007 First Light will do something no Bond game has done before – slow down: "Players might be surprised at how much they enjoy those quieter experiences"

007 First Light has James Bond in good hands. When Hitman developer IO Interactive announced in 2020 that it was working on a game based on the British superspy, it already felt like the kind fan wish fulfilment of the kind where you ask 'if you could get any developer to make a game based on any franchise, what'd it be?'. For IO Interactive, it's been much the same, as the developer's staff are fans of Bond too, which has already bled into their work on Hitman.

"There’s always been a lot of love for James Bond at IOI – Just look at the very first Hitman game from 2000, where you’ll find a lot of winks and nods in Bond’s direction," says 007 First Light cinematics and narrative director, Martin Emborg. "I wasn’t at IOI back then, but when I look at the henchman 'Necros' from The Living Daylights for example, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see Agent 47 at work."

Even Hitman: World of Assassination, the recent live-service-connected trilogy of adventures, has plenty of huge, sweeping levels that nod to James Bond's missions. "A level like Sapienza actually has a villain crafting a deadly virus in an underground lair. It can’t really get more close to a spy movie scenario than that," says gameplay director Andreas Krogh. "Those types of levels definitely gave us the confidence and belief that our level stories and gameplay challenges could work in a Bond game."

Spy to meet you

Still, though espionage is much a part of Agent 47's toolkit in Hitman as murder, making a James Bond game means 007 First Light is going to have its own vibe that stands apart from the studio's prior work. While infiltration is an aspect of the Bond experience that's rarely been explored in games, the spy would feel incomplete with car chases, action set-pieces, and an amount of open combat blasting his arsenal of guns and tricky gadgets.

Which actually means taking a few cues from the divisive Hitman Absolution when crafting the flow of Bond action. "The reason for this approach is that the Bond experience is much more focused on narrative, and very often on a ticking clock of some kind – so leaving the player to their own devices in a World of Assassination style sandbox doesn’t cater to the needs of an action/adventure game like 007 First Light," says Emborg. "Social stealth and infiltration are huge components of the game, but it simply needs that extra narrative focus that Absolution had."

A rollicking spy thriller needs a strong narrative, after all – and without that you're not going to feel like James Bond. "From the very beginning, we wanted to put the story more center stage in 007 First Light than what we did in Hitman," says Krogh. "To do that, we needed a different format. A format that lets us tell our more authored story but still allows us to use our expertise in more open-ended gameplay challenges. That is where the comparison with Absolution comes in. It has this structure of narrowing in to tell a story more linearly and then opening up in larger locations to allow for more freeform open-ended gameplay, with both stealth and combat in mind."

Emborg acknowledges James Bond's lengthy service (the hero has been around for over 60 years), and how post No Time To Die we're in a new era for 007. "The ones that are the closest to what we’re doing will naturally be the Craig era, simply because those are the latest ones," he says, but "we’ve crafted our characters and this world of espionage with a lot of love for all of those eras".

Part of putting the studio's own stamp on 007 First Light comes down to the game design, as you'd expect from the creator of such a systems driven series like Hitman. Plenty of James Bond games have come and gone, many charming us. Many of them shooters. Few have tackled the complete fantasy of becoming James Bond. But that's exactly what 007 First Light is designed to do.

Live and let die

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"We talk about 360 degrees because we’ve endeavored to create a game that includes all the aspects of the character," explains Emborg. "I hope that the social infiltration experience will make players feel truly like Bond, with all of his wits and charm at their fingertips – not shooting anyone, not driving a cool car, but simply being Bond – and that’s something that has not really been explored before in video games. The action is great, but we hope that players might be surprised at how much they enjoy those quieter experiences."

Krogh says the '360 degrees' approach is about embracing a "variety of gameplay" for Bond. "From stealth to combat to infiltration to driving to social interactions. Going back and forth between these combined with the fact that it is your own choice how aggressive you want to be, it will feel a lot less like a pure shooter game and more a mix between many play styles."

Hitman: World of Assassination is still ongoing, and designed to be massively replayable. I have to ask if this philosophy will be felt in 007 First Light, and how that may be balanced against the heavier focus on a main story and campaign for Bond.

"Obviously, the more linear segments, which are focused on story exposition, won’t have a lot of variation, as they are supposed to deliver the same narrative outcome every time," explains Krogh. "But every time we open up in the core gameplay areas where you can fully choose between stealth and combat, there will be multiple distinct ways through those areas, which will open these up for some replayability. On top of that, we have a list of challenges for each of these areas to make sure you explore and experience all there is in the more open areas."

I can't wait to take on those challenges myself when 007 First Light launches on May 27, 2027 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. Until then, I'm far from shaken with what we've seen so far, and certainly stirred into wanting to play it for myself.