Fans of Assassin's Creed will be greeted by a familiar face when they load up the latest intalment of the game - author of Join Me and Yes Man, presenter of numerous BBC television shows and all-round nice-guy Danny Wallace will appear in a significant role as a historian in the game. I was granted some time with the one-time Sega Power reviewer to discuss his life in gaming, how it feels to be realised in 3D, and a decidedly unorthodox piece of casting ...
How did you get involved in this project?
Well, I've got a friend who's a bit of a gamer, very massively, a bit too much actually; one of his rooms is essentially a museum to old rubbish consoles. If I ever get an invite to a fancy games event, I'll always bring him down, and he gets very excited and runs up to lots of game sellers.
He was doing that [at the videogame Baftas], and sort of shaking the hands of many men (I didn't know who they were, and he was deeply excited to be there) and then because he'd run off and left me on my own, a gentleman came up to me, happy-faced guy, and he said "Listen mate, I wonder if you'd like to be involved in a project?"
Usually when strange men do that, I obviously want to know a bit more, but it was a very friendly thing. It appeared to be about a video game, and I said "Yeah, let's have a talk about it", and it turned out it was Assassin's Creed II, a big blockbuster thing (I played the first one, loved it, wanted to get involved). He said "it could have been written for you - right, could have been written for you, this role."
They gave me the script, and the description of the character, which could have been written for me, was a nerdy, lonely sarcastic man with glasses, and I thought "perhaps I've been typecasted", but I read on, and it was fun and it was funny, and that was it - I was sold, and the next thing I knew I was recording it.
Why do you think you were chosen by Ubisoft?
If I was making the game I might not have been my first choice, but I'm thrilled that they did choose me, and I've got a background in gaming, I think they liked my stuff, thought I was alright. I thought it would be a fun thing to do, and my career has no real plan, I just want to have fun.
You've been a writer, radio producer, television presenter, worked in movies, written books - and now acted in a videogame. Do you find it difficult to define what you do now?
I guess so. I'm a writer basically, I do other stuff and writing is the core of it, and all of the other stuff feels like a hobby, lots of hobbies really. If a cab driver asks me, I say I work in Argos, that cuts the conversation somewhat, and if he happens to go on ("I love Argos") then as employee of the month, Bath branch, 1994 i think, I've got some background knowledge to get away with it.
Tell me a bit more about the character you play in the game.
He is the historian and as you play along, I will impart important information to you. He's probably a bit annoyed that he's not an assassin out in the field, because he wears spectacles, not a good look, but he has got a darker side that's revealed. I like to think of it that you, as the gamer, and me, we don't really get on. I like to think of it as one of those teenage American films, where by the end, the hero and my character kind of look each other and go, "you're alright by me" that kind of thing.
Do you think it's the start of a trend, casting television personalities or people respected in other mediums in videogames?
Yeah maybe, it's happening more and more. I know that Omid Djalili is in a game, and then the night i got approached about this, Jonathan Ross was asked, was being asked right there and then to be in another one, so he's popping up at some point in another game. I thought this would be just a little cameo, just you know, pop up, have fun, and it turned into something a bit bigger which I'm pleased about; it's nice.
Is it strange seeing yourself realised in a computer game?
It is a bit, yeah, I've seen some pictures but it's only this morning that I've seen it kind of moving around and talking.
That's a bit weird, and the fact that in the screen behind you I'm there somewhere, just typing away, and as the gamer you can just go up to me and start bothering me by just pressing the button, and you know I'll just get more and more annoyed - which I think my wife will enjoy doing.
You've mentioned your gaming background - something that comes up in your books. Didn't you start out reviewing games as a teenager?
Yeah, we were offered the chance at school to do some work experience, just before the proper work experience, like a little taster, and I was offered the chance to do this work in an accountant's office or digging ditches. I thought I'd maybe try and find something more interesting, and itd be a bit more fun.
So I bothered Sega Power magazine, and they let me come in. I was doing anything - making cups of tea for people who already had tea, alphabetising things that really didn't need alphabetising, trying to be a bit indispensable. One day a reviewer got ill, and they gave me a go, and I played the game to death, and that was it, suddenly I was part of this team, and I was this sort of voice of youth.
I still remember the first thing I wrote, it was issue 34 page 104, I've still got a copy somewhere, and it was actually a little feature. My mum and dad were taking me to America for a few weeks on holiday, and for me America was this incredible Mecca of video games, video game shops on every corner, and I got there, and it wasn't. And also the places we were going, like Maine, and Colorado, weren't exactly the hub of gaming, so I wrote a feature about that for them, and then got to write more. And suddenly got to write a bit more, and I was writing for Gamesmaster, and Total, and lots of other things that unfolded too, after I started writing for them.
