Interviews
An Exclusive Interview With Bourne Producer, Emmanuel Valdez
May 14, 2008
A fourth Bourne film is in the works for a release in 2010 but PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 gamers will be able to step into the assassin’s shoes in the first game spinoff, The Bourne Conspiracy later this month. Matt Damon’s voice or likeness won’t appear in the Teen-rated title. But that won’t affect the pleasure you derive from beating another human being to death with a book. At least it… shouldn’t. We sat down with Emmanuel Valdez, chief creative officer behind the game and co-founder of High Moon Studios, to delve a little deeper into the Conspiracy.
Where does The Bourne Conspiracy fit into the Robert Ludlum library?
There were five books written by Robert Ludlum and then three movies starring Matt Damon. The Bourne Conspiracy doesn’t exist in this library. We’ve taken some of the key action elements from The Bourne Identity, the first film and the first book, and then created a new original backstory of what Jason Bourne remembered from when he was a Treadstone agent through flashback missions in the game. The game shows two sides to Jason Bourne—the hunted, the amnesiac who’s on the run, and the hunter, when he was the fully functional human weapon.
Did you dive into some of the book to go deeper than the film?
Sierra has optioned both the films and the books. We chose to go more the film angle because the bigger fan base right now knows the movies. We looked at all of the movies and this was the first time anyone’s ever developed a game based on this character. It was our goal to empower players to make them feel like they were Jason Bourne. We wanted to draw from some of the inspiration from the film.
There’s no Matt Damon, but did you work with anyone from the films?
We worked with Tony Gilroy, who wrote the three films, and he gave our designers a lot of insight into the contemporary version of Jason Bourne. He’s done a lot of legwork for us and looked at all of the books. He took a lot of the elements that he thought would make for a great action movie hero and even created some new takes on the character.
What are some examples of things Gilroy brought to the table?
Two things resonated—he designed the film versions to always have a target and an objective. Jason doesn’t do random. He has a purpose. We didn’t make an open-ended game for that reason. Jason doesn’t go around looking for objectives. We went with a narrative experience for the game. The other principle from the film is that Jason Bourne isn’t James Bond. He doesn’t have cool gadgets or drive cool cars. He’s very resourceful. He’s able to weaponize the environment around him. The world is your weapon. We wanted to make a game where Jason Bourne could be in any situation and any environment and you anything at his disposal, whether that’s the walls or the furniture in his room. He can transform a pen or a book into a lethal weapon. That’s seen through his hand-to-hand combat style.
The hand-to-hand fighting is a signature feature of the films, how did you approach the game’s combat?
If you watched the movies, his fighting has a very unique look and style. We brought in Jeff Imada, the fight choreographer from the movies, to work on the game. He worked on all of the hand-to-hand combat that you see in the game. He also directed the motion-capture sessions with the stunt team, a lot of those guys also worked on the Bourne movies. One of the biggest components of the hand-to-hand combat system is takedowns. Jason Bourne has the ability to take down people with these very visceral and crazy, over-the-top moves. He’s violent. He can take on two to three people at the same time and that’s all in the game.
How’s this game different from the typical crappy Hollywood licensed game?
You really have to play this game to understand it, which is why trial is such a huge part of our outreach. The amount of gameplay that we brought to a licensed game is unprecedented. The camera work, when you see the videos you wonder if that’s part of the gameplay, but when you play the game you realize it really is part of the gameplay. You understand the language of cinema so well that you can tolerate camera cuts and handheld effects and go right back to the player-controlled camera and not have it jarring. We put a lot of thought into how to bring Jason Bourne into a game. It’s not just your typical action game with a license slapped on it.
The Bourne Conspiracy, published by Sierra, hits shelves June 3 for PS3 and Xbox 360.
–John Gaudiosi
