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007 First Light (PS5)
It's clear from every detail that behind this game are people who read the books, watched the films, and — more importantly — understood why both matter. If this is the beginning of a new era for Bond in games, the future looks quite bright.
One of the biggest gaps in the gaming world was actually a void no one had voiced for a long time: there simply wasn’t a proper James Bond game. Even on the film side, we’d watched Bond‘s last film back in 2021. Although I personally haven’t watched many of the series’ older films, I grew up with Daniel Craig‘s films, which I love dearly. On the gaming side, fourteen years had passed since the last serious production released under the 007 brand. Unfortunately, apart from the N64 legend GoldenEye, the brand never became one talked about for its other games. For that reason I approached 007 First Light cautiously the moment it was first announced — without even looking at the developer studio. Because while making a Bond game might be easy, the hard part was turning the series into a game correctly, with real understanding.
This is exactly where IO Interactive came in. That this studio — which has made a name for itself for years with the level design of the Hitman series, offering large and varied solution paths — had taken on Bond made perfect sense on paper. But what really made me happy was that, from the very first moment I launched the game, this wasn’t a “Hitman wearing a Bond mask.” 007 First Light is a work made with more respect than you’d expect, yet just as much an identity of its own. Let’s take a detailed look at this fine game.
This article contains spoilers only about the opening section of 007 First Light.
After Fourteen Years of Silence
The Bond in 007 First Light is not the version of him we’ve come to know. The game opens with a helicopter shot down over Iceland. We meet a man who has lost his team, is left alone on enemy soil, and carries a fresh scar on his face. Even this scar, on its own, says a great deal. Because even that scar on Bond’s cheek from the novels of James Bond‘s creator Ian Fleming has been carried into the game. From the very first minute, the studio gives the feeling that they know this universe and developed this game with passion.
Another important detail we learn here is this: this Bond isn’t a special soldier but a member of a flight crew serving in the Royal Navy. So right from the start, we see that the character we’ve known for decades as a successful soldier sets off from an entirely different starting point. The outstanding performance he shows in that unfortunate incident in Iceland — which could have ended his career — instead presents itself as a wholly different opportunity. MI6 invites him into the 00 programme that will start him on his new life. What follows begins with the intense training camp in Malta and continues with operations spread across three continents and a dark conspiracy triggered by the not-so-well-intentioned turn of a former MI6 agent.
Throughout the roughly 15-hour story mode, there’s something reminiscent of the Casino Royale spirit of the Daniel Craig era: Bond actually being a character who is trying to learn and capable of making mistakes. Patrick Gibson‘s interpretation fits right in here. This is a Bond in his late twenties — overly self-confident, a little cocky, but at the same time charming and inwardly fragile. Considering all this, he becomes a far easier character to connect with. Before the game’s release, everyone had heavily criticised the idea of playing as a young Bond. But since this game will turn into a series, I think this choice is much better. Moreover, the fact that Patrick Gibson plays the character this well shows they made the right casting choice. After all, watching someone trying to earn their number is something this series hasn’t offered us before.
The Characters of Bond’s World
The heart of a Bond production isn’t just the main character. 007 First Light is more than generous in this regard. We find Q at our side again. Elegant, a little fatherly, but with that classic inventor’s agility. Since we’re a greener agent and haven’t yet broken his gadgets and tested his patience, he’s a calmer character. But in later games, since we’ll probably be breaking everything constantly, he could turn into a slightly more irritable Q. Moneypenny is no longer just a secretary waiting at a desk either; she has a past, a story, and a role that genuinely touches the events.
But the cast’s truly standout name is the trainer and mentor Greenway (Lennie James) — who happens to be my favourite character. He’s a former 00 agent who has seen a lot and lived a lot, unable to decide whether that has made him wise or simply tired. The teacher-student relationship between him and James — and at times a deliberately rival one that pushes him to his limits — is one of the best-written elements of the game. Cressida and Monroe, whom we meet in training, are a beautifully written duo with natural chemistry who quickly turn from rivals into comrades, and then into friends.
The weak side of the coin, however, is the villains. In a Bond story, the villains are expected to be as charismatic as the agents — even, at times, scene-stealing figures. 007 First Light falls a little short here. The “Bond is after a former MI6 agent” story we saw in the trailers later gives way to a billionaire father-son conflict. The game, which actually handles a topic considered classic — the weaponisation of artificial intelligence, control of information, the clash between humanity and technology — fluently and not at all badly, runs into trouble due to the lack of a villain with the weight to carry the theme. Still, the script achieves its aim overall; it manages to be bold, full of twists, and at times dark for its genre. Most importantly, it doesn’t always keep Bond in the safe zone. It makes him make mistakes and lose.
