Geoff Keighley wants Half-Life to return & his favourite thing about The Game Awards | Checkpoint
you know I’m trying to remember the first time I met hideo kajima and I actually don’t remember the first time I met him um I assume it was probably at hey I’m Jeff key from the game awards here to talk about video games with bafta I’m trying to think my favorite video game character it’s got to be the L block and Tetris I’m just kidding um one of the great things about games is that often times you can become the character in a video game and you can kind of you know create your own story
and your own narrative so I love those games where you know you’re a silent protagonist in some ways like even uh the halflife series I mean I loved being Gordon Freeman and he was a character but because he wasn’t speaking you sort of felt like you were Gordon the other characters Alex Vance and others were kind of reacting to you and those were really kind of compelling moments for me um to sort of play Gordon and uh you know have a special place in my heart for half lifee one and half lifee two I would
I mean would love to see Gordon come back at some point I don’t if that’s going to happen but I definitely think
I love the narrative in the first Last of Us game uh you know when I played that game a decade ago I was so taken by it that I worked with Neil dman and the N dog team to actually create a a stage play based on that narrative because I was like the story is so great I I thought it would translate to other mediums we did that a decade ago long before the HBO series but I think that was something that really resonated with me um I love that and also I would say the
the first BioShock um I think that and the story of Andrew Ryan and the way that narrative unfolds and the you know I can spoil it now but sort of that whole would you kindly phrase and how that kind of un unwrap Tred as you played the game I still think is one of my favorite narratives that that Ken LaVine and his team had put together um I miss the Bioshock games although Ken is working on a new new game Judas which definitely I think is inspired by uh you know his his Bioshock work so
I would say those two and then you know the uh Red Dead Redemption as well I think that was an incredible story um still very resonant with me so I know those are three games but as the guy that does the game awards I always try not to pick my favorites so those those are three of my favorite narratives my favorite mechanic in a video game there’s something for me about a sense of verticality in games which I love when you’re able to sort of you know jump or do things sort of super human I
think there’s just something sort of empowering of that like I remember back in Crackdown where you were jumping or or just that idea of you know even jumping in Mario there’s something about that that I think is just kind of really fun um and it’s the simplest mechanic right um I mean I also love a run where you can you know hold down shifter the lpad and just kind of move faster but I think there’s something about jump to me that I just feel like is it’s a staple like every video game has a jump
button um but I think you know then the double jump and it’s sort of how far you can go and I think that’s something that I just always love to explore and figure out in a video game and there are things I love like cover mechanics certainly um have always been fun and and stealth and things like that but yeah I’m going to go with the jump my favorite moment in a video game there have been so many I I definitely think the the ride in Red Dead Redemption when far away starts to play I
think was an amazing moment for me um you know that song from Jose Gonzalez it was just kind of unexpected and you were you know playing Red Dead playing John marsten and then you this song kind of comes on it was I think it was really sort of the first time a song was in the game and it just was such a beautiful peaceful moment because it was simple and you weren’t doing anything I mean you were literally on your horse you know going off you know in the environment and the song was playing I
loved how how contemplative it was and how different it was and it just it made me appreciate the beauty of the game World um and it wasn’t you know a moment where I was just killed the antagonist or something dramatic happened I think there was something peaceful and beautiful about that music is something that’s like underappreciated about how it can really underscore Alman and add something to it and I just you know again games are you’re always so active you’re always shooting you’re always fighting and I think there was something just beautiful and peaceful about
that um and I love games that like you know the emotional Arc of them changes and it’s not all just like 11 out of 10 and I that was great after lots of fighting in red did you kind of wanted a break and that was just a it’s a it’s a beautiful moment trying to think of a game that I would love to see come back again uh the Bioshock series uh I miss it I there’s been talked there’s going to be another Bioshock at some point um you know I love Bioshock one even two
I enjoyed and infinite was incredible um and I think BioShock Infinite is I don’t it’s at least been a decade so I miss that franchise and there’s been talk that they’ve been trying to do a new one so I will be very excited um when that comes back uh certainly you know halflife uh you know I I I missed that franchise I did a lot of work with valve on the making of those games and we got kind of a half a halflife with halflife Alex in VR but I would love to see that franchise
return like everyone on the internet so nothing to announce here I don’t know what’s going on but um I definitely would love to see uh a full return to halflife World exclusive I just say just roll it here it’s a hard question to to actually calculate the game I’ve spent the most time playing and I’m not honestly like someone that spends a lot of time playing a ton of multiplayer games because in my role you have to sample a little bit of everything um so you know my brother for instance like plays a ton of
Destiny and that’s his game that he plays for me I kind of move around because I have to try and be a generalist and sort of playing a little bit of everything um but I’m trying to think like you know so the game I probably played the most is the one that’s probably had the most sequels or franchise and I think Resident Evil has had I don’t know how many but I want to say they probably been a good 15 Resident Evil especially if you you count the original ones and the remakes on top of
