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GTA Director (Independently) Working on Game about 1979 Iranian Revolution

Clipjoint

Member
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/08/11/grand.theft.auto.iran/

story.1979.game.jpeg


'Grand Theft Auto' director's next game explores 1979 Iran revolution

(CNN) -- Vice City. San Andreas. Liberty City. Tehran.

Three of these locales are instantly familiar to videogame diehards as settings in the "Grand Theft Auto" series, which has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. The latter, however, is more commonly linked to news bulletins about the Iranian nuclear program or confrontational statements by the country's hardline Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

If Navid Khonsari, 41, has his way, Iran's capital city will soon be much more familiar to gamers. A director of the "Grand Theft Auto" series, the Iranian-born Khonsari's next game has a simple working title whose numerals denote a world of significance: "1979." And the game's tagline? "There are no good guys."

"1979" gets its name from the year when the hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran began, which was during the height of Iran's Islamic Revolution. That year marked the overthrow of the dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, by a populist revolt and the subsequent installation of a fundamentalist Islamic state.

The game aims to combine some sandbox, open-world elements popularized by "Grand Theft Auto" with what Khonsari calls a "baton-pass" narrative, which explores this historic backdrop through the sequential perspectives of several playable characters.

Khonsari has an ideal pedigree for an undertaking this ambitious: Besides creating a raft of iconic and genre-defining games, he also grew up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.
Navid Khonsari says that players of "1979" will make choices that could change how they look at history.

"I want people to understand the incredible moral ambiguity of this story, that this was a country with many different ideas and beliefs," Khonsari said in an exclusive interview with CNN. "Growing up in Iran when I did, I saw Iranians in the greatest light, and I saw them in the worst light."

Shortly after the fall of the shah, Khonsari's family fled Iran for Canada. Khonsari moved to the West Coast as an adult to pursue a career as a filmmaker. He later moved to New York City and applied his talents to an up-and-coming studio named Rockstar Games.

"I was the cinematic director for 'GTA 3,' 'Vice City' and 'San Andreas,' as well as the two Max Payne games, 'Red Dead Revolver' and 'Bully,' " he said. "Anything that came out through Rockstar between 2001 and 2005, I was fortunate enough to be involved in.

"My main job, and what grew into my current passion, was bringing that cinematic 'feel' to video games."

After he left Rockstar, Khonsari founded his own game-production company, iNKstories, which he co-runs with his wife, Vassiliki. The duo already have two blockbuster titles under their belt, "Alan Wake" and "Homefront." They aim for "1979" to be the third.

The gameplay of '1979'

At the game's outset, the player is an American/Iranian translator on a mission to rescue the embassy hostages. The player must choose one of three historically inspired ways to enter Iran: By helicopter with a U.S. special forces team, through the Iraq border with Saddam Hussein's army or across the Afghanistan border with the Taliban.

In these preliminary levels, the game plays as a fairly standard third-person shooter, with some linguistic puzzles that will test your character's imperfect mastery of the Farsi language.

"But once you get into Iran, you're no longer the translator," he said. "You take the role of a student demonstrator who was opposed the shah. You've kicked the shah out, but you're unhappy with some of these fanatical elements you see rising up.

"So the game changes, and now your mission is to get this small military group to Tehran, but nonviolently, clandestinely. You want the American hostages out of Iran because you want the country to focus on rebuilding itself, and you've heard all these rumors about a war with Iraq coming."


This, Khonsari explains, is where gameplay shifts to include some morally ambiguous elements of diplomacy, stealth and bartering. Each time the baton passes to a new character, the style of gameplay changes, too. Some characters will focus more on action, while others will feature vehicles and puzzle-solving.

"Not everyone you meet is going to be helpful," he said. "There are going to be aspects of bribery, making exchanges and turning a blind eye to really bad stuff so you can get the job done.

"Maybe, in order to get the group there, you need to sacrifice some stragglers and let them get captured so the others can get away. And then you'll have some extreme choices to make when you get to Tehran: Are you going to invade the embassy, guns blazing, to try to get the hostages back? Or are you going to try to protect the embassy from the Americans?

"People who might not be completely familiar with the game world look at fancy graphics and polished gameplay and say 'this is cutting edge,' " he continued. "But from what I've seen, it's still quite basic. Very much a checkers mentality -- red against black, good against evil. I'm interested in having good and evil within the same character, and for you to experience both. I think that's true to life, and I think you can design a game around that, too."

A multiplayer version is also in the works, with 12 maps planned for release. The multiplayer modes will feature differing combinations of straightforward gun combat with ruthless negotiation and decision-making.

First in a franchise?

Though the game is still in the alpha stage of development and at least a year and a half away from release, Khonsari hopes the success of "1979" will breed a franchise of similar games.

"(This is) the first installment of a franchise where the games will be named after years in which there were CIA operations within certain countries," he said. " '1979' is the first one because it's closest to my heart and I know the story the best. After that, we want to explore what took place in Panama with (Manuel) Noriega, and Libya back in the '70s and '80s with (Moammar) Gadhafi."

Khonsari's heritage is one reason he's not concerned with political correctness in his treatment of one of the United States' supposedly implacable enemies.

