13 min read
“Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr. Matsuki – it may be your last.”
ok i tried, my bad
On the 18th of November 2020, developer IO Interactive posted to social media that they’d be revealing a new project. It wasn’t related to Hitman – the third game in the World of Assassination trilogy had already been announced during the PS5 reveal event and was on track to meet its January release date. So, what was it about?
While the majority of IO’s output has been Hitman games, they’ve dabbled in other IPs: Freedom Fighters, the Kane & Lynch duology, and – out of character as it may sound – Mini Ninjas. No one knew what to expect, and we certainly didn’t have “Bond in video games revival” on our bingo cards…
Bond’s last proper appearance in video games was 2012’s 007 Legends, developed by Eurocom and published by Activision. (I’m not counting the godawful World of Espionage smartphone game.) Released to coincide with the franchise’s fiftieth anniversary – Dr. No premiered on October 5th, 1962 – it had an interesting concept: a mash-up of some of the best set pieces in Bond history. But the execution was poor.
A common criticism levied at Activision-era Bond games was that they played like a poor man’s Call of Duty. Surely, some executive thought the military-shooter formula would thrive with a licensed property. It didn’t – to no one’s surprise. I’d go so far as to say Activision was a poor steward of the Bond license, and it’s a shame how things played out.
I, for one, liked Blood Stone’s story and their take on GoldenEye. Anyone who played games in the late ’90s knows Rareware’s GoldenEye 007 – its multiplayer has been often imitated, never duplicated – and Activision’s version wasn’t half bad. Sadly, both games marked an end for their developers: Blood Stone would be Bizarre Creations’ final project, and for Eurocom, GoldenEye would be their last well-received outing before things took a nosedive.
Eon had their “Star Wars Holiday Special” moment – reportedly revoking Activision’s rights to the IP – and didn’t trust the Bond license to anyone after that.
Bond lay dormant, but not for lack of interest. In 2014, Telltale Games co-founder Kevin Bruner expressed a desire to make a Bond game – if given the chance and an unlimited budget. By then, the point-and-click developer had struck gold with licensed titles like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. A hypothetical James Bond: A Telltale Games Series wouldn’t have focused on action, but espionage – and I could see that working. If anyone could pull it off, it was them.
But a perfect storm of perpetual crunch, outdated tools, and baffling executive decisions took its toll on the overambitious studio, leading to its closure in 2018.
More recently, a trailer by British developer Traveller’s Tales surfaced, pitching Lego James Bond to the license holders at The Lego Group in 2016. It went nowhere – the company thought Bond didn’t fit their brand image and passed on the idea. What’s interesting is that this pitch, unlike many industry leaks that swirl unconfirmed, was verified by a former director who worked there at the time.
Still, none of these attempts had Eon’s blessing.
IO’s lunch room at their Copenhagen location. (Image credit: Edge Magazine)
So how did IO manage to win over the Broccolis?
According to the IO heads in an interview with Edge Magazine, Eon wasn’t even looking for a new game. They weren’t happy with the results of the earlier, action-heavy entries. The license holder wanted more sophistication from Bond’s next outing, and IO’s creative north star, honed over the years with Hitman, is to make violence a choice, not the default. Except, of course, when murder is the mission. They wanted the same thing.
I won’t speculate on how you pitch your vision to someone who may not be fully familiar with your work, but the result is clear: we’re getting a new Bond game, after more than a decade of silence.
Project 007 was born. From Denmark and Sweden… with love.
The project was described as having “a wholly original Bond story and will see players earn their 00 status in the very first James Bond origin story.” This was groundbreaking: Fleming’s novels never told this story, Eon’s Casino Royale flirted with the idea but never expanded on it, and none of the earlier games featuring original plots were billed as an origin. IO was truly navigating uncharted waters – but they seemed up to the challenge. If you’re making a game based on such a high-profile IP, it’d bloody better be a noteworthy one. Earn your number and all that.
