{"id":298214,"date":"2025-07-28T10:17:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T10:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/298214\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T10:17:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T10:17:10","slug":"meet-the-new-james-bond-how-007-first-light-earned-its-licence-to-thrill-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/298214\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the new James Bond: how 007 First Light earned its licence to thrill | Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years after No Time to Die \u2013 the 25th 007 film and the final outing for Daniel Craig\u2019s version of the world\u2019s most famous spy \u2013 there is still no named successor to put on the tux, order a martini, or get behind the wheel of an Aston Martin. At least, not in cinemas. However, for the first time in Bond history, the world will meet a new James Bond<\/a> in a video game, before a new 007 makes their debut on film.<\/p>\n

As developed by Danish studio IO Interactive for next year\u2019s 007 First Light, the new Bond is blandly handsome in a doll-like way. He is fresh-faced, with blue eyes that appear more cocksure than piercing, in contrast to the refined older Bond of most films or Craig\u2019s ruggedness \u2013 although he is clearly inspired by Craig\u2019s man-of-action approach. The implication is not that this Bond will eschew these traits but acquire them. First Light is an origin story intended to define one of the most durable protagonists in entertainment for a new generation of game-literate fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way we went about it was to start with the origin. Because then we get to play with questions such as, \u2018Who is James Bond the young man, and what does it mean to be a 00 Agent?\u2019\u201d says IO Interactive co-owner and First Light creative director Christian Elverdam. \u201cWhat does it mean to become 007?\u201d<\/p>\n

Most James Bond video games to date have been shooters, in the mould of 1997\u2019s wildly popular Nintendo 64 game GoldenEye 007. Despite the continued success of the first-person shooter genre that GoldenEye helped popularise, subsequent 007 games saw diminishing returns. The tepid reviews and poor sales of 2012\u2019s 007 Legends put Bond\u2019s video-game career on hiatus, until IO approached Eon Productions with a deceptively straightforward pitch: a game that is less about shooting things and more about recreating the experience of a Bond film.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are great shootouts in the movies \u2013 but, if you think about it, it\u2019s not that many, right?\u201d says Elverdam. Correcting this discrepancy between the movies and games became \u201cthe nucleus\u201d of IO\u2019s pitch to Eon: to do Bond right in a video game, Elverdam says, meant letting players inhabit a character who is \u201cnot always shooting\u201d.<\/p>\n

This was an easy case for IO to make, because it had done it before. Between 2016 and 2021, the studio released an impressive three-part reboot of Hitman<\/a>, its series about an elite contract killer. With an admirable lack of self-consciousness, IO kept what worked about older Hitman games (prioritising elegant planning and problem-solving over wanton violence) and jettisoned what didn\u2019t (a sometimes lurid tone and confounding story). The result was remarkable: a series of endlessly replayable puzzles whose solutions involved the untimely deaths of the worst of the global elite with little collateral damage and allowed the assassin to escape entirely unnoticed. Satirical, witty and clever, Hitman: World of Assassination was a compelling calling card for IO to leave in Eon\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this stuff [in Hitman] feels like spycraft already,\u201d Elverdam says, \u201cSo if we take that, and we take some leaps\u201d \u2013 these leaps being the things a Bond game ought to include, such as driving, fisticuffs and, yes, shootouts \u2013 \u201cthat becomes the pitch for what would eventually be First Light.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Not always shooting\u2019 \u2026 Bond takes to the road in 007 First Light. Photograph: IO Interactive<\/p>\n

The title is apt, as this game is the first glimmer of promising news for an entertainment property in a precarious position. Initially announced as Project 007<\/a> in November 2020, the game has survived a tumultuous period for Bond, which began with the $8.45bn (\u00a36.3bn) merger<\/a> of the character\u2019s studio home MGM with the e-commerce giant Amazon in March 2022. While the newly christened Amazon MGM would control the lucrative existing Bond catalog, the idea was that creative decisions on future films \u2013 including who would play the MI6 agent \u2013 would remain with Eon, with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson steering the family business.<\/p>\n

Then, this February, Broccoli and Wilson handed creative control over to Amazon<\/a> in an undisclosed but allegedly massive deal that ended the Broccoli family\u2019s 63-year tenure as the stewards of James Bond\u2019s cinematic exploits. In the months since, Amazon has begun to announce its plans, and selected Denis Villeneuve to direct the next film<\/a>. But everyone with a passing or professional interest in Bond is still waiting with bated breath for a casting decision<\/a>, and what it may mean for one of the most lucrative film franchises in the world.<\/p>\n

With the next cinematic Bond in limbo, however, a new video game Bond can make a stronger impression. The first trailer for 007 First Light<\/a> isn\u2019t terribly specific but it exudes confidence. It\u2019s a montage affirming that everything fans love about 007 will be present. The death traps and gadgets from the Roger Moore era are there, as is the muscular physicality of Craig\u2019s Bond, and the devil-may-care attitude consistent across all onscreen depictions of the character.<\/p>\n

Everything fans love about the series will be present. Photograph: IO Interactive<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to really do this with high ambition, you have to look at the different Bond instalments and figure out what each of them tried to do, and then let that inform your own take,\u201d Elverdam says.<\/p>\n

While the creative director of First Light has much to say about 007 in general, he is not quite ready to talk specifics in relation to his version. The name of the voice actor playing Bond, for example, remains classified. But Elverdam is aware that, for all Bond\u2019s enduring popularity, he is not a character who can just be dropped thoughtlessly into the modern world.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery Bond is a Bond of their time, no matter how intentional you are. It\u2019s unavoidable,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is a zeitgeist in what you perceive as a threat, what you perceive as aspirational qualities \u2013 all that changes over time.\u201d Elverdam rattles off some questions that IO\u2019s version of Bond will consequently contemplate: when do you do your duty? When do you improvise? What does it mean to serve King and Country? Why do it in the first place?<\/p>\n

If Elverdam and IO are clever enough in answering these questions, they may give the next film-star Bond a run for his money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four years after No Time to Die \u2013 the 25th 007 film and the final outing for Daniel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-298214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114930348832783684","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}