In the 10-plus years since Activision acquired it, Middleton-based Raven Software has been the very definition of a good solider, doing a bang-up job on the company's licensed franchises (X-Men Wolverine: Origins, Wolfenstein) while back-burnering its own original concepts.
Raven's initial reward for such rare and remarkable loyalty? Watching Activision use its own adamantium-laced claws to slash Raven's staff by a whopping 30% in September, only a month or so after the release of the company's latest game, Singularity. The unconfirmed word at that point was that Raven's developers were being crunched into a single team, possibly assigned to throw together downloadable content for Activision's various Call of Duty games.
Which is what made it so strange to see Raven at the center of a bizarre rumor/report that surfaced earlier this week, attaching the company to the possible development of... a stealth-based James Bond game. Feel free to insert as many question marks and exclamation points as you'd like here.
But here's the 007 rub: The Bond franchise is an extended lull that has the potential to end up rivaling Rip Van Winkle and the Detroit Lions' losing-season streak. Fans already know that the next Bond flick remains stuck in development hell, thanks to MGM Studios' financial woes. (And despite the general awesomeness of Daniel Craig, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.) Add in the fact that not one, but two different Bond videogames -- Blood Stone and a Goldeneye remake on the Wii -- have released in the last month to an all but deafening commercial silence, and you begin to suspect that Activision's good solider studio has been handed another no-win secret mission, all the better for its parent company to cash in on what could be an expiring license.
Assuming, of course, that it ever even sees the living daylights, a Raven-built Bond game could help to bring Britain's most famous super-spy back into the gaming-culture limelight, adding some Sam Fisher and Solid Snake sneakiness to the traditional shaken-not-stirred 007 action cocktail. Raven has the talent and the track record. But for now, I'm thinking the whole project's a Richard Kiel-sized "if."