Patrick Gibson plays James Bond before he becomes 007 in 007 First Light, the new game from IO Interactive that sends him into the pre-00 years as a petulant, belligerent trainee with a talent for breaking rules. ’s review of the game for PC, Xbox and PlayStation 5 says Gibson starts out as a cookie-cutter insubordinate, then settles into the role once Bond is bouncing off M and Q.
That shift matters because the game is trying to do more than mimic a famous face. It is building a Bond who is still becoming the spy the audience knows, and the review says Gibson finds his footing when the character has someone to spar with — a green M trying to make her mark and an urbane Q who drops the frustrated quartermaster routine. In the review, that version of Bond feels less like an imitation and more like a person in motion.
The strongest proof comes in a small scene that the review singles out: Q teaches Bond how to tie a bow tie. The moment sounds almost trivial, but it is the kind of prequel detail that gives the story shape, arriving at an iconic look through a character beat instead of a cutscene lecture. The review calls it a perfect bit of prequelcraft, and it lands because it makes the transformation feel earned rather than inherited.
There is a reason that matters now. The review says there has not been a great James Bond video game in decades, and there has not been a Bond film in five years. That leaves 007 First Light carrying more than nostalgia: it is arriving in a stretch when the franchise has been oddly quiet on screens, and IO Interactive is trying to reset the conversation by going back to the beginning.
The friction is that prequels always risk becoming museum pieces, all posture and no pulse. Gibson’s early Bond, as the review describes him, can sound like a stock rebel at first. The game’s answer is to let him change through the people around him, especially M and Q, rather than to rely on borrowed swagger alone.
That is why the review ends up sounding cautiously bullish about Gibson’s performance even while it keeps its distance from easy hype. 007 First Light is not being sold as the return of Bond by force of nostalgia. It is being judged as a story about how the character learns the uniform, the habits and the confidence that come with it — and that makes the bow tie scene more than a flourish. It is the point where the prequel explains why this Bond can eventually wear the name with ease.
