As Mark Twain asserted; history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.


This would go a long way in explaining why my philosophical lamentations sound so sing songy

Here we are, at the end of all things. At least, at the end of all things GoldenEye 64 related, as we bring to a close a multi-week odyssey where we took a trip down memory lane, slipped into the shoes of our embarrassingly cherished and endlessly reckless secret agent, as we clumsily stumbled out way through the end of the Cold War.



While I don’t always wrap up my playthroughs in such a somber like manner, akin to a wake and a bittersweet eulogy to go along with it, I am reminded of a similar moment in time, where I felt as if I needed one last tribute to the recently “passed”, after I finished SIlksong last September, where I fittingly, referenced GoldenEye, in a strange callback moment before the callback was needed. In a similar way, before I move on from a game, I always like to feel as if by the time I’m done writing about it, there is simply nothing left for me to say about the title before doing so. There is something regrettable about me not having the same stable social standards that would grant me the ability to do some multiplayer rounds with GoldenEye 64 to write about before moving on, but times change, and we must make do with what is left involving the echoes of the past, in whatever form that takes.

With that in mind, here are some final thoughts on GoldenEye 64, in what it meant culturally speaking when it released.



I think the reason GoldenEye worked as well as it did when it launched, beyond the simplistically reductionist notion of “it was fun”, is looking at what made that fun possible. As I’ve routinely stated in the past, I think there is a far greater dimensionality to gaming as a whole dynamic, and fun is kind of a meager by-product of far greater machinations that occur within the sphere to make such a quality be willed to life. To that point, I think GoldenEye’s wow factor came with a strong message of possibility, at a time when technologically speaking, the industry was reinventing itself to meet a new demanding age, and with it, a literal extra dimenstion to deal with, as 3D gaming was just coming into its own when GoldenEye hit the scene.

Though we had Quake in the form of a fully fledged 3D shooter a full year earlier, and developer id software is absolutely no stranger to setting precedent within the realm of shooters, helping to have dug out the very foundation for their existence to be reinforced with, GoldenEye delivered a more human element than Quake did, both in and out of game, as not only was the context of GoldenEye less alien than what Quake delivered with, but as is the case with so much in the realm of PC vs console, GoldenEye was able to stream line the whole standard of connecting with other people, as (split screen) multiplayer became a far more convenient, easily understood, and in your face relevancy for anyone with an N64. Where as PC’s usually get the jump technologically speaking on feature sets before consoles, it is usually the consoles themselves that open the doors of convenience to a much wider audience, and for many, GoldenEye was the first introduction to the reality of multiplayer FPS’s, and ended up triggering what would become a standard in the genre moving forward.



GoldenEye stands on those merits alone, and easily could have offered little else and still have become a golden standard, but since it came from legendary developer Rare, who had already set a fantastic precedent for console game excellence the decade prior, they would go on to redefine their own lofty heights, by offering up what was to that point, the most cinematic shooter campaign that had ever come out. I think a lowkey and often overlooked idea that came with the notion of the single player of GoldenEye, involves the idea that for the first time, we didn’t just get an authentically amazing movie adaptation, but due to the 3D quality and graphical representation, it was in a way, like doing some faux behind the scenes tour of the movie itself, being able to explore not just the areas you could see in the movie, but the imagined parts of the movie you couldn’t see in the scenes, that helped cement the entire reality of Bond’s world in a way no other medium could have pulled off.



Though we’ve come a long way in narrative standard for first person shooters and immersive sim experiences since then, with the likes of Half Life, Halo, Deus Ex, Bioshock, and Modern Warfare, just to name a few, GoldenEye was a big part in reframing a maturation in the industry, in terms of laying some ground work with how to deal with cinematic framing and subject material moving forward, and the importance of a strong single player campaign mode for players to sink their teeth into.

I think to the point of maturation, we saw a multi-pronged effect in this regard, as with the advent of the PlayStation around the same time in the mid-90s, even though there is an undeniable element of marketing that went into the idea of video games not just being “for kids” or something beyond a “toy”, there was a truth to this as a reality beyond marketing bluster, as the eventuality of 3D being the standard would lead to richer worlds, more complex depth of interactivity, and a greater audience to engage with as a result.



I think to that point, where PlayStation already had done an excellent job of embodying that element of zeitgeist with its brand, Nintendo had an uphill battle in that regard, as the house of Mario was many things, but grounded in a more modern day, life like reality and an appeal to a mature crowd were not among its strong suits. In that way, I think GoldenEye represented a proof of concept of possibility, for all involved, as the industry started to mature, and grow in ways unthinkable just a couple years prior, helping to showcase a similar standard for Nintendo’s new console, the N64. This new tech was filled with previously unimagined possibilities, not just for the hardware, but the developers, publishers, and gamers that were developing right along side the imaginative journey of self-discovery, of which GoldeneEye’s ambitiously audacious aims and eye opening new visuals, helped to solidify, in being a poster boy for a new age of technological advancement.



That’s where I think GoldenEye 64 succeeds to resoundingly impressive degrees, in helping to establish a reimagining of proof of concept, and like any good piece of art, helps us to self-reflect on who we are, and in doing so, becomes a source of social credit for those influenced by its artistic machinations. Those touched by such levels of creativity, those “fortunates” involved, the individuals lucky enough to encounter and interact with this new ideal of possibility, would then feel transformed in a similar manner, further remapping our own ideas of how we can relate to a broader landscape of creativity, while also self-reflecting through the emotional resonance of how we connect with the imaginative worth laid bare.

While all of these grandiose measurements may be taken for granted by many who play the game, the metaphysical value of these revelations find themselves present in the small moments that matter to the players involved. The examples are many in number, and no doubt, as many gamers will tell you, many moments in GoldenEye that seem so humdrum and pedestrian now a days, were huge leaps and bounds of impressive upon first experience.



Some of these include running across and jumping off the dam for the first time, just like Bond did in the film, quietly taking out the guard in the bathroom stall in the Facility, unlocking your first cheat code, retrying the bunker multiple times after dying to its unforgiving standards, sitting at either the pause menu or the mission select screen after a long play session to chill to the music, looking forward to an all explosives match on Complex with your friends, circle strafing each other like madmen while dual-wielding RC-90’s on Bunker, doing a slappers only match on Facility, picking Oddjob to troll your buddy with, accusing one another of screen peeping when you felt cheated on a particular death, wrapping up your N64 controller to go to a friends house for a sleep over; it’s all of these tiny moments (and more)that feed into the memorable legacy of the GoldenEye standard, that helped to redefine possibility, and in a medium that bears no shortage of impressive examples of how to reinvent imagination, such a celebrated remembrance of qualitative standard is no small feat.



With that, I give a firm salute to Rare and their work on making GoldenEye 64 a reality, and for helping to shape our own so magnificently as a result.

~Pashford