Gamertell

With the recent film trilogy, video game and continuing series revolving around Jason Bourne, one must not forget the roots of such an enigmatic anti-hero.

Jason Bourne was originally birthed in 1980 from the mind of Robert Ludlum and seems to have become the American answer to James Bond. There are numerous differences between Bourne of the films, Bourne of game and Bourne of novels.

First are his age and enemies. In the Bourne Identity novel, Jason Bourne is entering his 40s and is a Viet Nam vet that only killed one person in his tour of unofficial duty before he was recruited by Treadstone. In the movie, it’s easy to see that Bourne is probably in his late 20s or early 30s and was a marine before volunteering for Operation Treadstone.

Yes, the constant CIA hunt does tend to be accurate although for different reasons. Bourne, in the original literary trilogy, is hunting the world infamous terrorist known only as Carlos. During his mission he sustains an injury that steals his memory, and, keeping to the period in which the book takes place, the CIA thinks that Bourne has defected to Soviet Union. The CIA hunt made famous through the film trilogy, however, doesn’t take up much of the literary trilogy. The game focuses on both Treadstone/CIA hunt for Bourne and his time working as a Treadstone/CIA operative.

Instead, the organization hunting Bourne through the original trilogy is Carlos and his cabal of followers known only as “the old men.“ These “old men” are a group of priests that fell into debt with Carlos and, to pay off the debt, have become are his eyes, ears and occasional assassin hands. The Bourne Identity novel even opens with articles from the Associate Press reporting on different assassinations attributed to Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal.

The Bourne Legacy and Bourne Betrayal continued the saga made by the late Robert Ludlum. Eric Van Lustbader wrote them to continue the story. Much like the Bond novels that were continued after Ian Flemming’s death, other authors stepped in to flesh out the story of Bourne after Robert Ludlum died in 2001. The action in these two new Bourne novels is closer to the reckless action depicted in the movies although they keep character development that Ludlum always used to perfection so that you actually care about what and why people are doing what they are doing. Lustbader recently added yet another installment of the series, The Bourne Sanction, to the list of novels.

The game, The Bourne Conspiracy, is an intriguing middle ground between the book and the movie. It focuses directly on the events of the movie while having flashback missions that mirror both the book and movie The Bourne Identity. It also managed to throw in some new material that was refreshing, yet faithful to the visceral standard of Bourne action. Some of the targets in the flashbacks are one that are either brought up as falsely attributed assassinations in the book (since in the book Jason Bourne only kills one person before he loses his memory). The difference is that in the case of the game, Jason Bourne (you) do the deed. Some of the assassinations referred to in the film are also put into the mix.

A second game focusing more on Treadstone, the organization Jason worked for, was in the works. However, as reported by Variety, after the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, they scrapped the plans for the new Bourne and the Ludlum estate took back the interactive rights to develop Bourne games. The Ludlum estate is currently looking into other possible publishers to look into producing the follow-up Bourne games or the possibility that they will raise the money to develop, publish and release the game themselves.

With both the merger and the Ludlum estate taking back the interactive production rights on the Bourne games, it is unclear whether or not the the licensing for the production of games based off of the Covert One will stick. If it doesn’t, hopefully the Covert One novels will be given the gaming facelift that was given to the Bourne franchise. Covert One just lends itself perfectly to gaming since it can be just as iconic for the espionage genre as Jason Bourne or James Bond have been.

Read [Igniq] Also Read [kirjasto.sci.fi] Also Read [VideoGamer.com] Also Read [Variety]

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