If there’s one thing Navid Khonsari has had quite enough of for the moment, it’s the American Dream. After working as a cinematics director on Grand Theft Auto 3, GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas, Bully, Red Dead Revolver, and both Max Payne titles, the Iranian-born Khonsari is bringin’ it home.
Now working for iNK Stories, Khonsari’s new project, 1979, is a sandbox, open world game featuring what he describes in an exclusive interview with CNN as a “baton-pass” narrative, which sees the unfolding events of Iran’s Islamic Revolution through the perspectives of several playable characters.
“I want people to understand the incredible moral ambiguity of this story, that this was a country with many different ideas and beliefs,” Khonsari says. “Growing up in Iran when I did, I saw Iranians in the greatest light, and I saw them in the worst light.”
The game starts you out as an American translator, deployed to Tehran to assist with the rescue of hostages at the US Embassy. And when you get there, everything changes.
“Once you get into Iran, you’re no longer the translator,” he explains. “You take the role of a student demonstrator who was opposed the shah. You’ve kicked the shah out, but you’re unhappy with some of these fanatical elements you see rising up.
“So the game changes, and now your mission is to get this small military group to Tehran, but nonviolently, clandestinely. You want the American hostages out of Iran because you want the country to focus on rebuilding itself, and you’ve heard all these rumors about a war with Iraq coming.”
Each time the player takes on a new character – there’s that “baton-passing” thing he was talking about – the gameplay changes up. You’ll be shooting guns at bad guys one moment, and solving puzzles the next.
“(This is) the first installment of a franchise where the games will be named after years in which there were CIA operations within certain countries,” he adds. “1979 is the first one because it’s closest to my heart and I know the story the best. After that, we want to explore what took place in Panama with (Manuel) Noriega, and Libya back in the ’70s and ’80s with (Moammar) Gadhafi.”
Sounds… interesting. The game’s still at least a year and a half away from launch, so expect to see more about this one over the coming months.
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