Opinion: Is the Goldeneye Remaster still aiming straight for your heart?

The sad fact is, I simply can not tell you when the remake of the legendary Goldeneye (a game which has shown its age in quite a few ways as any full play-through will more than show).

An article currently doing the rounds states that though development on it is 100% complete, it is stalling currently and this is due to the current war between Russia (lead by Vladimir Putin, ironically a very real-life Ernst Stavropol Blofeld) and Ukraine (lead by Volodymyr Zelenski, who is equally ironically a real-world equivalent to Commander James Bond).

Unlike many and sundry resource shortages which are in no doubt due to the current occupation, I just wanted to add my voice to the debate and weigh in with my personal opinion. That’s the undoubted best thing about writing for an impartial website.

Firstly, I am in no way going to equivocate a video game to an ongoing illegal war. Yes I am a Bond fan and video game fan too. But quite simply, these pale into insignificance when compared to the current war.

I would say if a game is complete, and the parent company of the James Bond films (EON Productions) as well as the licensors over the trademarks (DANJAQ - named after the founders of EON’s wives, Dana Broccoli and Jaqueline Saltzman) and these companies are neither based in the nation of Ukraine nor stand nothing to gain for renewing the trademarks after a quarter century of inactivity, only to suddenly (and very quietly I might add) renew them, makes so little sense to me.

Additionally, I can not stress this enough, the last film No Time To Die was pushed back from the initial Valentine’s Day 2019 release date (I had so much of a wealth of puns to help my workplace market it). In fact, it was pushed back multiple times, before it ultimately was released on 30th September 2021.

There was definitely an audience wanting to see it (apparently for the 2 years 7 months it was in film limbo, it existed on two separate hard drives in a high-security vault in Los Angeles) but with the decree from Barbara Broccoli that it shall not go straight to digital, it will have an initial cinema release (something which has arguably paid off given the film is reported to have brought in $774.2 million). Leaving No Time To Die with no distribution method for the duration of the world pressing pause during the pandemic.

The Goldeneye remake has its audience already there, but crucially also has a method of distribution wide open to it. One of the most notable features of a digital release is that it is not particularly susceptible to real-world events, as grave as they unquestionably are.

60 years ago was a very different time, there was a Democrat as President (Jack Kennedy), Elizabeth II was the Queen, and at the end of the year, people flocked to cinemas to see the movie, Dr. No. This was the first movie in the James Bond franchise which continues to this day and its incomplete history even adorns my bedroom wall (see below).

There’s another issue to highlight. Next month is August, the 25th anniversary of the Nintendo 64’s release of Goldeneye. To miss marking the date must have occurred to those making the remaster. In fact, the much-marked Goldeneye 25 remake was well into development and based on the Unreal 4 engine, from released screenshots, it showed immense promise. It was hit with a cease and desist order very recently. This is purely speculation on my part, but could that be because those at EON and Danjaq wanted as little competition to their in-development (at the time) remake?

In conclusion, I do not know when the remake will come out. I do not know if the initial and very brief report attributing its near demise to the ongoing war is true or otherwise. I do know the piece is based on a single tweet from Jeff Grubb admitting he is uncertain what the game’s status is and in no way backs up the original article’s concrete assertion.

I am guaranteed to buy it on release day and spend some time diving headfirst into nostalgia for my childhood. I can also ensure that I am far from the only person who can claim that.

I could be wrong. Time will tell and will, but not only has Commander Bond looked deep into the abyss of having no future and subsequently had a future. The droughts in films between 1989’s Licence To Kill and 1995’s Goldeneye, between 2008’s Quantum of Solace and 2012’s Skyfall and 2015’s Spectre and 2021’s No Time To Die more than prove this. But there’s also the massive issue that the Bond video games haven’t had an entry since 2012’s 007 Legends and that will be remedied when IO Interactive’s Project 007 comes to fruition, hopefully in this 60th anniversary of the franchise.

Yes, I could very well be wrong and Goldeneye remaster may never rear its beautiful head. But there’s one other issue:

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