Aside from the license reveal, the teaser showed very little. Yet the community reaction was positive. Bond had been missing for over a decade, and to some, it was like a beloved relative you haven’t seen in years – you don’t realize how much you miss them until they return. The prevailing sentiment was that if IO’s take on 007 followed the blueprint of their Hitman series, it had real potential.
And the timing? Perfect.
The flood of bombastic military shooters and the decline of stealth-focused games had left many fans burned out, craving something more tactical. Meanwhile, Eon wanted a different kind of Bond for years – one that leaned harder into the “secret agent” side of the character. IO seemed perfectly positioned to satisfy both the audience and the license holder.
The teaser also served as a recruitment tool, with the studio stating how new recruits would work on Project 007. I’d imagine qualified developers couldn’t pass up the chance to work on this revival. And who knows – maybe they drew in people who worked on older Bond titles, similar to how the Modern Warfare (2019) reimagining included Call of Duty alumni among its staff, some of whom had even worked on the original Modern Warfare.
Then… silence. For years, the game went unmentioned.
…until last April.
The original teaser resurfaced on the Switch 2-themed Nintendo Direct, confirming one of the platforms it’ll launch on. In June, a post in IO’s social media confirmed Project 007’s official name: 007 First Light, with a proper reveal later in the week. The unveiling happened during Sony’s State of Play, shortly before Keighley’s Summer Game Fest was scheduled to start, confirming a release window of 2026. A trailer uploaded to IO’s YouTube channel soon after confirmed the full list of platforms: Switch 2, Xbox Series, PS5, Steam, and Epic Games Store.
With the background established, let’s dive into this trailer, shall we?
First, some disclaimers: I’m unfamiliar with the novels, though I’ve read Bond’s biography as presented by fan wikis – which, in my experience, tend to have more detail than the main Wikipedia pages, if one exists at all. Any commentary on his characterization assumes that IO is building their Bond to align with the one from the novels, though that may ultimately not be the route they take. Finally, while I can’t be as thorough as I’d like, there are things I want to point out based on what we were shown.
It gets mentioned a lot: how Bond’s parents died in a climbing accident, leaving him an orphan. IO starts the trailer by showing the climbing event. And it’s here that we hit our first discrepancy: Bond is with his parents when it happens. That’s not how it goes in the novels – there, he’s said to be staying with his aunt while they’re abroad. If we’re dealing with an alternate take where young Bond was present, as morbid as it may sound, I’d like to see the player take control of him during that moment. It would carry far more weight than just hearing M or Bond narrate it later. I picture it playing out similarly to how Uncharted handles its walk-and-talk sequences between set pieces.
Another detail stands out: “he (then) started a grand tour of every major boarding school in Britain.” I know about the incident at Eton, but the implication that he bounced from school to school doesn’t match the character’s usual backstory. Perhaps this man named “Greenway” is exaggerating to establish Bond’s demeanor. Still, I can’t argue with what comes next: “always at odds with authority – same thing in the Navy.” That much is true. Fleming described Bond as “a blunt instrument of the government in power,” but he wasn’t always agreeable. He bent the rules when it suited him, and that ruffled more than a few feathers.
Since I mentioned Uncharted, I’ll admit: I laughed when Bond appeared. My first thought was, “Nathan Drake, is that you? What are you doing here?” The scar on his face is a nice touch – someone clearly paid attention to the novels. As for the ongoing speculation about whose likeness was used, I don’t particularly care. What does interest me is the voice. While IO hasn’t confirmed it, many believe it’s Irish actor Patrick Gibson of Dexter fame. I can’t comment on his performance, since I’m not a TV person, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
I got a little sentimental when I saw the Quartermaster – not for the character, but because it reminded me how much I miss Ben Whishaw. The character shown seems to be modeled slightly after John Cleese; really, if IO wanted to nod toward the film Qs, Desmond Llewelyn would’ve been the stronger pull. That said, I’m excited about the possibility of gadgets making a comeback in gameplay, especially since the concept felt sidelined during both the Craig and Activision eras. And that Triumph motorcycle before we cut to a training regimen scene? I was immediately getting Everything or Nothing vibes. I want a motorcycle mission in IO’s game!
