Published , by Charles Singletary Jr
Published , by Charles Singletary Jr
GoldenEye is a legendary N64 game known for its PvP experience and, since its launch in 1997, players have argued over whether playing with Oddjob is cheating or not. Over twenty years later, we finally have official confirmation from the game's developers: Yes, playing with Oddjob is cheating.
Eurogamer reported via a GoldenEye oral history published by Mel Magazine that Karl Hilton and Mark Edmonds confirm that playing with Oddjob constituted cheating. Hilton was the lead environment artist for GoldenEye and Edmonds was the gameplay and engine programmer.
"We all thought it was kind of cheating when we were play-testing with Oddjob, but it was too much fun to take out and there was no impetus from any of us to change it," Hilton said.
"It's definitely cheating to play as Oddjob!" Edmonds added. "But that can just add to the fun when you're all sitting there next to each other and berating/poking/hitting the person who chooses him. In our own Shack World Championship that took place during E3 2018, we even banned the character.
Hilton says that the team was working under the assumption that they could use anything from the Bond universe for the multiplayer content, which is what led to Oddjob's addition. The team even wanted to include previous Bond leads, but only the Goldeneye actors signed off on the digital rights.
In today's game industry, overpowered characters or only a patch away from being nerfed, unless you're Bayonetta in Super Smash Brothers. Oddjob thrived in a time where this type of post-launch change wasn't available but he definitely would be nerfed into oblivion in an official modern remake of GoldenEye. Are you an Oddjob user? Sound off in Chatty.