Coming off the again of a Gamescom the place Xbox principally centered on well-known titles that’ll be out fairly quickly, it appeared like we’d be ready fairly some time for an extra replace on a few of Xbox’s greater and extra mystery-shrouded upcoming video games. Once in a while we get just a little shock, nonetheless – and such was the case with Good Darkish, the place Xbox’s Matt Booty briefly deigned to speak in regards to the hotly-anticipated reboot throughout a PAX West panel.
Booty, who’s the pinnacle of the now-sprawling Xbox Recreation Studios portfolio of growth homes and video games, talked about how any reboot of the Good Darkish franchise must be dealt with “very fastidiously”, noting that properties similar to this “don’t at all times age nicely.” And, you understand, Booty is correct. However the subsequent factor he stated is curious – and for my cash, it’s unsuitable.
“What I feel is tremendous cool about Good Darkish, what’s tremendous cool about Joanna Darkish, is the tremendous agent fantasy, the spy, the form of Bourne Identification, James Bond form of factor there,” Booty defined.
“That’s at all times a cool meme individuals wanna lean into – however once more, we gotta ensure that comes ahead in the best manner, so I’m simply gonna stick with ‘very fastidiously’.”
Flawed might be unfair. I feel every thing that Booty says is correct… but it surely’s solely correct for round half of the unique Good Darkish. Or, to place it one other manner – Good Darkish is a spy sport, and it’s ostensibly a few feminine James Bond. However that’s each actually and figuratively solely a part of the story, and any reboot of the franchise must embrace the entire unique to channel what made it so beloved.
I’m speaking, after all, about Good Darkish being just a little bit bizarre. It’s not simply Bond or Bourne, and that’s even true from the very begin. The sport’s opening cutscene takes place on a futuristic flying transport zipping by means of a neon-lit futuristic metropolis straight out of Blade Runner. Your mission is to rescue a mysterious Physician within the clutches of an evil company – although whenever you uncover the physician, he’s not an individual in any respect, however quite a classy AI encased in a form of flying laptop computer. Good Darkish is full sci-fi.
It’s camp as hell, too. From the visits to Space 51, the place you rescue a wise-cracking ‘gray’-style alien referred to as Elvis – who later goes on to put on a stars and stripes waistcoat. Quickly, Good Darkish feels as a lot Halo because it does GoldenEye, with Agent Darkish discovering herself on hostile alien spaceships, in the end launching an assault on the hostile alien homeworld. Nothing is held again.
Don’t get me unsuitable – the spy stuff is a large a part of Good Darkish. I additionally suppose that the normal espionage-driven missions are the most effective within the sport. The opening trio of DataDyne HQ missions are glorious, as is defending your boss Carrington in an assault on his personal villa. Chicago stays my favourite, outlined by a extremely exploitable degree design, a thick rain-soaked environment with unforgettable music, and Jo skulking round in a Deckard cosplay trench coat.
However nonetheless all of that is solely a part of a wider sport, and I genuinely attribute a lot of what makes Good Darkish an incredible sport – and a greater sport than GoldenEye, don’t trouble commenting in any other case – is its breadth. It makes use of the spy and espionage stuff as a springboard right into a wider, madder story – and in doing so elevates itself past being only a Bond clone with a unique lead. On the time, I think about this was the purpose – Uncommon doubtless needed to each evoke and differentiate their new hero from Bond and their work on GoldenEye – and the full-fat sci-fi setting and extra-terrestrial shenanigans allowed it to do exactly that.
This isn’t the be-all, end-all, clearly. Extra essential to me is that this Good Darkish reboot isn’t just a few Tomb Raider-esque aggregation of at the moment widespread developments, however that it examines the construction of the unique sport (particularly its open-ended however mangeably-sized, multi-objective missions) and finds a strategy to efficiently adapt that into trendy sport design. The closest latest touchstone is IO Interactive’s glorious Hitman reboot collection, clearly – and that studio now finds itself engaged on Bond – so it appears Joanna and James’ futures stay intertwined.
What we’ve seen to this point of the brand new Good Darkish is attention-grabbing. The trailer, although CG and quick, lays out a transparent form of world state. The planet is ravaged by horrible climate and pure disasters, and humanity now cries out for assist from the very mega-corporations that most likely brought on the issues within the first place. We see hints of drone surveillance, we catch a glimpse of a laptop computer gun (itself consultant of PD’s good weapon alt-fire modes), and there’s speak of secrets and techniques as a digital camera zips by means of a clearly high secret laboratory. Thus far, so good.
All this might simply be a near-future sci-fi story, although, and stay comparatively grounded. I can simply see a model of this sport that performs this comparatively straight, as a darkish cautionary sci-fi story in regards to the mixture of the continuing local weather apocalypse slow-burn and the unchecked energy of firms, satirically bankrolled by bloody Microsoft. We’ll uncover one thing like, shock-horror, the corpos actively sped-up and instigated disasters to develop their sphere of affect, and all that. I actually hope it isn’t simply that, although.
Whereas it wouldn’t be as a lot of a shock as within the unique sport, the place the alien affect actually comes out of left-field, I actually do hope these firms are mining their local weather change answer know-how from past earth, or are even hatching secret offers with nefarious aliens behind-the-scenes. That is the schlock I need to see. It’s a core a part of what Good Darkish is to me. It was largely lacking from Zero, owing to it being a prequel, and it was truthfully considered one of my bigger issues with that sport’s story.
So, sure. You’re proper, Matt Booty – one of many cool issues about Joanna Darkish is the super-spy fantasy of all of it, and about her as a solution to 007. However that’s solely a part of Good Darkish’s attraction – and a number of the campier components, whereas maybe not as horny on paper right this moment as within the late ninet
ies, are a significant piece of the collection’ id. I hope they continue to be within the reboot.