Gun: The Randall Jahnson Interview

IGN: How did you decide to develop the characters, Ned and Colton? Do the characters have mixed backgrounds and hidden pasts that are likely to shock people like in Chinatown? Or were Sergio Leone's 1960s spaghetti westerns more of an impetus for the story of Gun?

Jahnson: They came about a bit by accident. I'd been sending ideas for characters and scenarios to the guys for a while; they were lukewarm about a lot of it because it was stuff they had seen before in other games or films. On a whim, I sent them this one-page description of the main character, which I titled "What You're Made Of." It was written in the second person: "Your given name is Colton. That much you know. You reckon you're somewhere north of 20 years, but can't say for a fact...."

"You" went on to describe your mentor, Uncle Ned White, and what little you knew about your past and a traumatic encounter with a cougar....

The Neversoft guys really responded to that, and that's what got the ball rolling. Curiously, I never dropped the "You" point of view. The whole cutscene script was written that way: "You jump on a horse and yank your rifle from its scabbard," etc...

In regards to hidden pasts, both Colton and Ned have them. Whether they're as shocking as the "she's my daughter AND my sister" moment in "Chinatown" -- I'll leave that for players of "Gun" to determine.

As for Leone, sure he was an influence but not the impetus. My sensibility for Westerns has been shaped less by spaghetti and more by stuff that has a kind of counterculture bent, like "Little Big Man," "Jeremiah Johnson," "The Long Riders," "The Missouri Breaks," "Will Penny," anything by Peckinpah, and -- though not a Western -- "Apocalypse Now." IGN: Do you play any games?

Jahnson: I'm a total greenhorn. Prior to this I'd never played a game -- and still haven't, to tell you the truth.

There was a learning curve, to be sure, but Scott and all the others didn't mind. When I first met them, they asked what kind of computer I worked on. I said a Mac. They just laughed.

IGN: What is it about the Wild West that you like, that drives you? What kinds of elements have you infused into the game that reflects the Wild West's color, violence, and raw sensibility?

Jahnson: To me the Old West has always been this incredible paradoxical arena where countless destinies were played out. It meant life. it meant death. It meant closeness to and reverence of Nature; it meant the wanton rape of the land and the genocide of its native peoples. It was a place where a man could forge a new name, a new identity, a new life, and where he could disappear without a trace.

Also, I find in it elements that - at the risk of sounding a tad corny - give me insight into today's world and an appreciation for the valor and sacrifices of those who lived then.

Years ago I was in Oklahoma researching a different project. On my last day there I visited the memorial for the federal building bombing, which brought me to tears (this was before 9/11). Then I drove west for nearly 100 miles to a little town called Cheyenne that sits in the middle of the Black Kettle National Grassland. In the quiet rolling fields just outside of town I took a self-guided walking tour down a dirt path that wound through the site where in 1868 Custer and his intrepid boys in blue attacked a Cheyenne village under chief Black Kettle. Out of the hundred or so villagers killed, only 11 were warriors. Custer also ordered his men to shoot the Indian ponies since they could not be turned into saddle horse. Their bones remained on the site until the 1920s when they were finally collected and ground into fertilizer.

In a single day -- and a hundred miles apart -- I saw both ends of the same thing. And the West is full of sites like this, sacred and profane, marked and unmarked.

I'm not sure what this all means other than perhaps by revisiting the events of back then we might glean some insight to help us navigate through events of today.