Find out the real reasons why Matt Damon wasn't involved with the game.

There’s no denying that the Bourne movie series was one of the most successful in the history of action flicks. Though many questioned whether or not Matt Damon could be a legitimate action star before the series kicked off, he delivered big-time in all three movies.

But, as many of you may already know, the developers of the Bourne Conspiracy seem to think that they can be successful without the action star featured in their game. In fact, they have even went as far as to go in a totally different direction with the Matt Damon-less Bourne Conspiracy. And both sides have recently opened up as to why Damon, or even any resemblance to him, is not in the game.

The whole saga began when the developer, High Moon Studios, made it known that Damon was welcome to be a part of the game if he so desired. They didn’t sit down and talk to him directly but they claim they tried their best to make the fact known that he could be in the game. And this is where the gray area comes in as Damon turned down the offer and little more was reported about the decision afterwards.

There were, however, speculations as to why Matt Damon did not want to be a part of the game with the main one being that he didn’t appreciate the violence it was set to offer. This rumor was only further fueled after a newspaper quoted Damon’s mom, professor Nancy Carlsson-Paige, as saying, “I am very wary of violent video games. Research shows they desensitize kids to violence, even more because they engage kids in committing violence.”

But if one stops and thinks for a second, wouldn’t it seem odd that Damon would be so anti-video game violence? After all, this would be a little bit hypocritical seeing as how he starred in a trilogy of movies that definitely dispensed their share of violence to the audience.

In fact, the truth is that this story about Damon not wanting any part of Bourne Conspiracy due to the violent content is somewhat exaggerated. The real story about why he isn’t in the game seems to have a lot more to do with how he says High Moon Studios ignored his ideas about how the game should be made.

Matt stated his vision for the game by saying, “I lobbied hard to not make a first-person-shooter game but to make it more like Myst which was a great, interesting puzzle you tried to solve…..you know, to play with his amnesia or his memory. They weren't interested. They made the game anyway without my likeness.”

People who know the computer game Myst (and its sequels) know that it is not exactly the most action-packed game. Though it was a great in its time, perhaps it is not the best choice to model an action-oriented story like that of Jason Bourne after. And while Damon’s story contends that his ideas for the game were largely ignored, one might start to understand why upon his insistence on Bourne Conspiracy being modeled after Myst.

Meelad Sadat of High Moon Studios got the impression that Damon’s heart was never fully in the game to begin with as he mentioned, “We got the sense that his interest in games overall was marginal, and we decided to move away from celebrity involvement and take our Bourne into an original direction.”

And this new direction is taking the Bourne Conspiracy to that of a main character who bears virtually no resemblance to Damon at all. The only link seems to be that the game’s Jason Bourne has the same freakishly-fast martial arts ability as the Damon-played Jason Bourne did.

Whether this new direction with the character will turn out to be a winning formula remains to be seen. However, most of the previews for the game seem to think that High Moon Studios has done a good job with Bourne Conspiracy. The rest of us will just have to wait until early next month to get our opinion.