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In the gilded halls of video game history, few first-person shooters are as revered as 1997's GoldenEye 007 (sometimes just referred to as GoldenEye N64, for the console on which it debuted). Despite the legions of lackluster film-to-game adaptations that would follow it, the game was a milestone in both FPS and multiplayer gamemaking, and nearly 30 years after its debut, still has an active community of players. So it's kind of hysterical to think about the fact that one of the major reasons the game got made was to put the likeness of Pierce Brosnan's James Bond in a video game.

Especially since it was the kind of game in which you don't see the main character.

This was part of the discussion at the Goldeneye 007: Meet the Devs Panel at EGX 2022, which featured OG GoldenEye developers Martin Hollis and Brett Jones. During the panel, Hollis and Jones reminded an audience of fans that GoldenEye really was conceived as part of the marketing for the 1995 Bond film of the same name, and because of that, they had to adhere to some strict rules.

"I was kind of worried in the beginning," said Hollis, "Because we were making a first person shooter, and [the producers] paid all this money for Pierce Brosnan's likeness. It wasn't going to be on screen, essentially, wasn't going to be on screen at all. That was the initial plan, because you never see the main character. That's how it works."

So what did the devs do? Well, even though modern cutscenes were still in their infancy at this point in gaming history, the team was able to work in some basic animations to get the fifth James Bond's face on screen.

"Isn't that one of the reasons we had the fly-in to begin with," Jones asks, referring to an in-game camera movement, "So you can see [which character] you're going into?" 

"That's one of the major reasons," Hollis answered, "we added the thing where the camera flies into the back of his head. But you only get to see the back of it. To [see Bond's face], you had to have the cameras fly around."

Beyond flying cameras, Hollis says that it was Jones who was responsible for simple, non-player-controlled sequences that featured Bond's face.

"You did the animations," he mentions to his co-deveeloper, "Like, he straightens his tie on the train. We were trying to make the most of God knows how much money they they paid for that."

It's funny - for a typical action movie role, an actor could get pretty upset that the game featuring their likeness doesn't see them doing bigger stunts. But I guess when you play James Bond, straightening a tie is cinematic enough.

You don't need to beat the game to prepare for the next one—here are all the major new and upcoming games coming our way.