There’s barely been any news about the new Perfect Dark game since it was announced in December, but now Xbox head Phil Spencer has spoken about it – including how female protagonist Joanna Dark offers “a lot of modern opportunities” for Xbox to change its male-dominated line-up.
In an interview on the IGN Unlocked podcast this week, Spencer spoke about a number of subjects including a few details on Fable 4, but the Xbox head also had a few notes about The Initiative’s Perfect Dark 2 – including the importance of having another female protagonist in Xbox’s first-party line-up, alongside Hellblade’s Senua and Kait Diaz from the recent Gears of War games.
“I think it’s awesome that, for us, we can focus on a female protagonist in our line-up, we don’t have a lot of that in our first-party [games],” Spencer confesses. “I think that Joanna offers a lot of modern opportunities. I love to see the team focusing on having a strong protagonist.”
Spencer also spoke about the quality of the game, admitting that Xbox 360 launch title Perfect Dark Zero “wasn’t as well-received as we would’ve wanted,” but also said about the new game, “whether we decided to reimagine Perfect Dark or do something new, the most important thing will be the quality of the execution and whether we deliver a delightful game that people love.”
Speaking of female protagonists, Xbox’s new studio The Initiative is headed by Crystal Dynamics veteran Darrell Gallagher, who helped oversee the recent Tomb Raider games before he left to join Microsoft – although Perfect Dark was already in development when Gallagher arrived, according to Spencer. “That discussion happened before he even joined us,” although Gallagher specifically chose to work on Perfect Dark.
It’ll likely be a while before we find out more about Perfect Dark, as it didn’t get shown off at Xbox’s E3 conference last month – however, while Perfect Dark Zero didn’t come out on PC, anyone desperate to try it can do so on Xbox cloud gaming right now. It’s probably better to play GoldenEye instead, which you can do through a Far Cry 5 remake or just play it direct, dammit.
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