I found myself at one point doing the tips column in a Nintendo magazine, and I didn't even have a Nintendo. It was a thing called Ask Alan, I didn't know what to call it, and he left, so I called it Don't Ask Alan, and suddenly I was this tipster, but without an actual console. The first book I wrote, the first Danny Wallace book, is a Mortal Kombat tips guide that was given away free with Gamesmaster.
Your younger self probably would have been astonished if he knew that you'd eventually be involved in a project like this
Yeah, totally, just the idea that you could be in a videogame, back then, was a bit crazy, because you'd get terrible efforts, they'd just look like really flat photos of people, and if you had the real person in a game, it would look like some terrible line drawing. Now you know you can spin around, see people from all different angles, it's extraordinary.
Do you still have time for gaming?
Yeah, I sort of got back into it in the last few years what with Xbox and PS3, and Call of Duty - I'm a huge fan.
I only play online, never the single player game, I like to play against other people, and outwitting and being outwitted and those moments where someone beats you, and it's just great because they've been so clever about it.
As for Assassin's Creed, the best thing about that, for me, was freerunning. They had this amazing thing where you can just hold down a button, and aim, and you look like you're incredible - like your hand-eye coordination is second to none - and anytime my wife would walk into the room, and I was doing that, she would just think that I was the biggest nerd in the world, being able to do this. It's like another world, to some people, which is interesting, but it's becoming a lot more mainstream.
I enjoy the world of the Wii, when my dad comes round, because it's instinctive. We'd always try and play together when I was younger, but he wouldn't realise for about 10 minutes that we were actually playing one player, and he wasn't actually playing. With the Wii because it's all down to how your body works and hand eye coordination, he'll be jumping out of his chair, this 67 year old retired professor, just like Harry Redknapp. I'm sure he'd appreciate the comparison. That means I'd be married to Louise, this is good.
What are games do you look back on most fondly?
When I was young your social group in terms of games was really carved up in the kind of Blur/Oasis kind of way, whether you like MegaDrives or ... you had a SNES? Wouldn't have talked to you. So yeah, you had things like Mario and Pilotwings, we had Sonic. And then Sonic 2 came out, that was a big one, so yeah Sonic, that was a big one.
Way of the Exploding Fist on the BBC is another that springs to mind, we went out, me and my dad went out one just after christmas, and I spent my £2.70 or whatever, and got that from Woolworths. I remember my mum buying me a copy of Donkey Kong, on the ZX, where you had the tape, and that was another big milestone, then GoldenEye, on the N64, that was a summer I'll never get back, just me and four mates and a 24 pack of Stella.
I think everyone of our generation looks back particularly fondly on GoldenEye.
Yeah definitely. I used to like the fact that you could see where other people were, and if you knew the map you could go and get them. I had it down so much that I could shoot a rocket in the air and have it timed so by the time that guy had turned the corner it would land on his head. I was obsessive about it.
For a more recent choice, it's a tussle between Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty. It would be churlish of me not to mention Call of Duty. I realise this is a Ubisoft thing, but to understand the world of the gamer ... I think everyone will buy both in November, they'll be two sort of milestone games, and Assassin's and Call of Duty, can't have one without the other.
Beyond graphics, how would you say games have changed since you started playing?
A lot of the same techniques will always be used. In the early days with the coin-ops, button bashing, then the decathlons - all the Olympic games that have come out recently even are still very similar fundamentally. The Wii, that's kind of changing the way we think about how to control games, so I think it's great with a game like Assassin's Creed where there's no longer a kind of set, like a platform game where there's a beginning, middle, and an end-of-level boss, it's a world to explore and a kind of mythology around it.
In the future, if we take things like that and incorporate the new technologies that are coming off the back of say, Nintendo's work, you're gonna have this incredible, sort of room, almost, your games room, where you can feel like you're moving around within these worlds. Nintendo have modeled the Wii not on the old way of controlling games but on a new way, where you actually move, and they've thought about the way you think. Stick that with a game like this, and you'll never leave the house.
What's next for Danny Wallace?
I imagine the franchise will keep me busy for the next 10 years with sequels and then the spin-off movie - the Historian, I'm calling it. I've faxed them, I've not heard back. I've got a new book out this summer. It's a book based on my Shortlist columns and some new stuff as well. There's a sitcom I'm developing and working on, I'll give that a go, and a film script I've just finished that we're sending off soon. They'll probably come back in the next few weeks and say this is dreadful, and I'll start again. In the next year I wanna just write and play games.
My career's basically been about finding the fun, and trying to do it well so you get asked to do more, and it's about those moments, trying to do things well, taking things to them really, and if you have an idea, actually doing it the next morning. Even when it feels like it's not going your way, just keep doing it, believing in it.
• Assassin's Creed II is out 20 November for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
