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007 First Light flexes plenty of the sly, creative problem solving IO Interactive has been building over the course of the Hitman series. But, it's still a licensed game – building on over 70 years of James Bond movies and books – which means that a gaming adaptation is still going to need to fit within the rules for what Bond is.
"We define the rule set in some way, though, which is quite nice," says senior combat designer Tom Marcham. It's been up to the team to carve out how IO Interactive's unique spin on a young James Bond, earning his 00 status, will feel to play. "The first thing we do is we go and look at Bond a lot. I mean everything: the books, the games, the movies," he says. "That defines the rule set that we impose on ourselves."
Licensed practitioner
"One thing we knew very early on was we didn't want the game to be all about shooting," says Marcham. "We knew guns and gunplay was an important part of the IP, but we didn't want the game to be all about it. That influenced a lot of things, like the License To Kill system, for example."
Bond won't always be able to reach for his gun. Relatively innocent guards in, say, a hotel Bond is infiltrating are fine to be quietly, safely knocked out – but Bond won't fire upon them. Even enemy henchmen aren't targets until they draw their own weapon with intent to kill – at which point the 'License to Kill' flicks on at the top of the screen.
When a guard is knocked out, they'll stay down permanently even when discovered. "We have a bit of a Batman approach to it," laughs Marchan – some of the takedowns are still brutal. Guards remaining unconscious is a departure from Hitman: World of Assassination, which is geared towards more complete, sandbox-style levels. This deliberate decision is to dial-in 007 First Light's "forward, focused approach" that moves Bond between sections of stages, and, like the action hero he is, not having to dwell on what he's already done.
When in restricted zones and combat breaks out, stealth can turn into fisticuffs, which can then escalate into firefight if a bad guy draws a gun, initiating License To Kill. Likewise, if guards are patrolling a room with assault rifles already drawn, Bond, naturally, starts with that privilege active, ready to go in guns blazing if you think you can handle the odds.
"It was discussed from the beginning, [but] it went through a lot of different iterations," says Marcham on the License to Kill system. "We actually play with it a lot [through] narrative – it's not an entirely gameplay system. [...] We get pretty creative with it as the game goes on." For instance, I notice during one intense sequence as Bond chases down an assassin across London rooftops that the License to Kill remains active, even though, for story reasons, he can't kill him at this point. Similarly, later on in my 007: First Light hands-on, a dicey escape gradually gets more and more dangerous, leaving me tense for when I'll finally be allowed to let Bond loose.
"It also helps us have a very unique take on stealth. When you see a guy in a room, you can't just pull a pistol and shoot him in the head – at least not every encounter," says Marcham. "Instead, you have to have this approach where if you really want to go to a gunfight, then go get into a fist fight, it'll escalate, [then] you can go to guns. If you want to do stealth, you're going to have to use the gadgets, you're going to have to use the takedowns, and it will play differently than it would have in another franchise where you would have just, you know, taken out your silenced pistol and shot him straight away."
"There has to be guns around. Bond won't shoot an unarmed man. If you have a section where absolutely no one has any guns, you won't shoot anyone, so you'll be using the close combat system. If you've got a section where a bunch of guys come in, they know who Bond is, and they're here to kill him, and they've got guns in their hands, you're getting License to Kill straight away. Bond doesn't have to come out and say, like, 'Hello. Are you going to shoot me?' You're in License to Kill," says Marcham.
If you have a section where absolutely no one has any guns, you won't shoot anyone.
Tom Marcham, senior combat designer
"Then, we have what we call 'dynamic escalation spaces' [...] where you get to start in close combat, eventually, someone in the fight will get frustrated, and they'll pull a gun. The moment they pull a gun: License to Kill. That's it. Once the gun's in their hand, they're showing clear intent to kill: License to Kill. You dynamically escalate in those spaces, which means that we have this unique system where you can suddenly trigger a gunfight at almost any point in that encounter, which means that the encounter plays very differently," Marcham explains, giving the example that you can remain in stealth to pick off guards, making for an easier firefight once the bullets start flying.
"One of the hardest challenges in the project was: How do you deal with a gunfight that can break out in the middle of a stealth encounter and make that feel good? We don't ever want that to happen and it to feel like a fail state," says Marcham. "If that happens, you should feel like it's time for an awesome gunfight, right? You're having your fun in stealth, it goes wrong, some guy pulls a gun. You're like: OK, let's go. And everything goes crazy. Much like what happens in the Bond movies. That's really important for us, that we have that ebb and flow."
License to Kill is also an important part of Bond's characterization, especially when it comes to 007 First Light's younger take on James. "He's probably not the guy that walks in the room and thinks, you know, my first resort is to pull a gun, right? He probably is the guy that still cares a lot about, about, about these things," says Marcham. "We are treating violence in a particular way. It has a grittiness and a realism in this world we're creating."
It's a big difference to the likes of IO Interactive's Hitman where "combat is a last resort," says Marcham, but can also be ruthlessly, instantly efficient. "Here, you can decide to run in and start punching, and we're happy to support that. I keep saying to everyone, if you imagine a Silent Assassin run of Hitman, it's a terrible Bond movie. No one would watch that Bond movie. Guy walks in, doesn't get seen by anyone, changes outfit 20 times, shoots one guy in the head and walks out. It's not a good Bond movie. So we had to add this more violent, dynamic element to it."
Counter intelligence
007 First Light has been inspired by the entire legacy of the James Bond series, across both films and Ian Fleming's original books. Marcham explains that one particular sequence in From Russia With Love helped to shape the direction of both character and gameplay – a scene where Russian anti-spy unit SMERSH reads through a dossier about James Bond, which details even Bond's distinctive facial scar, which is part of 007 First Light's Bond's design (as portrayed by Patrick Gibson).
I was like: Oh, I'll underline that one!
Tom Marcham, senior combat designer
The dossier also specifies "does not use disguises," Marcham tells me. "You can imagine reading that as a developer. I was like: Oh, I'll underline that one!" While Bond does briefly use a disguise in 007 First Light's opening mission, it's not a specific Hitman-like mechanic to find and use disguises. Instead, Bond can brashly bluff his way through restricted spaces to temporarily bamboozle guards. And, in some scenes where he'd frankly be better off using a false name, he'll still introduce himself as: Bond, James Bond. He's simply too suave to stay completely in the shadows.
"We started to see commonalities with certain themes that we were like: Cool, no matter what era we're looking at, these things are Bond-y. So, in all of the fights, he's always very creative and always very improvisational," says Marcham. In the game, "especially the close combat," Bond can "use the environment" in different ways, flinging nearby objects to stun guards and ready them for a take down, or grappling with them to shove them into walls.
One moment where Bond is jumped inside his own flat-share has him and his opponent making a real mess of his doubtless high-rent room. "Once you've played it a bunch, you can start getting very creative and start to do some clever things by messing with the different mechanics, messing with the various set pieces within the level, and this kind of stuff."
"The other thing that came from that kind of deep investigation of Bond was that the audience is incredibly broad. We knew we were going to get everyone from a hardcore gamer who's quite young to someone's granddad who remembers the old movies and loves Bond enough that he's gone out and bought a PlayStation 5, and we knew we needed to cater to all of them, which already starts to dictate some of the decisions we make," Marcham says.
"Where we know we need to make sure this hardcore gamer has a great experience, but we need to make sure someone else can get through it who might be coming to gaming for the first time and we've got to be a great ambassador for them, right? We need to support both. So, we spent a lot of time on that in combat as well, because combat is the thing that's likely to kill them."
Check out our best Bond movies for what to watch next, or our best stealth games if you're in the mood to get sneaky.
