Since he first burst onto the big screen in 1962, the name James Bond has been synonymous with exotic locations, innovative gadgets, high-speed car chases, and high-octane action. 007 First Light is the suave spy’s first foray back into the world of video games since 2012’s poorly received 007 Legends, so the stage is set for Bond to make one of his famous grand comebacks. Developer IO Interactive is doing its utmost to make that happen.
Game Rant recently sat down with IO Interactive’s franchise art director Rasmus Poulsen to talk about how some of James Bond’s tropes have been used in 007 First Light. The gadgets, cars, and locations that fans have come to expect from 007 will be present in First Light, but that doesn’t necessarily mean fans will always get exactly what they expect.
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IO Interactive seems to have understood the assignment in ensuring 007 First Light manages to include all the things that the franchise is so well-known for. Poulsen explained that the team had a lot of fun in ensuring every trope was hit, including cars, locations, and so forth, but they also had fun with these expectations. Living up to them came first, then having fun with them second, but that does mean fans should be mindful of how these various James Bond tropes play out and are possibly subverted to retain an element of surprise for players. When asked which aspects of Bond’s world were the most fun to play around with, Poulsen said,
”To be honest, all the tropes have been fun because it’s such an exciting place to get into with the locations and the wide variety of places you visit. From low-life crime nests to high-end places for the higher echelons of society, that’s totally Bond, right? Characters, car chases, action, all that stuff is really fun because there is an expectation to it, and it’s fun to play with that expectation. Sometimes we might give you exactly what you expect, but sometimes we’ll also give you something unexpected. Firstly, we tried to live up to the DNA and the expectations of the character, then thereafter we tried to have some fun with the expectations.”
007 First Light Presented Plenty of Challenges for IOI to Overcome
James Bond has found himself behind the wheel of some amazing cars over the years from the iconic Aston Martin DB5 in 1964’s Goldfinger to the Lotus Esprit that doubled as a submarine from The Spy Who Loved Me. For IOI, including cars like the Aston Martin DBS in 007 First Light‘s announcement trailer was a no-brainer, but this doesn’t mean the actual process of making that happen was straightforward. Poulsen explained,
”With Bond himself, we knew what we wanted there, but getting that live has been a journey in terms of some of the partners we’re working with. Aston Martin, for instance. We knew we wanted the DBS, the yellow one you saw in the trailer. That’s the one we were super excited about, so that was a given from the start. Then seeing that actually in the game and in high-res was super, super cool. Then there were things like, for instance, the development of Bond’s scar, what’s too much, what’s too little? We’ve been agonizing about all that stuff.”
Poulsen and the rest of the dev team will be hoping that this attention to detail will help the finished product be as immersive as possible, making the player feel like they’ve unmistakably stepped into James Bond’s world. The best James Bond games are the ones that manage to pull this off successfully, and there’s no reason to believe 007 First Light won’t add its name to that list when it launches next year.
007 First Light
- Released
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2026
- Number of Players
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Single-player
- Steam Deck Compatibility
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Unknown