'John Wick Hex' creator Mike Bithell talks unusual prequel: Interview

"'Well, you wouldn't do a third-person shooter because it'd be kind of boring, and it wouldn't let you think like John Wick. You'd haveto make something where it's about thinking. So, I guess it's like a strategy game?'"

Leaving a movie theater with games producer and friend Ben Andac, indie developer Mike Bithell pitched an off-the-cuff premise for a combat game. It would be a tactical puzzler, possibly turn-based, dedicated to unpacking the marvelous mind of Bithell's favorite on-screen hero, the John Wick.

The hypothetical game of "John Wick chess" (as the concept would come to be short-handed) would bottle the mesmerizing complexity of the hero's iconic fighting skills, while examining the in-the-moment thought processes of the man behind the pistol.

In this theoretical world, gamers wouldn't run around in poorly rendered suits under even more poorly rendered neon lights, heedlessly cascading bullets onto charmless enemies. No, we would become John Wick from the inside out.

To Bithell, this imagined game was little more than a pleasant exchange between friends, a clever answer to a pipe dream question from Andac — "How would you make a John Wickvideo game?" — shared in the post-cinematic glow of an action film Bithell can't even remember the title of now.

To Andac, it was a job interview for one of the most beloved franchises in action movie history.

Andac knew the Wickverse was in the market for an unconventional games guy. And more importantly, he knew Bithell's name was already in the running.

After all, Andac had put it there.

"They brought in a producer called Ben, who is out there," Bithell recounts of an early conversation between franchise creators at Lionsgateand gaming publishers at Good Shepherd (which he was notably not party to) for Mashable — gesturing to a lobby filled with PR folks and Andac in the process.

"And then they say, 'Who would make a weird, interesting John Wickgame?' And Ben says, 'I've got a friend, who is obsessed with John Wick and obsessed with action movies. But he makes weird shit. And he's called Mike.'"

Now, months later, Bithell is the official creator and director behind John Wick Hex — an unconventional prequel to the movie trio, made for Windows and Mac OS and announced in early May.

The brilliant mind behind indie smash hits like Subsurface Circular, Thomas Was Alone, and Volume, among many others, Bithell is far from the go-to, AAA guy many action franchises might want for a lead developer — a fact he'd be the first to tell you.

Bithell champions minimalist design and stupendously original narratives, a style that has earned him a BAFTA Games Award, mountains of critical praise, and countless fans, but isn't exactly standard fare for major adaptations.

"I'd been making [indie] games for a while, and so I wasn't really looking to make a John Wick game," Bithell remembers with a smile. "I didn't even think it was possible to get something like that."

But Bithell's high-ranking role in the behind-the-scenes Wickverse was no accident. Lionsgate wantedto do something different, and Bithell is different.

As Bithell understands it, project leaders on the movie side of John Wick began their gamifying mission by asking publishers and producers at Good Shepherd to simply find "something cool" to do with their universe.

Enter Andac, then Bithell, and finally John Wick Hex.

"I think the outside world thinks of [John Wick] as like an action franchise," Bithell notes. "But from [Lionsgate's] perspective, it's just an indie movie that did really well and changed into these three great films. So they were very into the idea of doing something that was less obvious and was interesting."

But could Hex be too outside the box for Wick's larger audience?

As evidenced by the many shocked, skeptical, and confused reactions to its first teaser,Hex is indeed an unusual game. Titled for its hexagonally designed character mechanics — meaning in-game Wick can take actions in any six directions per "move" — Hex is unlike any combat game you've seen before.

Yes, it's similar to a tabletop game like chess or checkers, but the stakes are far higher and the rules far less strict. As Bithell notes, Wick would never wait for his "turn." So in the game, there are no turns.

Instead, players are encouraged to smoothly string together sequences of sidesteps and assaults to evade their enemies in fluid, Wick-like motions bit-by-bit. Sure, you could theoretically wait indefinitely between actions — but the game's threatening aesthetic, intimidating rhythm, and implicit urgency seem to beg for rapid decision making.

Add in the game's phenomenal "fog of war" feature, a visual cloaking mechanism designed to shield from sight what Wick himself would not know about in any given arena, and you've got a pretty compelling framework for some panicky, yet thoughtful gameplay.

This promising blend comes in large part from Bithell — his games Subsurface Circular and Subsurface Quarantine share much of Hex's dire moodiness, despite their text-based design — as well as from the cherished input of John Wick'sfilmmakers.

"Once the filmmakers got involved, they started seeing the focus on the martial arts, the focus on the fight choreography, and how seriously we were taking the art of that," Bithell recounts, emphasizing his appreciation for the cinematic collaborators' willingness to step into the world of games.

Watching John Wick Chapters 1 and 2 "at least every few weeks" and flying to Los Angeles from London to read the Parabellum screenplay before Lionsgate even began production on it, Bithell relied heavily on Hex's movie partnership to tie his prequel story into the larger universe he admired so much.

Bithell recalls John Wick stuntmen agreeing to film physical demonstrations of combat for developers to model their animations after, and scouring through Wickverse details for the perfect narrative hooks to hang his story on.

At one point, John Wick director Chad Stahelski even welcomed Bithell into a Parabellum editing suite to chat Hex plans between feature-length film cuts.

"He took a break, bless him," Bithell laughs. "It could have been his excuse to take an hour off from work to be honest. But it was a productive hour! He came up with fog of war."

From what little of Hex Bithell was able to show at E3 2019, it seems that this cross-medium partnership has paid off thus far. Yes, Hex is a Bithell game — but it is also undoubtedly a John Wick game, and not just because of its title.

With no release date in sight and very little known about its story (although Bithell promises it will be faithful to its origin, yet ripe with unexpected twists), Hex largely remains a mystery to those eager to see it released. Heck, we can't be sure that Keanu Reeves' voice is in it yet.

But of two things, both promises from Bithell himself, we can be certain.

"One is to make something that is true to franchise, that respects the amazing work of everyone who has worked in this universe before me, and to make sure we don't mess it up," Bithell assures John Wick fans.

"The other responsibility, and I take this really seriously, is to do something interesting, and to not just make a lazy, easy, cash grab game," he explained.

"I don't want to make that game. I don't want to play that game. And Lionsgate definitely doesn't want to make that game either. We want to make something original and interesting. That's how John Wick got to be John Wick, because they took a chance on a strange movie about a guy whose dog dies and then he takes out bad guys."

For both Bithell and the rest of the creators in the Wickverse, John Wick Hexis just the next step in the franchise's long history of doing things that are original and interesting.

And short of the Baba Yaga himself, there isn't anyone more up to the task of championing John Wick and his legacy than Mike Bithell.

John Wick Hex is available for pre-order now.