it and things like that so I’d probably go with sort of the Resident Evil franchise the first video game I ever played I’m trying to remember what that was I think honestly it was something called reader rabbit on my mother’s IBM PC Jr she was working on accounting stuff and said hey there was this quasi video game you could say that I got to play where uh I learned how to read on a very early IBM computer so I don’t think at the time I thought it was a video game but that was I think
my first experience with interactive entertainment on a computer device people often ask me uh about my favorite game of all time and it’s hard because games naturally progress over time uh in in terms of the quality of games really because you know gaming stands as this intersection of Technology entertainment so even though the games last year were great the ones this year usually get even better because you know the the the art form is improving and the technology is improving with that in mind some of my favorite memories and some of my favorite games are
are probably some of the early ones that I played um as a kid that really inspired me to to want to make games my career and those games are really a lot of the early adventure games from companies like Sierra online and LucasArts specific titles like day of the tentacle and Gabriel Knights they were some of the early you know amazing adventure games that just took me to these other places and worlds and were you know text Adventure Games right before they even had voices in games but I used to play a lot of those
with my brother um when I was a kid and they they still have such a resonance for me because I I you had to use your imagination so much with the world and even though you know you would see this amazing pixel art in a game like space Quest and you’d read the text your mind would just go crazy Imagining the world because it was so sort of abstract in a way so those are memories that that have stuck with me throughout my life of course you know when someone ask the best game you’ve ever
played now you know the the gameplay and the immersion of games is so much more advanced than it was 30 years ago but for me I think some of my favorite memories are those early games that I played that inspired me to you know want to devote my life to this industry you know I’m trying to remember the first time I met hideo kajima and I actually don’t remember the first time I met him um I assume it was probably at an E3 trade show um in the ’90s at some point but it wasn’t that
you know that moment where we instantly clicked and we were best buddies and exchanged I don’t know back then beeper numbers or something to like uh stay in touch but the first time I really had a like a a deeper moment with him was in 2001 when I went over to write a story about the making of Metal Gear Solid 2 and spent some time with him in his Studio we spent a lot of time kind of talking about his creative process and I got to know him a little bit better and that was you
know 20 plus years ago so that was kind of the time where I think we started to sort of connect and then ever since then we’ve been on this journey together I think to hopefully help Elevate the gaming medium so yeah we’ve we’ve been Brothers in that way and you know he went independent right around the same time I went independent with the game awards and he launched kajima Productions so we’ve sort of had that uh entrepreneurial Spirit kind of in our in our blood and we talk a lot about that over the years so
yeah he’s he’s become you know a a good friend my favorite thing about the game awards is that we bring an awareness to this medium around the world and the thing that I’ve learned over the past decade is how Global the audience is for video games and and I love that we touch people around the world with the show and and all of us you know that love games I think tune in and it represents more than just who’s going to win game of the year or what the big announcement is that night um it’s
this sense of This Global community that comes together at the end of the year to celebrate our lava video games we’re so honored that we get to to do this show and that people care about it that means people have you know crazy high expectations for what the what’s going to be the show and and what’s in it and how we present the industry but my favorite thing by far is that I think we we feel like one big Global Community when we do that show rals I’m wondering have one for you right now let’s
take a look is it hard to keep those Secrets because imagine even now in your head you’ve got like a million games that you know only people could know yeah I mean it’s it’s fun to reveal things to the world at these shows it it creates a lot of pressure uh you know because the expectation is always very high about the things we may or may not have um but it’s it’s fun to surprise the fans it’s increasingly hard in this world uh with you know so much social media and leaks to to really bring
those surprises to Bear but when we can have those moments um it’s just fun for the community especially when everyone’s watching the show around the world and streaming uh you know I nothing is better than a great surprise I know some people look at that and say oh this is It’s a marketing event why are you marketing games in this way in an award show but for us like that’s the future potential the excitement of this industry is that fan base getting excited about what’s coming next games are incredibly special and I think what what
sets them apart from everything else out there is that sense of immersion and that sense of authorship that you feel um over your experience games just allow for so much creativity in them and that’s uh you know I remember when I was a kid I would play this old game on the PC called the incredible machine and it would just be so fun I’d like build little puzzles and this rud Goldberg machines and I just remember I was like you can’t do that anywhere else and it’s just there’s an infinite possibility with games and I
think that’s exciting to me as well and that you know when you watch any other type of entertainment it’s there’s a finite period of time um and with games you can just get lost in those worlds for for hundreds of hours as we know and that’s what makes them special is that they’re sort of infinitely entertaining and continually improving and I look back you know to 10 years ago of the game awards compared to the games today there’s just been this incredible ramp and the quality of games and technology and I get excited about that
future potential in 20 30 years how much better games are going to get every year things get better and that’s what I think makes this medium truly special is that combination of entertainment and Technology fusing together
