Person-First Shooter: Christopher Brookmyre unveils Bedlam

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, the computer and videogame industry had a rather unhealthy and unsustainable fascination with movies. Just about any Hollywood film of the time found itself with a game tie-in, costing developers a sizeable chunk of their budget, which invariably lead to a poor quality finished product. Since then, the gaming industry has ballooned and thrown up its own titles that can rival any star-studded flick, to the point that films based on games are now becoming the more common crossover, with equally disastrous results.

Meanwhile, games developed on the back of novels have had a much more steady and successful translation, pound for pound, with recent titles such as Enslaved, The Witcher and Metro 2033 proving that there’s plenty of gaming gold ready to be mined from literature old and new. Entering into this field is Bedlam, a 2013 novel by acclaimed Scottish writer Christopher Brookmyre that is now being turned into a first-person shooter by Brighton-based development team RedBedlam. However, it’s no straight forward conversion, as Brookmyre himself explains.

“I would say the book and the game are pretty much the definition of a symbiotic relationship,” he begins. “They were developed in parallel and initially the main impetus was all about the game. When I came up with the concept for it I quickly realised that the best way to develop the story was to write it as a novel. I wrote an outline for the game first, so RedBedlam had something to work with. Then I wrote the novel based on that outline, but since then it’s been back and forth between the two.”

On the other end of this working relationship is Nick Witcher, marketing director with RedBedlam and Brookmyre’s first point of contact. “I'd been reading Chris's novels for over a decade and was always struck by how often he referenced computer games,” explains Witcher on why he approached Brookmyre in the first place. “I figured he may have an idea stored away for a game and because he's such a creative writer I thought if he did, then it would be blinding.”

"I think it would be a mistake to even try to compete with the triple-A titles - it’s all about the ways in which we tell the story” – Christopher Brookmyre

Brookmyre’s resultant pitch and subsequent book saw everyman Ross Baker physically merged into Starfire, a fictitious first-person shooter from his youth. Slowly, Baker wrestles with his existence and the mystery of the brave new world he inhabits, all told through Brookmyre’s inimitable black, sweary humour. Bedlam, the novel, was well-received, not least because it stood out in the cynical world of typical, cash-grabbing, game-to-book crossovers. Unsurprisingly then, Brookmyre chose an unconventional route when he finally sat down to pen the game itself.

“One of the things we discussed early on was how much we had enjoyed the first expansion packs for Half-Life,” says Brookmyre of the main difference between book and game. “You were playing as Corporal Adrian Shephard but you’d occasionally catch a glimpse of [series protagonist] Gordon Freeman.” So with Bedlam the game, Brookmyre decided to tell the story not from Ross Baker’s point of view, but from that of a new female character, Heather Quinn, allowing both worlds to overlap in the same way as Brookmyre and Witcher had so enjoyed in Half-Life.

“We also wanted the character to be like women we know,” expands Witcher on what he calls the game’s ‘eureka’ moment. “Our friends that play games, they’re a bit geeky and love blasting someone in the face with a shotgun – in a first-person shooter of course – so it was really important that our female lead character was a believable person. It really helps that Chris has a great reputation for writing strong female characters in his novels and the whole idea just made perfect sense.”

In a medium that has a dearth of strong female protagonists, Bedlam is taking a risk right from the start, but it’s not the only gamble on show, something evident from the very opening act. “The first levels are deliberately retro looking with nineties textures and really bad enemy AI,” laughs Brookmyre. “But early on there’s a glitch, like something’s gone wrong with the game, and if you walk into the glitch you’re suddenly transported to this other type of world where the textures are state of the art and the whole feel of it is completely different. So it’s that kind of thing that’s going to hopefully make the player question what the real story is.”

It’s a story that the team eventually hope to expand upon, with a planned trilogy of games and books in the pipeline. However, all is dependent on the success of this first outing, which the team have been working hard, and thriftily, to accomplish. “I have a lot of ideas about where I’d like to take the story and obviously if the game is a success and we have more money for a sequel, that will allow us to do more complex things,” says Brookmyre. “As it stands I think our current budget is about half-a-million pounds, which is nothing in these terms.  But we have a small team who have done pretty remarkable things and the infrastructure they’ve developed over the past decade will help it look like a more polished product. Nonetheless, there are limitations with what we can do.”

In this respect, when talking to Brookmyre, it comes across as very much a case of ‘art from adversity,’ clearly relishing the challenges presented by such a relatively small-budgeted game. “There are occasions where you make a virtue of it and other times you just have fun with it,” he explains. “For example, all of Quinn’s communication between worlds is done with a comms system, so you never see anybody’s lips move because that would have cost far too much money for the budget we have. I think it would be a mistake to even try to compete with the triple-A titles – it’s all about the ways in which we tell the story.”

That adherence to narrative first and foremost is evident in the current game build, available to PC on Steam early access at the time of writing. Had it been any other way, Brookmyre’s involvement may have seemed redundant, which Witcher was more than aware of. “Conceptually, it seems like quite a big idea for a small independent team to be working on,” he admits. “But when we got the first script through, I loved it. I knew it needed a lot of work to turn it into a game but overall the concept worked for me and it made me laugh, which is something we’re keen for players to experience.”

That experience is ready to drop as RedBedlam put the finishing touches to Bedlam for its slated full release later this month. With that, we ask both about their own gaming nostalgia, the games they themselves would like to be sucked into in the same style as Ross Baker and Heather Quinn. “When I wrote the book I was mostly thinking about Quake II,” says Brookmyre. “I’d played lots of Quake but Quake II was, for me, the beginning of online-gaming as a community and as a cultural phenomenon. I was heavily involved in that community with my 36k modem, but the minute you drew a good weapon and got a power-up, that was usually when your phone connection hung up, leaving you just standing there, easy pickings.”

Yet whereas the writer has a known videogame lineage, the game's own developer has a much more unconventional background. “I wasn't much of a gamer,” reveals Witcher of the period in question. “I liked driving and footy games but getting introduced to Half-Life and then Counter Strike, I felt like I'd discovered a new planet and a new way of living – especially after I got my first headshot!”

A new planet and a new way of living is exactly the quandary Heather Quinn finds herself in. Even with twenty years of development since the genre took shape, plus a wealth of intelligence and humour embedded in its own narrative, Bedlam is still a videogame that’s aiming for the kill-shot.