"Iranians are going to criticize me because I'm making a game that 'promotes American imperialists going in and shooting Iranians,' " he said. "Americans are going to criticize me because I'm making a game that 'glorifies Islamic fundamentalism,' or something. I'm not going to please everyone, and the point of the game isn't to do that.

"I think that being able to base a game in contemporary historical truths is significant, besides being educational," he said. "It opens people's eyes to look beyond what they're reading in the paper and realize that there's a definite relationship between history and the headlines.

"Most of the people who are playing games nowadays were born after 1980 -- after the Iranian Revolution. People are so quick to accept the official record of things as 'history,' without examining everything that's gone on in the last 40, 50, 60 years. It's important we remember these things, and work to keep them relevant."
 
"I was the cinematic director for 'GTA 3,' 'Vice City' and 'San Andreas,' as well as the two Max Payne games, 'Red Dead Revolver' and 'Bully,' " he said. "Anything that came out through Rockstar between 2001 and 2005, I was fortunate enough to be involved in.

All the good GTAs plus the Max Paynes AND RDR? Not a bad resume at all.
 

Nix

Banned
Remember NOIR my brothers; REMEMBER NOIR!

Sounds like he just needs to go back and start making what works~ sandbox games.
 

Sober

Member
Very interested how the diplomacy portion of the gameplay is gonna be like, especially if, since it sounds like it's going to be most a third person 'action' game.
 

Archer

Member
Interesting.

Huge Persian community in Vanc, my better half being the same. Look forward to hearing their versions of what happened, and their reactions to this game.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
Sounds really interesting. I'm interested to see where this game goes.
 

cuyahoga

Dudebro, My Shit is Fucked Up So I Got to Shoot/Slice You II: It's Straight-Up Dawg Time
Wasn't there a Kickstarter about this? Nice to hear that the guy got his game funded.

Will be interested to see how this turns out.
 

Suairyu

Banned
Now this is the sort of high concept videogames should be tackling. Will watch this one with eager anticipation.
 
This is exactly the sort of thing I want video games as a medium to tackle. And yet at the same time... I can't help but worry that we've not yet reached the point, either technologically or creatively, where a story/event of this magnitude can be given the treatment that it deserves.
 

duckroll

Member
Errrr... so who would be developing this game? iNK Stories is not a game development studio. Navid Khonsari is not a game designer.
 
This is going to make the Fox News punditocracy go apeshit. Can't wait until some uninformed twit calls it a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda.
 
After he left Rockstar, Khonsari founded his own game-production company, iNKstories, which he co-runs with his wife, Vassiliki. The duo already have two blockbuster titles under their belt, "Alan Wake" and "Homefront." They aim for "1979" to be the third.
wat
 

duckroll

Member
adriano999 said:

iNK Stories does cinematic direction, motion capture direction/casting, and voice-over direction/casting. Remedy and Kaos worked with them on those two games respectively.
 

LiK

Member
duckroll said:
Errrr... so who would be developing this game? iNK Stories is not a game development studio. Navid Khonsari is not a game designer.

maybe the former Team Bondi employees. :p
 

lupinko

Member
This is still around? This was mentioned years ago on some tv special or something, I remember seeing it on youtube awhile back.
 

duckroll

Member
lupinko said:
This is still around? This was mentioned years ago on some tv special or something, I remember seeing it on youtube awhile back.

Seems to me like there's no game, and he's just doing another round of press interviews to whoever is willing to listen, to try and gain attention and hopefully get funding/publishing/development.

Who's the developer?

Who's the publisher?

What are the platforms?

Clearly when the news hits CNN instead of Game Informer, you know that something is fishy.
 
duckroll said:
iNK Stories does cinematic direction, motion capture direction/casting, and voice-over direction/casting. Remedy and Kaos worked with them on those two games respectively.
yeah, just read about this on linkedin but with that sentence + the whole article, it's like he is taking credit for games he really didn't have something important to do with other than some minor stuff(really, homefront cinematics?), also the fact that iNK Stories doesn't really make games makes all of this sounds like bullshit to me.
 

knitoe

Member
duckroll said:
How's it going to get to retail when there is no publisher? Lol.
Notice, I first said "Not going to happen". Then, "even if I did, going to bomb hard at retail = publisher".
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
I really like the sound of this, but I'm worried that the tone will be ruined by gameplay involving taking missions from people with giant glowing symbols over their heads.
 

megalowho

Member
Mystery-white-boy said:
This is exactly the sort of thing I want video games as a medium to tackle. And yet at the same time... I can't help but worry that we've not yet reached the point, either technologically or creatively, where a story/event of this magnitude can be given the treatment that it deserves.
Pretty much my thoughts. You have to respect his passion for the project at the very least. I hope this game gets made, regardless of whether it's a success or not.
 

Afrikan

Member
Jason's Ultimatum said:
I want pics now. This and Agent are getting me excited.
um, I guess I'm the only guy here who thinks this game described IS Agent.

I swear all this sounds familiar.
 

truly101

I got grudge sucked!
This is an awesome idea for a game but it will NEVER get released. There will be a lot of scrutiny and criticism from the west and death threats and jihads from the middle east.

EDIT: to be truly fair to Iran, and to fully understand the political climate of the time and what caused this, they need to have the CIA essentially staging a revolt to dispose of Iran's rightfully elected leader and installation of the Shah
 
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