Somewhere Between Hitman and Uncharted
Now to the gameplay side. You could roughly describe 007 First Light as half Hitman, half Uncharted, with a little Watch Dogs sprinkled on top. The game alternates open, crowded exploration areas with linear, cinematically striking scenes; and as you’ll know from Hitman, IO Interactive is a studio that’s a master at designing this kind of level. The sections left to the player’s freedom are the game’s brightest side. From a magnificent castle hosting a chess tournament to a crowded gala, every location is like a puzzle with its own rules. You can reach the same target from the front, from behind, or from a rooftop. Sometimes you can even skip all that and progress toward your goal by using the things you see around you as clues.
One of my favourite aspects of the game is gathering information about a mission after leaning somewhere and secretly listening to conversations. Time and again, the game lets you get past places you’ve repeatedly failed to clear thanks to a tiny detail you notice. This can sometimes be an object, sometimes a line of dialogue. In situations like these, the game makes you feel what it promised: thinking like an agent. Of course, this needs balance. After all, the game isn’t built entirely on stealth. If you bungle the stealth, enemies go on alert, and at that point you have to face them all. Generally, when I make a mistake in stealth I like to restart the level. Because I’m always curious about the various options the game offers on the stealth side and what I can do. So I adopt as stealthy a playstyle as possible. But if you want to fight fist to fist, that’s a choice too.
I’d like to give an example to convey the variety the game offers. At one point you need to gather $100,000 to get into a private auction, and the game leaves you completely free as to how you reach this goal. There are money-making methods I perhaps still don’t know about, like fighting in an underground fight club, stealing a crypto wallet, or guessing the right cup. Thanks to this level design, out of sheer curiosity I’m thinking of replaying the game and doing things I never did. Moments like these increase the game’s replayability and ensure a different kind of experience each time.
Q’s Gadgets and a Licence to Kill
Bond’s close-combat side was one of the things that surprised me most. There’s a combat system with a sense of weight that, in flow, somewhat recalls the Arkham series. You dodge red attacks, parry yellow ones, grab enemies and slam them into tables, throw them against walls, even toss them off ledges. Add to that moves like shoulder-charging to disarm an enemy and take their weapon, and throwing objects around you, and you get an incredibly varied and enjoyable combat system.
Weapon use in the game is positioned more as a last resort, but that feeling is very satisfying too. Kicking a dropped gun into the air and catching it, landing a slow-motion headshot, hurling an out-of-ammo gun into an enemy’s face and switching to your sidearm… As you get used to the area you’re in, the game practically tries to draw you into stylish combat. The equipment Q produces supports this combat system too. With a laser attachment, a missile pen, an EMP-firing camera, a phone that fires darts, and a Q-Watch that hacks locks and cameras, you can ease the situations you’re in. Of course, to keep these mechanics from being overused, you have to collect batteries or chemicals within the level in order to use them. So instead of using every feature outright, you need to play a little more thoughtfully, advancing strategically.
The game prevents you from diving into areas guns blazing. Since in 007 First Light we control a Bond who isn’t yet a 00 agent, we aren’t allowed to simply kill everyone. This actually adds a nice layer of tension to the game. Bond is authorised to use lethal force only when enemies pose a genuine threat. This authorisation can be tracked at the top of the screen. Of course, you can still progress by knocking enemies out instead of killing them; apart from a few mandatory sections, you don’t have to kill any enemies.
A Bond Film, Scene by Scene
Where 007 First Light truly shines is its striking scene and cinematic design. The game very successfully captures the rhythm of a classic Bond film. I wasn’t bored for even a minute while playing; its pacing is genuinely finely tuned. For instance, the entire training section is designed as a cinematic montage, and I can say it’s the best tutorial section I’ve played so far. Because, just like Bond, you too gradually master those drills.
In one mission you flee through the streets of London in a giant garbage truck while that iconic theme music plays in the background; in another you turn an airport upside down and fight in mid-air with a parachute. The cinematic presentations within the missions are excellent. The variety of locations is just as lovely. Rusty ships in Mauritania, a night gala in London, a tropical hotel in Vietnam, a secret base in Antarctica — the game takes you to many regions and locations. In the sequels, I hope we’ll also get the chance to see Istanbul.
