When thinking about a game adaption of the incredibly popular John Wick films, Bithell Games might not be the developer that first comes to mind. Co-founder Mike Bithell and his team are known for emotion-tinged platformers, old-school stealth adventures, and interactive narrative stories. Appropriately so, Bithell Games chose an unexpected target for its John Wick mission: a turn-based strategy that feels like a mash-up of XCOM and SuperHot.We sat down with Mike Bithell after playing his new game for the first time, and dove into how he secured the project and ultimately convinced Lionsgate to go along with his vision. John Wick Hex will launch on PC (exclusively through Epic Games Store first) and MacOS, and does not yet have a release date.GameSpot: Were you approached, or did you approach someone to make a John Wick game. What was the first idea for the project?Mike Bithell: They were like `we need Thomas was Alone`s creator to reinvigorate projects.` [Laughs] No, it was interesting. So basically Good Shepherd, who`s the publisher, and Lionsgate movies, they were already talking about doing something with John Wick. Lionsgate`s whole thing with John Wick is they still see it as the weird Indy movie that did good. It`s growing and doing so big so they specifically want to do interesting John Wick games, they don`t want to just do straightforward person action kind of things.So not recreate the movies?Well, they want to recreate the movies but with creativity. The thing with third-person shooters, just as an aside, is that I`m a clumsy idiot. When I play a third person shooter, I can be in a suit but I`m going to be just running around aimlessly firing. It`s not John Wick.So, going into that strategy thing, lets you do the whole think-and-react thing and work your way through a space. But to go back to your answer, they were thinking: how do we do this more interestingly? They bring in Ben, who is the producer, and they say, `go find something to do this,` bas ...
|
