John Wick has been expanding across mediums since the first movie’s breakout success, and John Wick Hex sees that process hit the world of videogames. A big part of the movie series’ style is its stunts, and capturing that work accurately in John Wick Hex gameplay meant the developers needed to work closely with the film’s stunt coordinators – and occasionally get a little roughed up by them.
There’s a move in John Wick Hex, for example, that lets you push an enemy back a few feet. “There’s no moment in John Wick where he pushes someone three meters like that,” lead developer Mike Bithell tells us. “It doesn’t really exist in the movie, but we knew it was something that made sense in the game.
Bithell says he was “able to turn to Jojo [Eusebio], the stunt coordinator, and show him a really rough version of that mechanic in the game and be like, ‘what should that look like?’ And him saying ‘stand up,’ and grabbing me, grabbing my shirt, and being like ‘do we do it like that?’”
With a rough idea of how the move should go in mind, Eusebio would then grab a fellow stunt performer and work out the details. Then Bithell was able to film the drills, and give the developers back at home reference material for what those moves should look like.
Even with some gentle violence, Bithell says the stunt team was “lovely” – and that he got the vicarious thrill of doing something like a simple wrist twist and watching a trained stunt professional do “do four spins and go flying across the room. It makes you look cool.”
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Bithell also gave us some quick insight into the replay function for John Wick Hex – at least, as much as he could when he’s clearly not allowed to talk about it just yet. (He’s clearly excited for it, though.)