We get actual gameplay footage! Most of the cuts appear to be set in a mansion – likely the only fully polished environment ready when the trailer was assembled – but it gives us a taste of what to expect. Bond sneaks around, throws something at a guard (I couldn’t tell if it was a dart or a distraction device), and stealthily neutralizes another. He disarms one guard, throws an empty gun at another to stagger them, kicks someone over a balcony to their death, and – once his cover seems to be blown – opens fire outside a warehouse. The sequence wraps up with a one-liner that genuinely made me laugh: when a housekeeper walks into the aftermath of Bond’s rampage, he shrugs it off with, “Jet lag. Gets me every time.”
It was exciting to see an Aston Martin in a high-octane chase sequence! I don’t know if the Hitman games have ever dabbled in this kind of action before, so I can’t say how it’ll play in First Light. Instead, I want to focus on the vehicle itself. Bond’s behind the wheel of a DBS V8 — Aston Martin’s first-generation V8-powered car. This model ran from 1969 to 1972, before being succeeded (and rebranded) as the AM V8, which stayed in production until 1989.
I also looked into the license plate, and I spent way too much time on it just to answer one question for myself: was it period-correct? Turns out, it seems like it! Taking the car’s general timeframe (1969–1972) as our base, the plate – GVFR 637 J – would’ve been issued under the suffix system: “GV” designates Ipswich, and “J” stands for 1970, which lines up with the car model. We could even go ahead and say this is a 1970 DBS V8. The “R” doesn’t correspond to anything in the system, likely an intentional choice to avoid clashing with a real registration – probably for folks like me who obsessively look into this stuff.
As for the sequence itself, the setting got me wondering: could this chase actually be in the Ipswich countryside? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t – but based on the plate and the sudden way the scene kicks off, the thought crossed my mind, and I couldn’t help entertaining it.
What follows is a series of quick-fire scenes from the game – none of which warrant individual breakdowns on my part, save for the music choice. Playing underneath is a rearrangement of John Barry’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service theme, originally featured in the film of the same name. It’s a perfect fit for the montage, capturing that unmistakable “Bondian” feel, for lack of a better word.
I also spotted what seemed like nods to various Bond films sprinkled throughout the rest of the trailer. Among the ones I could make out: Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino Royale, The Living Daylights, and even Die Another Day. It truly feels like IO is writing a love letter to the series – and as someone who’s been a Bond fan for years, I couldn’t ask for a better comeback.
Overall, I think this is a strong showing for what IO’s been quietly cooking these past four years. They understood the assignment — they wouldn’t have pitched this to Eon, much less convinced them to give Bond in video games another try, if they hadn’t. It hits all the right notes, delivers fan service in exactly the ways a Bond game should, and still finds room to hint at how they plan to innovate within the universe. I’m thrilled beyond what words can express.
A closing thought: when Activision lost the rights to the Bond IP, I felt relief. Despite the occasional standout, the publisher’s overall mismanagement felt like a slap in the face. I hoped EA would take another crack at it, but they weren’t interested anymore – fair enough. What I didn’t want, and what ultimately happened, was for Bond to fade quietly into the background. Like many, I was uneasy with the rise of smartphone gaming and how every major IP seemed to be migrating there. Even Bond dipped his toes in those waters – unsuccessfully. The landscape could’ve been very different had the IP managed to gain real traction on mobile, and that thought still gives me the shivers.
It touches on something fundamental about why I play games. If you’d asked me back then, I would’ve said gameplay mattered more than story. Now? I think they’re equally important. Maybe they always were. I think of games that moved me deeply with their narratives, even when the gameplay left something to be desired – and suddenly, the division between the two isn’t so black and white anymore.
I feel deep, deep gratitude to IO for letting this jaded soul feel excitement again. I wish them nothing but the best on the road to gold, and I’ll be there whenever the game is ready.
Godspeed, Commander.