007 First Light gives James Bond a proper beginning. IO Interactive, the studio behind Hitman, has built its new spy game around Bond’s brilliant beginnings, and the result is a younger, rougher version of 007 who is still learning how to carry himself, how to fight and even how to tie a bow tie.
Patrick Gibson plays Bond as a petulant, belligerent rule-breaker in his pre-00 days, and the game leans into that immaturity instead of sanding it down. M is written as a green leader trying to make her mark, while Q arrives as an enjoyably urbane quartermaster who introduces Bond to vinyl. One scene has Q teaching him how to tie a bow tie, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes the character work before he becomes the legend.
The game’s shape is a break from Hitman’s open-ended structure. This time, IO Interactive tells the story linearly, but it still finds room for moments of social stealth. One chapter is built around a training montage that runs through getaway driving, stealth and gunplay, and the game even takes Bond to a Slovakian castle. It is a cleaner, more guided approach than the studio’s older template, but it still knows when to let the player slip through a room instead of storming it.
That matters because there has not been a great James Bond video game in decades, and there has not been a Bond film in five years. A convincing game has been a long time coming, and IO Interactive is using the instincts it honed in Hitman to try to give Bond a world that feels measured, elegant and dangerous. The review’s clearest sign that it is working is not just the story setup but the way the action lands: the guns are enjoyably punchy, and the game’s best fights are built for spectacle.
That spectacle, though, comes with a trade-off. Scripted fights are designed to favor explosive theatrics over strategy, so Bond is less a patient planner here than a man hurtling from one set piece to the next. In fist fights, he can barge enemies into bookshelves and grab mugs and keyboards as improvised weapons, which gives the action a nasty comic edge. The game knows exactly what kind of Bond it wants to be — not yet the finished agent, but the one still breaking rules on the way there.
So the answer is yes: First Light 007 is trying to do something Bond games have struggled with for years, and it is doing it by starting at the beginning. It does not ask the player to admire the myth from a distance. It lets them watch it being made, one bad decision, one training lesson and one well-aimed punch at a time.
