We know the members of this study in charge of the new Perfect Dark, and what they can contribute to the restart of this popular saga created by Rare.
One of the great surprises of the last edition of The Game Awards was undoubtedly the announcement of the new Perfect Dark, which represents the return of one of the IPs that delighted shooter fans on Nintendo 64, along with others like Goldeneye 007 or Turok, without going any further. In the hands of a studio in a state of grace throughout the 90s such as Rare, Perfect Dark is a good example of what since then can be known as “more than one fps”. At the forefront of this new attempt to return the franchise to the place it once had is The Initiative, a newly minted studio in the hands of Microsoft Studios, and that in addition to maintaining the Rare legacy, has the difficult mission of being one of the flagship development teams in the company’s recent journey with Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
However, when talking about a new study, it is worth wondering if it will have enough packaging before such a complicated company, and is that The Initiative is not exactly made up of novices in the industry. Let’s meet some of the thinking heads of this team at the hand of the new Perfect Dark.
Illustrious names at The Initiative
Since it was founded in 2018 and geographically located in Santa Monica, California, The Initiative has not stopped adding talent. As it could not be otherwise, any study must start from a leader, and for this Microsoft trusted Darrell Gallagher, formerly a member of Crystal Dynamics and the head of the successful reboot of Tomb Raider, and that critics and the public liked so much. But by no means does his resume end there, and it is that he has a long career, beginning his career as a creative director at Sony and then going through high-caliber studios such as THQ, Rockstar and Activision, having worked on other games such as Thief, Destiny 2 or even multiple installments of Call of Duty.
In fact, he is not the only talent caught by Crystal Dynamics, since Gallagher was also joined by Daniel Neuburger, whose career has always been linked to the studio run by Tomb Raider, having also participated in that famous reboot of 2013, in addition to others such as Tomb Raider Anniversary, Tomb Raider Underworld or the delivery with aerial view and cooperative play, The Guardian of the Light.
He also moved from studio, but not from state – in fact, not even local – is Brian Westergaard, also from Crystal Dynamics years ago, and he participated from the role of Senior Producer in games like Rise of the Tomb Raider or Shadow of the Tomb Raider. However, his most recent position was held precisely at Sony Santa Monica, occupying an important position of producer in the narrative aspect of the outstanding God of War of 2018. Before, he had been part of other companies such as Activision, Trion Worlds or THQ.
It may be the most important, but it is not the only one who changed the company of Cory Barlog for that of Darrell Gallagher, and it is that from Santa Monica the artist Erik Jacobsen also arrived, evidently with credits in God of War, but also in other studies like Turtle Rock –Evolve-, inXile –Wasteland- or Pandemic –The Saboteur-. Other members of the studio in charge of God of War, and participants in its development took the same path: Ray Yeomans, Kai Zheng and Chriss O’Neill, all of them level designers.
Meanwhile, the head of the playable section will be Sean Slayback, who joined The Initiative in the summer of 2019 from Respawn Entertainment, where he was one of the main designers of Apex Legends, and where he would remain no less than 9 years, in which Obviously, he also had time to work on individual Titanfall installments. Before Respawn, his experience as a designer extends to none other than Treyarch and Infinity Ward, being one of the many who changed the latter to Respawn. In both studios he collaborated on very important titles of the Call of Duty franchise such as COD 3, World at War or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. A great experience in the shooter genre for Perfect Dark, without a doubt …
Although it is now considered one of the big underrated in the Xbox One catalog, Sunset Overdrive is held in high esteem by the public and Microsoft itself. The result of this is that the Redmond company has trusted Drew Murray, director of the only exclusive Insomniac Games game for the Xbox ecosystem, for the role of Design Director at The Initiative. Sunset Overdrive represents one of the craziest and funniest open worlds of this almost extinct generation, but it is by no means Murray’s only prestigious work, since with more than a decade of experience at Insomniac he has also been part of the team in charge. others such as the Ratchet & Clank or Resistance sagas, as well as the semi-unknown Fuse, one of the study’s “black sheep” with a score of 63 on Metacritic.
What to expect from the new Perfect Dark?
The original Perfect Dark dates from the year 2000, 3 years after the huge success that 007 Goldeneye was for Rare, although it shares many of its mechanics, with espionage as the central theme of the game, although you give a more futuristic point of view. Probably due to having appeared in the final stretch of the useful life of Nintendo 64, it did not have the same repercussion at the media level, but that does not prevent it from being one of the best games on Nintendo’s 64-bit console, And even though 15 years have passed since its previous installment, Perfect Dark Zero, the announcement of this reboot shows that it continues to enjoy some popularity.
Now … what can this IP contribute to a genre that has been extremely saturated since then as the first person shooter? From The Initiative, obviously due to the early date of its announcement, they have not commented on the magnitude of the game, but it should be intended to occupy a middle ground between shooters with more action and linear and others set in large open worlds as they can. be Borderlands or Far Cry, for example. It is hoped that Joanna Dark, already an agent with a wide variety of abilities in the original game, will expand these to achieve great versatility that allows her to interact with the environment in a remarkable way.
But not only that, but surely we have a significant number of gadgets and weapons that allow us to solve each situation in different ways, and the original Perfect Dark already boasted such a virtue. In short, it is one of those games that, played now, seems incredible that they arrived more than two decades ago, and whose duration will surely extend beyond 8 hours from its first installment.
