EA Announces "GoldenEye: Rogue Agent"
EA Games announced today what up until now EA and Bond fans have called “GoldenEye 2”. GoldenEye: Rogue Agent will not be a sequel to the N64 1997 hit game GoldenEye, nor will it feature 007 as its main character. Instead, the first-person shooter will feature a dismissed double-O agent who takes on a series of memorable James Bond villains from the past. The game is due for release November 1, 2004.
The following press release comes from EA Games.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., May 5, 2004 – Why save the world when you can rule it? Going where no previous James Bond game has dared to tread, the upcoming GoldenEye: Rogue Agent first-person shooter from Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) breaks all the rules by transporting players to the dark side of the Bond universe to experience life as a high-rolling, cold-hearted villain. The highly anticipated game is scheduled to ship this fall on the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system, the Xbox video game system from Microsoft, and the Nintendo GameCube under the EA GAMES brand.
As an aspiring 00 agent dismissed from MI6 for reckless brutality, the player is hired as an enforcer by Auric Goldfinger, the wealthy super-villain with a lust for all things gold. Goldfinger is locked in a ruthless war against his archenemy, the brilliant scientist Dr. No. The prize is control of the world’s greatest criminal organization. A brutal encounter with Dr. No costs the player an eye, but Goldfinger’s technicians replace it with a gold-hued, synthetic eye, earning the player the name ‘GoldenEye’. Players have the ability to customize and upgrade their villain persona and wreak havoc as they make their unrelenting rise through the ranks.
With a radical twist to the Bond franchise that makes the player’s goal to rule the world rather than save it, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is the ultimate thrill ride through the 007 underworld. Players will cross paths with such legendary allies and enemies as Oddjob, Scaramanga, Xenia Onatopp, and, of course, Pussy Galore on globe-spanning missions of vengeance and demolition. Players will travel to famous and original Bond locations from the mountains of Switzerland to the streets of Hong Kong and from Fort Knox to Dr. No’s Crab Key lair in the Caribbean. Enemies will react intelligently in combat situations and use the environment to their advantage for intense and unpredictable shootouts.
GoldenEye: Rogue Agent seamlessly integrates single-player, multiplayer split-screen, and online gameplay for the PlayStation 2 console* across all game modes. Featured modes include story-driven campaign missions, deathmatch style simulator trials, and objective-based war games. Officially licensed by MGM Interactive, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is being developed by EA’s Los Angeles studio. This game has not yet been rated by the ESRB.
*PlayStation 2 online play requires Internet connection, Network Adaptor and Memory Card for the PlayStation 2.
Key Features:
- Build your own personalized villain, equipped with a customizable synthetic eye and physical attributes.
- E.V.I.L. AI engine motivates enemies to react intelligently to your actions and their surroundings to make every shootout more believable, intense, and unpredictable.
- GoldenEye: Rogue Agent integrates single-player, multiplayer split-screen, and online gameplay for the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system across all game modes.
- Featured game modes include story-based campaign missions, deathmatch style simulator trials, and objective-based team war games.
- Fight with and against legendary villains and Bond girls such as Oddjob, Dr. No, Goldfinger, Pussy Galore, and Xenia Onatopp.
- Travel to famous and original Bond locations from the mountains of Switzerland to the streets Hong Kong and from Fort Knox to Dr. No’s Crab Key lair in the Caribbean.
- Production design by Academy Award winning Sir Ken Adam, visionary creator for the look of the Bond film universe.
- Character models from Rene Morel (Final Fantasy film) and wardrobe designed by Kym Barrett (Matrix films, Titan A.E.)
While For Your Eyes Only occupied the time between 
In an ironic turn of events, Smythe’s pet octopus plays a central role in choosing the fate for Smythe and when Bond returns later, he finds the man dead. The case is closed with a conclusion of ‘found drowned.’
With MGM Vice Chairman Chris McGurk saying that there will be a decision as to who will be James Bond “in the next few months” (
Seeing as Kingdom of Heaven (2005) is currently being filmed… there are two scenarios. If Elizabethtown is filmed in late 2004 / early 2005 and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 is filmed in late 2005, then he probably won’t have time to fit Bond 21 (2005) in. But if Elizabethtown‘s filming doesn’t conflict with Bond 21’s filming and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 is set for late 2006 instead of early 2006 (being filmed in early 2006), then he will indeed have time for Bond 21.
Pierce Brosnan, who has been waging somewhat of a PR war with James Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli over his future as 007, has dramatically tempered his rhetoric in his latest television appearances promoting his new film, Laws of Attraction. While print interviews still contain Pierce’s oft-quoted statements that “The producers are in a state of paralysis,” and “They don’t know what to do,” Pierce all but avoided discussing James Bond in two recent high-profile T.V. appearances on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (April 29) and The Tavis Smiley Show (April 30).
Everything or Nothing is easily the best game EA has created with the 007 license. The 3rd person point of view provides a refreshingly different vantage point. The levels are longer and more difficult than in EA’s previous outings. The enemy AI improved dramatically from Nightfire. All of this combined with excellent scans of the actors, and the use of their actual voices makes Everything or Nothing one the greatest James Bond games ever.
