Hitman studio IO Interactive has gone to great lengths to ensure 007: First Light feels James Bond enough. We’ve had entire videos documenting the watch Bond will wear, or the Aston Martin he will presumably drive, and there’s a celebrity making a villainish cameo. There’s even a 007: First Light Bond Theme recorded by famous singer Lana Del Rey. But what about the game’s, ahem, sexiness?
Hear me out: is there anything more quintessentially James Bond than a steamy romance subplot? With the exception of Quantum of Solace in 2008, I can’t think of a Bond film that doesn’t have one. As far as I can recall, every film (I’m referring to the films as I’ve only read one of the books) has a ‘Bond girl’ for our agent to eventually seduce. So is the same true of 007: First Light? And if it is, just how sexy is it?
I pushed the point with narrative and cinematic director Martin Emborg recently because the studio hasn’t said a great deal about it. He gave me an elusive answer. “I think we’ve already shown our hand in the trailers a little bit,” Emborg said. Is that a yes, I asked – does that mean there will be romance and perhaps sex scenes? Emborg wouldn’t be moved. “I will invite you to look at the trailers,” he said. So I did.
Of the 20-odd trailers IO Interactive has published on the 007: First Light YouTube channel, there are only two that detail anything remotely sexy (depending on how sexy you find a car chase, I suppose). In the 007: First Light announcement trailer, there’s a brief glimpse of Bond on a boat or yacht as a woman wearing an oversized shirt – and nothing on her legs – sashays towards him. The emphasis is fairly clear: there’s something going on here.
Then in a 007: First Light story trailer, we see some poolside flirting as an attractive woman in a swimsuit gets out of the water to say to Bond, suggestively, “You seem the kind of guy who knows what he likes.” This moment was screenshotted by IO Interactive for promotional images, by the way, suggesting it could be the clue Emborg was hinting at. Why else use this image if not to highlight the game’s sexiness?
Incidentally, the character pictured here is Miss Roth, a French intelligence agent who Bond makes a temporary alliance with to catch the rogue agent 009. She is also who we see Bond flirting with at a gala or party event in other trailers, and who we see Bond driving around with. It’s safe to assume, therefore, that Miss Roth may be a love interest. But these are the only clues I can glean from the trailers.
There is, however, a more serious point here. Sexiness might be a titillating feature of Bond films, but it’s attached to a more questionable side of Bond as a character, and to his antiquated attitudes towards women. Author and creator Ian Fleming wrote the Bond stories throughout the 1950s and 60s, when the world treated women differently. So if you’re going to keep reusing the character some 60 years later, and vow to do so faithfully, how do you deal with this?
“It’s pretty simple, actually,” Emborg said. “When you look at all the films and all the interpretations, also in games and other media, it’s always seen through the lens of the decade that it’s made in. So you can tell how the same stories are being interpreted in different ways as the years progress. And it’s been going on for 60 years. So it’s our time to look at this character and see what does it take to save the world in 2026? And some things fall by the wayside and some things are more important than ever.
“But I do think he’s an eternal character,” he added. Here he snapshotted the game’s storyline, which highlights how, for all the high-tech equipment MI6 has, it’s the “human doggedness” Bond brings that allows it to turn impossible odds in its favour. “That’s what M sees in Bond. That’s what he’s always been.
“But we have – beautiful women are there. He’s a young man, he’s got game, and he’s very cool” -Martin Emborg
“But we have – beautiful women are there,” Emborg continued. “He’s a young man, he’s got game, and he’s very cool. It’s just that people are worried about that kind of thing. But I can’t wait for people to play the game and experience the character, because everything we’ve done in creating this game has been to give you the richest, truest Bond that we can possibly make.”
Irish actor Patrick Gibson plays James Bond in 007: First Light, a game which tells a new and original story in the Bond saga, detailing how he earned his 007 agent number. It treads similar ground to Fleming’s debut Bond story Casino Royale – a story that coincidentally provided the basis for actor Daniel Craig’s Bond debut in 2006 – but isn’t the same.
Additional Bond excitement currently comes as auditions for a new cinematic Bond actor get underway, and it’s this recent lack of a cinematic Bond to follow Daniel Craig that’s provided IO Interactive with so much creative space making 007: First Light – though there have been weekly meetings with Bond licence holders MGM and the Broccoli family – and a natural sense of attention surrounding the game. Not everyone is on board with Gibson’s depiction of a young Bond, however, though IO Interactive insists this is because we’ve only seen him on a superficial level and there’s more from him to come.
Time will tell, of course, and we haven’t long to wait. 007: First Light will be released on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X next week, on Wednesday, 27th May.
