Eurocom talks turning GoldenEye into Call of Duty

GoldenEye 007: Reloaded is out in the US today, and in Europe on 4th November. A careful (for legal reasons) homage to Rare's classic GoldenEye, it's a colourful FPS with a drastically enhanced story mode, a hefty competitive multiplayer suite (including four-way splitscreen) and all-new offline "score attack" modes. We liked the game's style when we previewed it; here's Eurocom project manager and writer Robert Matthews to fill in the gaps.

How do you pay tribute to a game as cherished as GoldenEye without knocking out a clone?

At the start when we developed the original Wii title the approach that we took was reimagining the original film story. It wasn't about remaking the original game. We thought we'd take the story, update it for the current day, there are elements from the original game that you'll see touched upon - like four player splitscreen, and some other little things in there that fans will pick up on - but essentially the process that we took was to update the story - so obviously we have the new cast, Daniel Craig as Bond. Some of the locations are the same, such as the dam at the start - but then we have new locations throughout as well. Things like Zucovsky's club, and the solar park at the end of the story.

Were there any particular original GoldenEye features you didn't think you could keep, or any new ideas you left out because they'd have changed the game too much?

There was a fine line. I think the original game is great, everybody back in Eurocom loves it, but things move on and gamers understand a different language today. They're more about Call of Duty and Battlefield. The presentation that you experience in games like that - that's kind of what they expect in other games as well. So that's the template we looked at, we took bits of that and fed it back into the Bond world so that people who like those kinds of games will find something in GoldenEye that they can relate to. But also there's something a bit different, because you've got the flavour of Bond in there as well.

Can you enlarge on what you mean by "presentation"?

It's very much that first person, you're-in-the-action cinematic feel. Throwing you right into crazy situations, that's kind of what people take to now, and that's kind of the way we've gone with it. I mean obviously the original was first person, but we've ramped up the spectacle, tried to get close to what you'd experience in a Bond film, only you're experiencing it in an active role and at first hand.

Does that kind of presentation have a shelf life?

I think gamers tastes are always evolving, there's always something new to look forward to and experience. Who knows in the future, possibly, but that creates opportunities for other people. I think for now with the success of games like COD and Battlefield, the appetite just seems to be growing.

Is there anything new here for Xbox 360 in particular?

We have the MI6 ops mode, which is a single player game mode which has a social aspect to it as well. You're setting high scores, sending them to the leaderboards. You can go in, choose a game type from stealth to objective to all-out gun-fighting, tweak the settings - like the number of enemies you have to kill, how aggressive they are. I think there are some fun options such as the Golden gun, paintball - there's about a dozen variables you can tweak.