not trying to do too much. And whether that's how someone at EA feels about their Bond games or how other teams feel about their games, I don't know. I know as a gamer I can feel a game, play a game, and feel "hmm, not very good."

There are other things too. You guys know, you're gamers, you know when a camera doesn't seem right, it seems wonky, you're behind geometry and you're constantly clipping through. You can look at games real quickly and say that doesn't feel very good, so you want to avoid those kind of things.

The other thing is, we're looking at how they do Bond Awareness. We're looking at that. Of course, we're looking at Goldeneye. Goldeneye is a great game. They blazed a great trail for us, not just for Bond games but also for first-person shooters on console. They blazed the trail for Halo, they blazed the trail for Call of Duty, blazed the trail for all these console first-person shooters because their game is so great. It's not just Bond games but all first-person shooters. That was the early standard.

The world has evolved, technology has evolved, multiplayer has evolved a great deal now that online is much bigger. It was just smooth. It didn't necessarily need to be a Bond game. The controls were very smooth, the graphics were great. For the time [laughs]. Couldn't go back and play it now. But it was a great standard at the time.

So you've got to learn, whether you're writing books or you're making movies or you're making videogames, you've got to learn from what gamers love and play them and understand what really works. Some games you go okay, well that's really cool for that genre of game, but it doesn't really fit for our genre. But you gotta be learning or else you won't make good stuff. Or you'll make stuff that people have already done 10 years ago and say oh yeah, nobody knows how to do this and you go, have you ever played any other games? [laughs]

Daniel Craig has been quoted in the past saying he has a strong dislike of violence in videogames. Did you discuss this with him?
Well, our game is a T-rated game. If you shoot any pedestrians or civilians, you lose... shoot a civilian, come over and steal their money, you know? [laughs] It's not Grand Theft Auto.

I didn't hear the quote but when I hear it from people when they talk about it, it feels more like they're talking about games that are kind of on the edge. The gratuitous gore, the gratuitous violence. I see that stuff and I don't like that stuff.

I had to turn my eyes when I saw Call of Duty: World at War and the whole knife thing. That's a little bit much for me. They're an M-rated game, they're going in that direction.

I think that's probably more what he was talking about. He knows in our game... he was asking us about the weapons. What weapons we have, how the weapons work, and he's played it of course. But I have not spoken to him directly about violence and things.

I do know the Bond producers are not big fans of ultra violence. Like in our game, though you are shooting people, you are not going to see blood spurting out of them. That's partially because we want to be a T-rated game, partially because... Bond is violent but not violent, you know? You will see him punching out guys and you will see him shooting guys but you won't see a chainsaw cutting a man in half.

Has Daniel Craig had any input on the game itself?
He's not on the design team, obviously, but he's a gamer and he can give us and has given us... it's hard because he's shooting movies and he has a fulltime job also, right? We've met with him once and we're going to meet with him again at the end of this month actually, we're probably going to spend a couple of days with him.

I think his input is going to be most valuable. Other than the fact we're get to photograph him and we're going to scan him and we get to use his voice in the game. Other than that kind of stuff, which is obvious, I think his input's going to be most valuable when it's gameplay feedback.

Because when we've been building the game for the last year and a half... you're looking at pieces on a string. It's not really a game yet. And now we're at a point where you can start to give gameplay feedback. About the events, about the AI, about moving through the environment. We'll get a lot of feedback on the script also. Not so much Daniel but the movie people themselves. I'm sure when we'll be meeting with them later this month, he'll be giving feedback on the script.

There's a lot of shooting...
...yeah, okay, there is. [laughs]

And there wasn't much shooting in Casino Royale. Have you had to tailor your game around the COD4 engine?
No, it's not so much that. The COD4 engine is just a great base for us to push the technology. COD4 gameplay is different than the engine. The engine is more about the technology and the pipeline that lets us build content and then get the content into the game.

There are a lot of COD4-style shootouts in the ballroom.
There are a lot of guys in the ballroom right now. Way too many guys. We actually had a build that had less guys in the ballroom, about half as many guys, but there were other bugs in the build and so I was like, well, we can't show this [laughs]. So we had to revert back.

Let me say a couple of things. First off, when take movie scenes and make gameplay into it, we have to say what's the gameplay mechanic we're going to put into this. So have a chase mechanic. Which is not the core game but it's part of what our game is, and so we took some elements from Casino Royale and put some chase gameplay into it. Which is fun, it's fun gameplay.

