To make 007: First Light, Hitman's creators had to get uncomfortable
On paper, the idea of the developers behind Hitman making a James Bond game sounds like a complete no brainer. Of course that team would be able to create a great spy game that naturally plays off everything it has accomplished with its flagship series over the past few decades. Take Agent 47's suit to the dry cleaner, tailor it a bit, and throw it on James Bond. What's so hard about that, right?
But for Io Interactive, making a James Bond game was an exercise in discomfort. 007: First Light aims to create an entirely new take on the character, delving into an origin story that will allow the team to make a Bond that belongs to the gaming medium. Maybe it would be easy to throw that character into Hitman's immersive sim template and let him take down targets with stealth and his cunning wit, but that wouldn't truly capture the character's ethos. To get Bond right, Io would need to step outside of its comfort zone.
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Following Friday night's Io Interactive Showcase, where the studio shared more details about First Light, I spoke with CCO Christian Elverdam about where the project shares DNA with Hitman and where it needed to push away from it. It wasn't enough to trade one agent for another; it would require a studio that's spent nearly a decade perfecting one instrument to learn a new one.
'It sounds easy to mix Hitman and Uncharted,' Elverdam tells Digital Trends. 'I saw a lot of people say that. I'm like 'hah … yeah, sounds easy … ''
A 360 Bond
Ahead of 007: First Light's debut trailer, I'd wager that a lot of people had a certain expectation in mind. We were no doubt in for an immersive sim starring a debonair spy who uses his brains and charisma to outwit unsuspecting goons. That's not exactly what First Light is. It's not just that Io is going full Hollywood for 007's action; it's that James Bond himself is totally different from the suave hero we're used to. First Light will tell an origin story about the spy, showcasing him as a young, brash agent in training. The move has come as a shock to some fans, but Elverdam explains that the change came from a desire to create a Bond that belonged to gamers.
'If you're going to build a James Bond for the games medium, where do you start? We were like, let's start at the beginning,' Elverdam tells Digital Trends. 'There's this great question of who's James and who's 007? I think James has always been a rebel. He's always been at odds with authority, but we thought it was interesting that most young people yearn to find out what's their purpose. If you put that question in front of James Bond, it starts brewing some magical stuff instead of saying 'this is who you are.' This is a different version of that. I think we tried to communicate that in the trailer. It's a little bit like, hm, he's not fully fleshed out is he?'
The Bond we see in First Light's debut trailer already teases a very different take on the character, but he's not totally foreign. The confident spy we know is somewhere underneath all the uncertainty waiting to be fully formed. Elverdam says that the Bond ethos is still present here in the character's moral compass.
'First and foremost, I think James Bond is a true hero,' Elverdam says. 'He will do what's right almost at any price. From the bottom of his existence, he has some element of that. I think 007 is a profession in a way. It's both about being a great spy and a great agent, and that comes at a price of humanity in some cases. It's super fun to play with this idea: What if he's not the perfect spy? What if he makes some mistakes and then learns some spy craft along the way? He's always audacious … He stirs up chaos and expects something good to come out of it. That's deep in his bones as a character.'
Really getting down to the essence of Bond wouldn't just be about hanging on to the character's core personality traits. The gameplay would have to reflect him too, which meant that First Light couldn't be your average action game. It had to be something that felt custom built for Bond's skill set. The team's Hitman experience would come in handy there, as it knows how to craft action and tension that isn't just built around gun fights.
'With Bond, our insistence, which was shared across everyone that was involved with everyone in the game, was that we wanted the 360 version of James Bond,' he says. 'And that means it's not just a shooter. That was super important for everyone. It turns out that Hitman had a lot of stuff to teach us because most people who don't know Hitman think it's just an endless game about killing people left and right, but in reality, it's actually about almost not doing anything. There's just a lot of non-shooting gameplay, and that was one of the things we brought into James Bond … I think the movies are clearly action films, but there's not a lot of shooting. It happens, but it's not super frequent. It's much more action, running, driving, fighting, spectacle moments. And that's hard to build, but it's one of the things where we said we have to nail that.'
Elverdam is tight-lipped when it comes to sharing any new details that haven't been revealed about the game. Every time he even alludes to a gameplay component, he treats it like a spoiler and leaves a trail of teases. All he does affirm is that First Light won't quite be like Hitman, though that series' approach to freedom will still be somewhere in 007's bones, just as Bond's do-gooder nature will still be underneath the younger hero's skin.
'A Hitman location you should be able to play 100 times. And I think our desire with Bond is not that it's one and done, but it's also not 100 times,' Elverdam says. 'You can't play a level 100 times and keep discovering new stuff. You might replay it because you enjoy the story, and there certainly are different paths you can take in the game, without spoiling too much.'
Learning a new instrument
Based on the bold changes to the Bond series, it may seem like Io Interactive has a lot of creative freedom here. After all, it's putting a very new spin on a character that's historically been locked to one fairly rigid interpretation. The independent studio does have free reign in some ways, but Elverdam notes that there's a bit of a self-imposed restriction too — one that's also present in its Hitman games.
'I'll be totally honest. I was a big part of reimagining Agent 47 in the current universe. I never felt like I had freedom even though we own that IP,' Elverdam says. 'You are beholden to the fans, and to a legacy and to an understanding of the core. I don't think James Bond is different. You have to respect that there are a lot of people out there who have an opinion about what the character means to them. So, we have a lot of freedom, but we don't have a lot of freedom. And that's actually a good thing.'
It's always uncomfortable to learn stuff. If you play the piano the first time, it sounds miserable.
As we discuss this, the conversation turns to the Hitman series. While it has been around for decades, its defining moment truly came in 2016 when Io Interactive retooled the series into what it is today. Like First Light, that too was a risk that had to balance fan expectation with creative vision. It paid off, as that game spawned a trilogy that was collected into one live service offering that's been going strong for nearly a decade now. It expanded once again last night with a new 007-themed update that brings Casino Royale's villain to the fold as a new target.
I ask Elverdam what he feels the studio did right to make that happen. He cites a lot of reasons, such as its unshakable desire to turn it into a service, but one part of his answer stands out in context of First Light.
'I kind of always felt like you're either making a Hitman game or you're not, which means that you cannot pretend that this is a game for everyone. It really isn't,' Elverdam says. 'And by doing that unapologetically, I think we found a really engaged audience. We're not going to be Fortnite. That's not in the cards. And being independent allowed us to just double down on that. We're here to build the absolute best version of what Hitman can be. And that's the real first right call we did.'
It's with that answer that I can clearly see how First Light is a product of the Hitman team, even if the games don't look as similar as you'd expect at first glance. This is a team that has the utmost respect for its audience and wants to do right by them, but also understands that sometimes the right thing to do is what fans aren't expecting. First Light seems to be a product of that thinking, telling a reimagined take on Bond because that's what's going to make for a better story, even if not every fan can see it right now. It's about pushing fans out of their comfort zone, because that's exactly what Io Interactive is doing to itself too. It's creating a game with more cinematic action, a narrower structure, a pure hero, and a James Bond that no one has ever met before. And the studio is embracing it all.
'There has to be an element of growth and discomfort,' Elverdam says. 'Man, we have to learn something here. We have to invite some new people into Io to teach us how to do stuff, which is great! It's always uncomfortable to learn stuff. If you play the piano the first time, it sounds miserable. There's some growing pains there with James Bond. How do we do this again? That's why we do it.'
007: First Light launches in 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
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