GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links.

The World is Not Enough Preview

The world's sexiest, craftiest, most debonair spy is back not only on the movie screen but also on the video game screen. The World is Not Enough follows the recent trend of making James Bond games that closely follow the plotlines of the movies they're named after.

Comments

The world's sexiest, craftiest, most debonair spy is back not only on the movie screen but also on the video game screen. The World is Not Enough follows the recent trend of making James Bond games that closely follow the plotlines of the movies they're named after. The third official Bond game, TWINE hopes to overcome the problems that plagued the last game and return to the roots of the Bond video game heritage with a style similar to GoldenEye.

While The World is Not Enough is the second Bond game to be published by Electronic Arts, it's the first game to return to GoldenEye's first-person-shooter formula. Joel Wade, the game's producer explains why the game is a first-person shooter: "In The World is Not Enough, we thought it best to take the first-person perspective route since it does a better job of truly immersing the player into the game and making the experience that much more intense." As such, TWINE, not Tomorrow Never Dies, is more the unofficial sequel to Rare's GoldenEye, the first James Bond game, as TWINE feels very much like an improved version of GoldenEye. But the TWINE team is working very hard to take the best elements from other first-person shooters while maintaining an element of uniqueness. Wade says, "First-person shooters are a huge and exciting gaming category, and we strive to capture the best features from all of them. We're working very hard to tune the core game play mechanics just right and to make them as fun as possible for the PlayStation gamer."

The latest James Bond experience may be the most immersive yet. "When people play the game, I want them to feel like they are James Bond 007 - seeing through his eyes, not those of a hovering hairdresser. The ability to lean around corners, hide behind objects, and see bullets flying past are more realistic from a first-person perspective, and we believe it will be a better, more enjoyable game because of it," says Wade.Not only will you have to be handy with weapons and spy gadgets, but you'll also have to be ultra-stealthy too. Mission objectives are only the start of the TWINE experience. "Similar to its counterparts, The World Is Not Enough on the PlayStation will have large doses of both action and spylike objectives. This breakdown will be defined by how the missions relate to the movie plot. Each of the levels will contain an array of action-packed missions and objectives. For instance, our City of Walkways level, which is extremely action-oriented, requires the player - as Bond - to protect Christmas Jones and Zukovsky from attacking terrorists, so the mission has a large amount of combat, culminating in the destruction of several enemy helicopters with a special Q-Lab rocket launcher. Other missions require a great deal of stealth and strategy, with Bond avoiding security forces while collecting evidence or rescuing hostages. We wanted to make sure we incorporated everything that makes James Bond such a rich character- the exotic locations, the sexy Bond girls, and his ability to use wit to successfully make his way out of tricky situations." TWINE expands on the task-based FPS shooter by loading the game with tons of new mission objectives, some of which can even change or be updated as you play the level.

When stealth can't save you, you'll have your weapons to fall back on. TWINE will feature more than 25 different weapons and gadgets. You'll be able to customize your weapon ring to help bring up the weapons you're more comfortable with, and, as in GoldenEye, you will be able to change weapons and gadgets at the pause screen. As far as which weapons the game will feature, Wade explains, "Where would Bond be without the Q-Labs? We're currently planning over 25 different weapons and gadgets for the game, to give the player the fullest game experience possible. A few examples of our gadgets are night-vision goggles, X-ray glasses, a micro-camera, and the grappling-hook watch, which was featured prominently in the film. Of course, Bond also has a full arsenal of weapons for dealing with any kind of unpleasantness - assault weapons, sniper rifles, shotguns, satchel charges, and even a cell-phone stunner, when a more stealthy, nonlethal approach is required."

Being EA's second PlayStation first-person shooter, TWINE looks remarkably good. The levels in TWINE are actually larger than those in Tomorrow Never Dies and GoldenEye, giving you plenty of room to accomplish your objectives. Each of the enemy characters are motion-captured, with more than 30 different captured motions and reactions per character. Just like GoldenEye, TWINE will feature localized hits, and enemy characters will react to where you've shot them. Shoot a character in the leg, and he'll hop about and stumble; shoot him in the arm, and he'll grab it painfully. Hit his gun straight on, and you'll force him to drop it. This system makes the shooting elements of TWINE very realistic, and it rewards sharpshooting players. Still, with all this graphical goodness Wade expects the game to suffer from very little pop-up and almost no slowdown. "We're committed to delivering a very fast game with tons of high-speed action. Black Ops has done a fantastic job of completely rewriting their rendering engine, and the results are already very impressive. They've been able to achieve huge draw distances - which lets us create large, open spaces and interiors - without sacrificing frame rate or texture quality. We've also already implemented frame-rate counters that allow the level designers to see exactly how far they can push the system without slowing down gameplay."

Electronic Arts knows that fans of the Bond gaming experience weren't exactly thrilled with EA's first offering of the license, Tomorrow Never Dies. With TWINE, the company is striving to make an exciting, groundbreaking game that truly reflects the persona of the world's craftiest secret agent. Wade explained that Tomorrow Never Dies was a cobranded game, published by both EA and MGM. And while EA liked having the bond license, the cobranded aspect created several difficulties between both parties, and the game ultimately suffered. He explained that there were some elements of Tomorrow Never Dies that EA wasn't happy with but wasn't able to change because of the cobranding. Because of this, EA has completely licensed Bond from MGM, and TWINE is not a cobranded title, giving Wade and his team the final say on their product.

Creating one game on several platforms usually leads to little or no variation between consoles. Still, it's obvious that the versions will be different between consoles. "We've worked hard with MGM and Danjaq to keep a consistency among the different versions, especially when it comes to essential personal characteristics that make up the larger-than-life world of Bond. We also wanted to make sure that we capture all of the best action scenes from the film. In the end, however, all important decisions are driven by the desire to push the most performance from each given hardware platform. For example, in the case of the PlayStation, we've made the most of the vast amount of storage capacity on the CD, incorporating huge amounts of texture data and lots of actual footage from The World Is Not Enough to help tie the missions to the story. Overall, we're pretty excited and confident that the game will deliver the level of quality and gameplay that PlayStation gamers expect and deserve."

Got a news tip or want to contact us directly? Email news@gamespot.com

Join the conversation
There are no comments about this story