But really, what's core to our game is shooting in third person and in first person. That is a core part of our game. It is a game where you're going to run around and you're going to have a gun in your hand. Eighty to ninety percent of the game, you will have a gun in your hand. That is part of what our game is.

I will say though, we're still learning as a team about what is the right balance of shooting and balance of AI and balance of each event and we're still figuring that out. We get to play our game all the damn time right now. We're still kind of, testing the water and figuring out what is the right balance.

There are some people on our team who aren't COD people and they say, hey yeah, we need more shooting, more shooting, more shooting! And you sit down and go well, that's not the new James Bond. We need to think about this a little more so every bullet does matter so you're not just sitting there with a barrage. It's not Rambo. Rambo would get killed in our game. You're not going to succeed as Rambo in a James Bond game.

You showed an alternative way to play, which is more stealthy, but it seems one mistake means ten guards rushing in to attack you.
That's part of our tuning. Some areas we might punish you, some areas we might say okay, there's three guys here, you can sneak by them but if you kick off, all three guys are going to come attack you and be aware of you and come and get you. That is part of the tuning.

For any game development team, you've got to get the stuff in for the first phase. Early phase is pre-production prototype but this phase, everything is pretty much there, the game mechanic, the core, you have the levels, you have most of your assets in, then you do most of your tuning and doing your polishing and working out 'this feels like too many guys' or 'this doesn't have enough guys'.

From a stealth standpoint, we're not building Splinter Cell. It's not a pure stealth game. We have between six and 12 events on each level and we're still tuning if they're going to be combat or stealth areas.

So who is your targeted gamer? Is it the guy who wants to play a shooter or the guy who wants to play a James Bond game?
Interesting question. I don't know who the guy is that wants to play a James Bond game.

If I see Quantum of Solace, am I going to play those stages with a lot of guns? Or play as Bond who tries to think his way through it?
You will play a little bit of both. We're not going to be a complete puzzle game, we're not going to be a Splinter Cell game and by puzzle I mean like Half-Life, where you stack boxes on top of each other. That's not what is core to our game.

It's a first person shooter with third person cover combat. What Bond is, is a bonus. Bond is the wrapper around that and all that sense of immersion. Immersion is part of our core, immersion in the Bond world. But it's not going to be a crux for us. We're not going to say no, we can't do that, because we have to spend more time watching Bond sit and talk to Camille, Bond sit and talk to Vesper, Bond sit and play poker. That's not what our game is about.

At what point did you think 'this will be a really good game' where it all sort of come together?
Given that we're not done with the game yet, I'm still looking for some of those points [laughs].

I've been making games for 13 years now and sometimes there's an 'aha' moment. Another franchise I worked on for Microsoft was Forza Motorsport. There was definitely an 'aha' moment when we knew we were getting the Gran Turismo physics right, that feeling of a racing simulation. Then we were doing all this customisation stuff and we thought people weren't going to like it.

When Need For Speed Underground first came out, it struck such a chord with people that we were like... okay, so where's the art development and art design plans. The art team were like "you should cut that stuff" and we were like "no, this is going to be really great!" And then the game comes out and it sells a ton and we're like "yes, we told you, it's going to be really great!" [laughs]

Not all games have that obvious moment where you know, wow, this is going to be great. For us, over the course the time, the parts where I've seen it... we had a level end of December. We're building the game and building the game and it's a prototype and we can't play through it but there was a really cool moment at the end of this... what we call the first playable milestone.

There was a moment where you were jumping around a bit, there's some stealth, some hiding, some combat and you get into an elevator and the elevator broke and there was guys shooting at you, you took cover and you stayed alive. The elevator broke and they all ran away and you had to get out of the elevator, get up through the top of the elevator and climb out. We had that at the end of the level.

And it was the first thing that felt like James Bond in our game. You climbed out and just as you were climbing out, there was a scripted event and the elevator finally snapped and fell down and there was this flaming inferno. You were climbing out and the music was kicking in and you had this explosion and that was the first time we were like, wow, that feels right, that feels very Bond right there.

Did you look at the Bourne franchise or any other spy franchises?
The Bourne movies I think are really good. I think a lot of people maybe thought they were maybe better than the Bond movies until Casino Royale. The Bourne game... we did download the demo, we did look at it, like we do anything that's new and coming out. Turok we played and other things that are new, we played GTA although that's not really in our space.

But... yeah... not super impressed with the game. No offence to those guys at all. We're actually now partners. They're kind of merged in with Activision, so now they're in San Diego. I haven't met them yet. I don't know anything about them at all. I hope their game does well. It's always tough though when you make a game and you don't have the lead character from the movie.

OXM Staff