Meet the new James Bond: how 007 First Light earned its licence to thrill

The Guardian

7 days ago

Four years after No Time to Die – the 25th 007 film and the final outing for Daniel Craig's version of the world's most famous spy – 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 in a video game, before a new 007 makes their debut on film.
As developed by Danish studio IO Interactive for next year's 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's ruggedness – although he is clearly inspired by Craig's 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.
'The way we went about it was to start with the origin. Because then we get to play with questions such as, 'Who is James Bond the young man, and what does it mean to be a 00 Agent?'' says IO Interactive co-owner and First Light creative director Christian Elverdam. 'What does it mean to become 007?'
Most James Bond video games to date have been shooters, in the mould of 1997's 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's 007 Legends put Bond's 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.
'There are great shootouts in the movies – but, if you think about it, it's not that many, right?' says Elverdam. Correcting this discrepancy between the movies and games became 'the nucleus' of IO's pitch to Eon: to do Bond right in a video game, Elverdam says, meant letting players inhabit a character who is 'not always shooting'.
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, 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't (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's hands.
'All this stuff [in Hitman] feels like spycraft already,' Elverdam says, 'So if we take that, and we take some leaps' – these leaps being the things a Bond game ought to include, such as driving, fisticuffs and, yes, shootouts – 'that becomes the pitch for what would eventually be First Light.'
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 in November 2020, the game has survived a tumultuous period for Bond, which began with the $8.45bn (£6.3bn) merger of the character's 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 – including who would play the MI6 agent – would remain with Eon, with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson steering the family business.
Then, this February, Broccoli and Wilson handed creative control over to Amazon in an undisclosed but allegedly massive deal that ended the Broccoli family's 63-year tenure as the stewards of James Bond's cinematic exploits. In the months since, Amazon has begun to announce its plans, and selected Denis Villeneuve to direct the next film. But everyone with a passing or professional interest in Bond is still waiting with bated breath for a casting decision, and what it may mean for one of the most lucrative film franchises in the world.
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 isn't terribly specific but it exudes confidence. It's 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's Bond, and the devil-may-care attitude consistent across all onscreen depictions of the character.
'If 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,' Elverdam says.
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's enduring popularity, he is not a character who can just be dropped thoughtlessly into the modern world.
'Every Bond is a Bond of their time, no matter how intentional you are. It's unavoidable,' he says. 'There is a zeitgeist in what you perceive as a threat, what you perceive as aspirational qualities – all that changes over time.' Elverdam rattles off some questions that IO's 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?
If Elverdam and IO are clever enough in answering these questions, they may give the next film-star Bond a run for his money.