Interviews | James Bond 007 Quantum of Solace

Das Interview: Quantum of Solace Producer Stuart Roch

November 10, 2008

Most movie critics pissed on the selection of Daniel Craig before he debuted as the new James Bond. Now console jockeys get a chance to do the same thing to the video game version of Craig with the launch of James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace from Activision. Unlike other first-person shooters on the market, Quantum of Solace has two hurdles to overcome, a track record of sub-par Bond games and the same stigma any licensed game has to shoulder.

Craig silenced all the doubters with a performance that brought a new level of violent reality to what had become almost a fantasy role (Pierce Brosnan couldn’t pull off parkour much less choke a terrorist to death in a stairwell). But the new Bond can’t do any of the heavy lifting when it comes to silencing the video game critics. While Craig threw in a few tips regarding dialogue and gameplay, the guys at Treyarch and Activision have to bring the 007 gaming franchise back from licensed game hell. I caught up with Stuart Roch, executive producer of Quantum of Solace at Activision, to talk about the new title, Daniel Craig’s Guitar Hero habit and his plans to turn the franchise around.

Das Gamer: Did the development team at Treyarch collaborate the crew making the new film or was the game a solo production?
Stuart Roch: So often you work on one of these games and it almost feels like a lunchbox deal to the filmmakers, but I’ve found that whether it’s Daniel Craig or whether it’s Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, the producers, they’ve been really open to working on a video game and really interested in it. For me this has been one of the better licensed properties I’ve ever worked on in terms of access and Hollywood’s participation in the game.

Even you qualified the game as “licensed.” It’s almost a synonym for “fail” at this point. Why do so many Hollywood licensed games turn out to be crap?
Stuart Roch: Without going into specifics towards those other ones, because again, this is one of the good cases; I just find that, again sometimes you work with a licensor, and they’re either busy making their film, or they’re not gamers, or you can run into any number of different circumstances where it’s just a little difficult getting the things you need to really make a faithful adaptation of the franchise. And in this case, I think that the people we’re working with, they’re gamers. And they understand the medium. And they’re just keenly interested in making a great video game. For this relationship with Danjaq, the makers of the Bond films, we’ve kind of found that they really just have one key goal in mind, and that’s to make sure that everything has a high quality. As long as we can focus on making this a great game and a good compliment to their film franchise, then it works out pretty good for all parties.

How often did the game team go to the set and what was the working relationship like?
Stuart Roch: It was really great. I think that when they’re shooting their films, they’re obviously really busy doing their own thing. I can imagine it’s a little bit of a hassle to have the video game guys come by and want to do cyber scanning or want to do digital photography or what have you. We’ve been out to Pinewood Studios on three occasions, and a number of different other locations to gather assets from the film, and on all cases they were just really welcoming us into their world to make sure that we had everything we needed to make a great game.

How did you find out that Daniel Craig was actually a gamer?
Stuart Roch: I did hear from one of the Treyarch guys that he was playing Guitar Hero on his breaks between the film shoots, so that was kind of our first tip that we were dealing with somebody who knew games.

Did Craig’s gaming knowledge bring anything to the table for the game? Did he ever throw you any input?
Stuart Roch: Since he’s a gamer, it’s not like we would go in and sort of pull the wool over his eyes about whether it’s a good game or a bad game. He knows quality. And so it’s been really good, because he was really busy with shooting both of the films and he made the time to look at the game and offered us tips. When we did voiceover recording, he had some really great insight into how to rework a line to make sure it was the best it could possibly be. He was really involved along the way.

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