007 Legends - What Happened?

Man, can't believe Hank Scorpio, an actual supervillain, is a better employer than Bobby Kotick.

If I didn't know any better I'd say this was deliberate sabotage. "Alright, so... You're gonna adapt 6 movies into a 10 hour video game. The movies all have clashing themes so in one mission it'll be realistic and in the next you're gonna be in space wearing rubber suits and shooting lasers. Oh and you only have 2 years or you're fired, so I think it's time you rethink this whole 'sleeping' nonsense"

When a game that was a celebration of the 50 years of the James Bond franchise itself screws up the iconic and well known "Bond, James Bond" line, you knew that it would be terrible and something went wrong.

Activision: "You HAVE to get his out in time for the movie's release!" Also Activision: "Do NOT spoil the ending of the movie! In fact, don't even include that part yet!" As always, the higher-ups fuck themselves over and then blame the people they ordered to fuck it up.

It could have been interesting if they'd done episodic missions in the style of a Hitman game and allowed you to choose between Bonds, each of which would have different skills, abilities, and equipment. It would have been cool to be able to take Daniel Craig Bond into Goldfinger, or see how Roger Moore would fare against Silva.

At first, the idea seems kinda cool to have Bond see memories of the past as his prior film's... Then you think about the premise, and it quickly falls apart, since they didn't get creative with it, and had no budget for said creativity, it becomes the exact opposite of a "Legend".

Ah the holiday season. The deadline that most companies strive for but forget that the stuff they put out should actually be good.

I do find it funny that they may be making 007 "more sneaky" when in reality if you watch the movies Bond is constantly shit at his job as a spy, constantly killing people, being super conspicuious, etc. He's such a shit spy that his trademark catchphrase is literally SAYING HIS NAME to people.

I'd like to see an episode on Foodfight. Everyone talks about the production of that in like two lines and then moves to the thing itself but I want to know about the history.

Man, I've been waiting for this one for a LONG time! Glad to see 007 legends finally get an episode, and on Christmas no less!

The franchise was Bond, but the job seemed more Mission Impossible. When will publishers learn that rushed development only tarnishes the work? I hope the developers feel a quantum of solace from viewing this laser-focused examination. You're a legend, Matt!

It could be a neat idea if they went with the premise that 007/ James Bond is a call sign and all the actors that have played him are actually different agents using that name. That way you could do the wacky Cold War stuff without trying to shoehorn it into the modern canon. Make it like M or Moneypenny is reviewing old declassified case files or something.

So Activision's choices killed both their licensed game department and an entire studio? Guess that's what happens when you set out to make broken Bonds.

If they wanted to celebrate the 50 years of James bond. Instead of this mess, make a collection of their games.

I feel like this game could have been interesting if it was just the plot of Skyfall but with flashback sequences to prior films that somehow related to the present day story. Like him "dying" could have tied to You Only Live Twice, Severine's death linking to On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond having to deal with a mirror image of himself could tie into The Man With The Golden Gun, M and Bond being cut off from all the MI6 resources could tie into Licence To Kill and finally the idea of Silva being betrayed by his country could have reflected Bond's capture by North Korea in Die Another Day.

On Her Majesty’s is a great film. Totally different than the other Bond films, but wonderful.

I remember playing this game with my dad when I was a kid, we were both huge Bond fans, but even then I always felt like this game never existed.

I QA tested this game! It was my first and only job as a tester, we were a tiny team compared to black ops II. Sadly during my time there, a lead Eurocom programmer died and it really affected the morale and development. We were in Québec and they were in Europe which really complicated the whole process.

To this day I still haven't seen any Bond moves in full out of a smidge of mild indifference and general lack of time due to the absurd amount of movies that exist, but videos talking about their games like this one are super fascinating

007 Legends: "Do you expect me to sell?" Activision: "No, I expect you to die!" I sure miss good Bond games. Here's hoping Project 007 will be good.