The Bourne Conspiracy: No Damon, all action

Still catching up on some previews in the past few weeks of upcoming games I've checked out... this time, it's Sierra's "The Bourne Conspiracy." (Which sounds exactly like the titles of all the books and movies, but is actually original.)

"Bourne" is the first (and definitely not the last) game that Sierra (a division of the soon-to-be-merged with Activision Vivendi) is making as part of an expensive, multi-year license with the Robert Ludlum estate that I first wrote about in Variety in summer of 2005.

The goal is, pretty explicitly, to make Ludlum for Vivendi what Tom Clancy is for Ubisoft -- though it'll be interesting to see whether Activision shares the same goal (more on that issue in a blog post tomorrow or Wednesday).

"Bourne" is, of course, best known to most audiences today for the movies, not the book, but Sierra's license is for the books. Developer High Moon Studios is heavily inspired by the movies and collaborating alot with the talent, though there are some key differences.

Most importantly, gamers will notice that Bourne is not modeled on Matt Damon. The team was considering making a deal with the star, but abandoned that after Damon said at the Cannes film festival last year that he was done with the character. Getting Damon committed to the game when he was no longer committed to the movies would obviously be awkward. (Although -- oops! -- Variety has since reported that Universal has "landed Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon for a fourth "Bourne" movie, even though the director and star seemed ready to wrap it up after three pics.")

But there's lots from the movies. Even though Damon's not involved, Franka Potente is playing her supporting role from "The Bourne Identity" as Marie, which actually strikes me as kind of awkward, but anyway. Film writer Tony Gilroy consulted on the story, which basically tracks "Bourne Identity," but makes all of Bourne's brief flashbacks in the movie fully playable levels, along with some new missions in his past that we haven't seen. Essentially, it's a lot of backstory as we learn more about how Jason Bourne got so f*cked up by the CIA.

The most important collaboration, however, might be with the movies' fight coordinator Jeff Imada, who spent "hundreds of hours" working with High Moon to motion capture all the different fight moves (dozens, if not hundreds) in the game, which are in the exact same style of the movie. Beyond giving Bourne his signature take-down moves using items in the environment, each of the bosses has his (or her?) own unique fighting style designed by Imada.

That's the most important thing because the game is pretty much non-stop action. It's all adrenaline, with basic third person action that we've seen before interspersed with takedowns, which you can pull up when you build up enough adrenaline (or whatever "Bourne's" name for the boost meter is; they all kind of blur together). Not only do they look really cool, but the camera moves in close, with camera angles that mimic the hand-held fast moving camera that director Paul Greengrass used in the second and third "Bourne" films.

All of the takedown moves I saw, which involved using walls, filing cabinets, pens and dry erase boards to take enemies down, along with Bourne's hands and feet, were really impressive. Will they be just as impressive after playing the game for a few hours? Will the shooting and driving -- which seemed fairly standard in the demo I saw -- stand out as much as the hand-to-hand action?And will the multi-player be able to take advantage of the game's signature moves, or in an effort to balance it out will it be a chaotic mess, a la "Stranglehold?"

Those are all the big questions I'm left with leading up to June, when "The Bourne Conspiracy" comes out.

(Oh, and a note to developers: If you want to flatter me during a game demo, tell me that I'm doing a better job than some enthusiast press (IGN, GameSpot, etc.) writers who were there earlier in the day. Sure, you may be transparently flattering me, but it totally worked during "The Bourne Conspiracy" demo, I can't lie.)