Even after you finish the game’s story mode, the game doesn’t let you go easily. A mode called TacSim is a kind of endgame content unlocked in the area of Dr. Selina Tan in Q-Branch. You return to the story levels at varying difficulty. Structurally, this mode obviously recalls Hitman. Every successful run earns you points, weapon skins, gadget upgrades and cosmetics. You can do these missions while playing the story mode too, but the developers’ real aim in designing this is both to ensure the game’s future longevity and to offer a challenge to players who finish the game. With updates coming in the months ahead, new levels will probably be added here.
The Technical Side and the Power of Music
The game uses the Glacier engine, which featured in the studio’s earlier productions, and we know what it’s capable of. Especially after seeing the general disappointment caused lately by the inability to properly integrate Unreal Engine 5, which the whole industry is using, the Glacier engine feels like a remedy. That the engine can run such huge, extremely detailed crowd scenes filled with dozens of NPCs this successfully is a tremendous achievement.
On PlayStation 5 you get 60 FPS in performance mode and 30 in quality mode, and even in packed scenes like the chess tournament in Slovakia, the game mostly manages to stay stable. If you set off explosives during a firefight there can sometimes be minor drops, but apart from that I didn’t experience any performance issues. On the other hand, while the main characters’ facial models are very nicely crafted, the model quality of side characters and NPCs stays a bit lower.
The use of the DualSense is quite good. Each weapon’s trigger resistance is different. Even without looking at which gun you’re using, you can tell the difference just from the controller’s trigger. The sound and music side is quite successful too. In a Bond film, the opening music and cinematic are as important as the plot. IO Interactive had already released the opening cinematic and music beforehand. But seeing it in-game is, of course, more impressive.
The theme music belongs to David Arnold and Lana Del Rey. Arnold is a name who scored five Bond films, from Tomorrow Never Dies to Casino Royale. The group The Flight, who handled the game’s other music (also the composers for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Shadows and Horizon Zero Dawn), delivered work quite faithful to the iconic tones of the legendary John Barry.
Minor Blemishes
After so much praise, I’d be remiss not to voice a few complaints, minor as they are. First, the game’s stealth system isn’t as deep as its combat mechanics. For example, not being able to carry the body of an enemy you’ve taken down, or hide it in a corner, can sometimes tie your hands when it comes to staying unnoticed.
When they go on alert, the AI runs extremely aggressively to your area and covers one another, which can sometimes give the feeling that the game doesn’t want you to play stealthily. The driving part is one of the weak links too. The vehicles often feel heavy and clunky, as if they came from an older game. Since the driving doesn’t take up a big place in the game, it’s understandable that less effort went into it — but it being noticeable is, of course, a problem.
There are a few stumbles on the technical side too. On PlayStation 5 my game crashed once and I had to start from the beginning of the checkpoint. Luckily the game’s save and checkpoint system is good. So I didn’t lose much, but it was still annoying. I also occasionally saw enemies getting stuck in doors and hanging in mid-air. Still, since these don’t break the game, they aren’t serious problems.
Final Words
Some may not know, so in my final words I’d like to touch a little on IO Interactive. In 2017, IO Interactive had only three months of cash left. When the Hitman game released in 2016 didn’t sell as well as expected, the publisher Square Enix abandoned the studio and left it with millions of dollars in losses. Having laid off half its staff, IO then bought itself out. It kept the Hitman rights and afterwards went after something bigger: the James Bond licence.
With a budget exceeding $200 million, 007 First Light cost more than the combined budget of three Hitman games. The company’s CEO, Hakan Abrak, spread IO Interactive across five offices, including Istanbul, during development, and at the end of this painful process they produced a highly successful game. In this respect — since it also includes Turkish teams — the game’s credits screen is practically a portrait of pride.
007 First Light doesn’t settle for merely adapting the James Bond brand. It understands it and puts forward an identity. These are sentences we haven’t been able to say much lately about adaptations. Instead of loosening Hitman‘s formula just enough to fit Bond, IO Interactive has built an original structure that is more cinematic, more guided, yet just as freeing. With Patrick Gibson‘s striking performance, the brilliant supporting cast, the unexpected depth of the combat system, and the film feeling it delivers scene by scene, this really is the best James Bond game I’ve ever played.
Is it flawless? No. It stumbles in a few places with its weak villains, its somewhat lacking stealth, and clunky driving mechanics. But the whole it offers is solid, polished and full of character. It’s clear from every detail that behind this game are people who read the books, watched the films, and — more importantly — understood why both matter. If this is the beginning of a new era for Bond in games, the future looks quite bright.
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