007 First Light is the upcoming action-adventure from Danish developer IO Interactive, the studio behind the famed stealth series Hitman. But just how were the James Bond video game rights secured? Well, it turns out with a little help from a certain Hitman’s body and a very famous face.
IOI CEO and First Light game director, Hakan Abrak, revealed to me at a recent studio visit that the head of the most recent screen Bond, Daniel Craig, was sculpted onto the torso of Agent 47 and dropped into the World of Assassination.
“We actually did put Daniel Craig in there”, Abrak revealed. “We just modeled his head and put it in instead of Agent 47, just for demo purposes, giving an impression of what these living, breathing spaces mean in an IO game. And if you are acquainted with the franchise, there is a level called Sapienza with the virus in the caves underneath the compound. So we showed some things off there and, yeah, it was well received.”
The sun-soaked streets of Sapienza provide the exact sort of beachy Italian relaxation spot that you can imagine Bond lying low in, but in Hitman’s world, it’s laced with deadly opportunity — a sentiment IO wanted to convey in this specific demonstration to the license holders at MGM and Eon.
“It was just for demo purposes, right?” Abrak continued. “I think what they saw in us and what we are also conveying is our angle would be to try to deliver a 360 experience where it’s not necessarily about only shooting and cut scenes — there’s certainly that in our game as well — but it’s also being able to explore the part of the Bond fantasy where he is in social spaces where he is using not only his fisticuffs, but also his charms and bluff and figuring out different ways in those social spaces to overcome the obstacles or get what he wants. How would a charming Bond fare in a situation like this where he doesn’t have to necessarily resort to violence?”
Sapienza has become one of the most beloved Hitman maps ever since its 2016 introduction, and you can see why it was picked by IO as the perfect example of its brand of social stealth gameplay. Blunt violence is, of course, an option, but much more Bond-like mission stories are available too, such as gatecrashing a romantic rendezvous involving one of the targets and her golf coach lover — the sort of scenario James could easily find himself tied up in.
But First Light was always going to be a Bond origin story, so, while it was all fun and games sticking Craig’s face onto 47’s, the British actor was never a genuine option to play IO’s 007. Instead, the studio has gone much younger, selecting Patrick Gibson to portray its 26-year-old James.
“We’ve only made original worlds and characters before, so this is our first time working on something else”, Abrak explains. “So it was very important for us that we could put our creative fingerprints on this as well. So we weren’t interested in a gamification of a movie or maybe where it’s about technical prowess only, like pushing the pixels on Pierce Brosnan, for example, or just taking some bespoke scenes from a movie and realizing them in gaming.”
It was very, very important for us that this was built from the ground up as a game for gamers, but that really, really felt like a genuine Bond experience. And also exploring a space that hasn’t been explored before, where it’s not necessarily about just starting from day one with this super-experienced agent that knows exactly from the start of the game how he wants his drinks or how he’s walking around in a tuxedo. But part of the experience is that this young man is learning the ropes and is being faced with the world of espionage and becoming throughout this journey. So I thought that was very interesting to explore.”
You can read about the casting of IO’s new James Bond here. You can also check out how Queen Elizabeth II’s passing affected First Light’s development, and the IO CEO’s thoughts on publishing MindsEye following its disastrous launch.
For much more on 007 First Light, make sure to read my extensive preview full of gameplay and story details.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