M ships our 007, equipped for the first time, a gadget laden Porsche Cayenne Turbo SUV, in search of 003. James Bond finds 003’s hideout. While searching through, the telephone rings, with geologist. Serena St. Germaine (Shannon Elizabeth) calling to meet with 003. Bond and Serena make their escape out of the city, to begin investigating Diavolo’s platinum mines.
Agent Starling is captured and whisked away to the crematorium. Bond blasts out and into the graveyard.
Bond penetrates the hotel where the drivers are staying, and replaces one of the drivers. Bond finishes as usual, in 1st.
standing at a control panel ready to fire nuclear missiles with additional nanobot warheads. Bond destroys the controls, stopping the missiles from firing. Nadanova and Diavolo have begun their escape through the escape shaft in a Harrier Hover Jet. The Hover Jet is destroyed but Diavolo still manages to get away.
(This review contains minor spoilers)
According to Pearson, after he finished his biography of Fleming, he received a strange letter from an elderly woman — an acquaintance of Fleming’s from Switzerland — telling him that James Bond is, in fact, a real person. As evidence she includes a photograph of Fleming with an intense-looking, athletic young man who she claims is 007 himself. Unfortunately, the woman dies before Pearson can interview her. Intrigued, Pearson does some research and discovers the name of James Bond on the Eton registry and in the ranks of the Royal Navy. Could the letter be right? Confirmation of sorts then comes from a shadowy government official, who warns Pearson to stop his investigation immediately. When the author doesn’t, another branch of the British government requests an audience — the British Secret Service!
What follows is a terrific narrative that cuts back and forth between Pearson’s adventures interviewing the sometimes uncooperative James Bond in Bermuda (in which Bond’s mysterious female companion is revealed to be none other than Honeychild Rider) and Pearson’s own retelling of Bond’s life story. Many of the events Pearson chronicles in this 317-page book (one page away from tieing Goldfinger, as the longest Bond novel) read like James Bond short stories — and good ones at that! For Bond fans who have longed to hear tales of Bond’s school days, early missions and his wartime adventures, you have it all here. Some of the stories have a bite that rivals Fleming. Bond’s mission to Stockholm to kill a former colleague is quite shocking, both in the events and the clean, clipped economy of the writing. Having mined movie ideas from many of the continuation novels by other authors, Eon Productions might be well advised to get their hands on Pearson. A villain who keeps his lair in an abandon zoo in Budapest? Not bad. 
Character-wise, Pearson presents a James Bond shaped by tragedy, starting with the death of his parents in the oft-mentioned climbing accident (the surprising details revealed here) and continuing on with several chapter-ending shockers. Pearson gets to the roots of Bond’s darkness, revealing a man who is subtly turned into a hired killer by a series of dubious mentors, ending with M. He even explains how Bond got his famous scar (I won’t spoil it, but suffice it to say, James Bond’s face scar is a visible representation of a permanent scar within). 
Still, the “conspiracy” approach to the novels origins puts an interesting spin on things, and it’s amusing how Pearson explains that Moonraker was a pure work of fiction, concocted by Fleming and Bond, to further confuse and frustrate the Russians. Also clever is how Pearson reveals that the reason James Bond is specifically targeted in From Russia With Love is to “out” the fictional character to the world. Ultimately, the Russians give up. Outing James Bond would only confirm their own many failings, so on this one point, the Russians and the British reach a détente. The real James Bond must remain top secret.
Perhaps to help the masquerade as a nonfiction novel, Glidrose choose to publish James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007 not under the traditional Jonathan Cape banner but through Sidgwick & Jackson. The U.K. dust jacket is notable in that it is the only original novel to succeed in using Eon’s 007 logo on its first edition (Eon would object to the use of the 007 logo on the U.K. paperback edition of John Gardner’s License Renewed, forcing a redesign). 
How much do the short stories by Ian Fleming actually let you in on? Are they on par, or even better than some of the James Bond novels? Is is the smaller adventures that make the difference?
The somewhat simple plot works effectively enough, allowing the reader to see Bond in action while ‘in the field.’
Judy Havelock is an intriguing heroine because her very purpose in the story–to get revenge. Her relationship with Bond, which is on a professional backdrop because of the reason they are both together is an interesting one. They both know the killing of Von Hammerstein will eventually occur, but Bond immediately gives her the line: ‘Don’t be a silly bitch. Put that damned thing down. This is man’s work.’ How the story finally concludes makes it all the more interesting for the reader.
The Governor tells of how two people he once knew got married and the nightmare that followed, involving affairs, a husband made into the laughing stock of a community, his financial revenge on his wife and their ultimate divorce.
Granted the location jumping from Italy and Albania is noticeable but it doesn’t detract much from the overall ‘Fleming sweep.’
A fight almost breaks out between the exasperrated 007 and the drunken Krest, but the latter wisely chooses to go to sleep and everyone else eventually does the same.
According to the official