What kind of spy are you? Stealthy Jason Bourne, guns blazing and intense Jack Bauer, or smooth James Bond?
Spies are, by nature, a tricky bunch. It’s only years after that we may even have an inkling that certain people were even spies, as in the case of Ken Taylor. Taylor was a regular diplomat who turned spy in order to get the U.S. hostages out of Iran in 1981. Unfortunately, such real life stories of paper-pushing espionage aren’t as fascinating as our fictional spies. Thankfully we have two games coming this year to deliver our fix, Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction and Alpha Protocol from Obsidian Entertainment. Russ Pitts was able to speak to these two developers for issue 241 of The Escapist and get their opinions on what kind of spy their protagonist resembles.
“We always use ‘The Three J.B.s,'” says Obsidian’s Senior Producer, Ryan Rucinski. “There’s Jack Bauer, James Bond, Jason Bourne. Each have their strengths and weaknesses. Jason Bourne is stealth, kind of like ‘I’m going to beat you up really close and get the hell out of here.’ Jack Bauer: gun forward, amazing with the 9mm. And of course there’s the James Bond, who is more of a suave, sophisticated type of guy who uses more linguistics with the ladies as well as other people to kind of get through things.”
In Alpha Protocol, you will have the option to choose from moment-to-moment which spy’s toolset is most useful. Says Rucinski, “You decide what kind of spy you want to be.”
Richard Dansky doesn’t pigeonhole Splinter Cell: Conviction‘s hero Sam Fisher into any of those three spy archetypes, and even posits that the no-nonsense uber-violent trend of Jason Bourne and the recent James Bond films was begun by Fisher. Perhaps that’s why Dansky believes that if pitted against Bourne, Bauer or even Bond, Fisher would definitely come out on top. Read the rest of Why Spy? and let us know if you think he’s right, and if not, who you think could take down Sam Fisher.
