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Jason Bourne isn't much of a talker. Jason Bourne is a doer, with deeply imprinted training that makes him act so instinctively and decisively, it can seem like brutality, even to him. For the first act of Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity, he's a confused amnesiac in a scruffy orange jumper, just starting to get a handle on his previous life as a chameleonic, blackest-of-black-ops assassin. Reconciling lethal muscle memory with his innate sense of self is clearly twisting Bourne up inside - it's the rubber-band motor that powers the entire movie and, subsequently, the Bourne franchise. It's also a slippery question: how can he do these things?Similar thoughts of agents and agency might float through your mind while replaying The Bourne Conspiracy, developed by High Moon Studios and released by Sierra in 2008. It's a game stuffed with spectacular moments where, as Bourne, you pull off surprising, uncanny feats: balletic dodges, improbable one-shot kills and brutal improvised takedowns. Admittedly, it's a thrill almost every single time, but there remains a nagging undertow: how did I just do that? Who exactly is in control?
Questions, questions. Foremost among them could be: was the world crying out for a Bourne video game in 2008? From a corporate spreadsheet point of view, maybe it was. The film trilogy wrapped up in 2007 with a surprising sense of finality, so here was an opportunity to slipstream a global movie franchise with a considerable existing audience who probably wanted to keep the adventure going, or at least relive some iconic parts of it. An army of fanboys (and fangirls), keen to "become Bourne", as the marketing promised. Some of them clearly worked at High Moon Studios.
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