00Heaven
Here’s a thing. GoldenEye 007 is officially 22 years old. That makes me feel old as shit but it also means the youth of today, you know, the ones lapping up the likes of Fortnite and whatever else is hip, completely missed the best FPS ever made. But that’s likely to change in the next few years.
GoldenEye 25 is the answer to many of the original GoldenEye 007 fan’s prayers. Since remasters and remakes have been cropping up left, right and centre, fans have always been yearning for a GoldenEye remaster. False hope was given when GoldenEye: Rogue Agent surfaced a few generations back with it, unfortunately, sharing nothing of the original bar its name. GoldenEye 007 2010 (followed by Reloaded a year later) tempted fans but again fell short of living up to the majesty of the N64 masterpiece.
The only thing that’s come close to capturing the original is the GoldenEye Source mod built, as you’d guess, on Valve’s Source Engine. Focussing purely on multiplayer, GoldenEye Source is an accomplished project and one that I highly recommend you check out. But whilst multiplayer was arguably the standout for GoldenEye, the single-player campaign still holds fire in many a fan’s hearts. GoldenEye 25 is shaping up to stoke that fire.
As you’d guess from the drawn-out intro, GoldenEye 25 is a remaster of GoldenEye 007’s single-player campaign. It’s been in development for the last few years and is intended to be released on GoldenEye’s 25th anniversary. Penny. Dropped. But what makes this different to the others that have come before it? First and foremost – passion.
GoldenEye 25 is a project solely created by volunteers who’re passionate about GoldenEye. Soundtrack, modelling, level-design, well, everything, is being created by a small team of volunteers, completely unpaid. The game will also be released free upon its completion. With a project as such, built by passionate folk, you can be rest assured that the final product will be as near a perfect remaster as we can expect to see. It’s a project that is also driven by the community, with members giving their input on certain aspects of development. The combined forces of passionate developers and a passionate community have already conjured up something incredible.
The project is being built on the Unreal Engine but unlike the usual “look how great this game looks in the Unreal Engine sans any charm”, GoldenEye 25 is serious about retaining what made the original game so special. That said, and this may not sit well with purists, inspiration is being taken not only from the game but also the film. GoldenEye 25 then is more a frankengame which dips its toe into the ‘what if GoldenEye was remade with modern technology’ paddling pool. It’s not a full dive, though. Each deviation from the original material is put forward to the community who ultimately have the final say. Keeping the final game as close to the original is still the endgame here.
Development is fully underway with GoldenEye 25 with most levels currently being worked on but with each at a varying level of completion. A large number of in-game models have also been created and modelled including the likes of the AR33, KF7 Soviet and the Klobb! The development journey is a genuinely interesting one and I urge you to head over to Twitter to check out GoldenEye media feed (link below). The amount of detail going into this project is truly incredible! But if you’ve not got time to scour through their timeline, here’s a small collection of some of the work that has already gone into GoldenEye 25.
If GoldenEye 25 tickles your fancy, and why wouldn’t it, you can keep an eye on its progress over on Twitter: @007GoldenEye25 and YouTube.
