‘You can be any Bond you want’: the inside story of 007 First Light | Sports

Meif you want to tell a child’s story James Bondfirst you have to choose which James Bond will grow up. This was the task given to Hitman developer IO Interactive, the studio responsible for the spy in 007 First Light, the first Bond movie in almost 15 years. So what will it be? Will their assistant take baby steps towards Sean Connery’s ugly manhood, or do Roger Moore’s eyebrow in the bathroom mirror? It’s like he’s a “film” Bond at all. For a generation of gamers, the character is clearly there as a hand at the bottom of the screen in GoldenEye 007.

As a result, 007 First Light’s Bond, portrayed by Patrick Gibson (in the corner of another market, after playing a serial killer in the show Dexter) is a collaboration: the scar on the face is the detail of Ian Fleming, but the charming charm comes from Pierce Brosnan’s game book, and you also learn the Casino book. Royale on loop. Trying to create a Bond for all fandoms may run the risk of being unsatisfying, but in the demo we played, the performance works. Fortunately, Gibson brings a sense of instability to the alien that’s all his own, grounded by an arrogance that will one day be captured by MI6.

The multi-faceted hero allows 007 Shining to move confidently between games. Walk into the Kensington press conference and you’re playing the part of a biting Hitman. Navigation shows directions to your desired destination. Do you consider yourself an artist? Or smelling a list of sticks to send the guard yawning during his break? The difference is that, unlike Agent 47, Bond can’t break anyone’s neck, and is more of a sociable animal than a predator: a catch you don’t have to be and you can use “Instinct” to block the accuser with one rail.

Walk through the red carpet and the game changes to a hidden hidden object – a hacking device to activate electronic devices; Chemical arrows send the guards back to the warehouse – and the explosion of hand-to-hand combat. Getting noticed in a Hitman game often means reloading saves while 100 guards chase you; here you can go down, which is a polite term for punching one person in the face and screwing up their friend with the nearest ergonomic keyboard.

The chief war engineer, Tom Marcham, greets every Bond who walks through the door. “We’re happy you’ve chosen whatever (look) you want,” he says. We hope you will choose one that you will enjoy the most. The desks that a few seconds ago gave cover to a lazy game can easily turn heads. When I walk into a room with a billiards table – and its most beautiful ball – it takes a lot of self-control not to talk loudly and hit someone, just for the fun of a tough fight.

Did Marcham draw a Bond of his own while sewing his own? Daniel Craig is an obvious influence, he says, “because he has a really good way of following through. He uses krav maga, so we take a lot from that.” But he also likes the “madness” of Brosnan’s time, which is associated with a young, wild spy. “We want them to not be 100% familiar from the beginning. We want a little bit of chaos and we’re getting that from Pierce Brosnan, where there’s a lot of bullets – a very fast-paced battle.”

Of course, when Bond escapes his captors in a bin lorry, sideswipes jeeps and runs into fashion stores, you can’t help but think of Brosnan crushing St Petersburg in a tank in GoldenEye. It’s also reminiscent of Uncharted, with the kind of blockbuster choreography that few studios outside of Naughty Dog have the interest or budget to attempt.

Here, you may feel that IO has a new role. When Bond dodges sniper fire on the roof or sprints along the edge of a falling crane, there’s a bit of a glitch in the transitions and animations; the best thing that reminds you of this is to leave the Hitman clock change. That’s not to say that 007 First Light pieces aren’t going to be competitive. Another scene sees Bond tied up in an interrogation chair, and you try to put your weapons in order to listen to your captor without succumbing to his torture. With Goldfinger’s laser table, you’re the only one in the room, living the moment.

It is with that interest, according to art director Rasmus Poulsen, that IO is trying to separate its new game from Hitman. “Instead of having big open boxes, it is important for us to hear certain things sometimes, to bring the story and make the player feel it later.”

The price you pay is a little less on a larger scale. But you can’t call 007 First Light “IO Interactive Lite”. Aside from the problems of stealth simulation, the Venn diagram of Bond and Hitman is almost eclipsed. Both are international events that show global waste as the most desirable. Call it Blofeld chic. Poulsen also says that the Craig-era Bond influenced his work in previous games.

But this style now carries emotional and psychological burdens. Poulsen sees IO’s Bond as a classic hit, romantic and cutting edge. “These are beautiful things that are fighting, as are the heads that are fighting,” he says. “It’s a long life to challenge the promise of technology. How to live, and challenge what came.”

It’s the same for the game studio in 2026: how can you take responsibility for finding new ways to challenge and have fun? For Bond, there is no better avatar. “It’s really fun to use every aspect of my art to try to create a world where you’re interested – you feel like an outsider, (or) you feel like you belong – with a character that hopefully the players can relate to,” says Poulsen. “To me, this has been an incredible expansion of our capabilities.”