Considering the tendency of James Bond stories to end up with epic shoot outs and other action setpieces, it should come as no surprise that IO Interactive’s upcoming 007: First Light will also focus on that aspect more than the studio’s forte of stealth gameplay. In an interview with GameInformer, gameplay director Andreas Krogh has spoken about the studio’s decision to make it more action oriented than the Hitman games, while still hanging on to some of the social stealth aspects that Agent 47 made famous in his own games.
Krogh describes the gameplay of 007: First Light as being based on “forward momentum”, especially when compared to the slower-paced stealth-driven gameplay of the Hitman series. To keep the tempo of the Bond game high, the studio wants to give players enough options that the time they need to make decisions is drastically lower than in a typical Hitman level.
“Hitman was a game where we thought about [stealth] as puzzle design. We’re taking that same type of stealth into Bond,” he said. “But I will say an important difference is that in Bond, we are striving to do forward momentum gameplay all the time, both in combat and in stealth.”
“Where in Hitman, we had some setups where we wanted you to use some time to stake out the situation and maybe poke a little bit at it to see what happens. In Bond, you can use time to observe a situation, but it’s very evident there are options you can use right away, and you can just use them and see what happens and come forward. We want to reduce that decision-making time to always keep moving forward and be a little bit faster.”
While IO Interactive has made no secret of the fact that many of the things it had learned in the development of Hitman games were helping with the development of 007: First Light, the studio has also spoken about how the upcoming game will be quite different. One such example came courtesy of cinematics and narrative director Martin Emborg, who noted that Bond’s game will have more focus on its narrative than the typical Hitman title. He compared it to 2012’s Hitman: Absolution, which had plenty of story moments and cutscenes breaking up its gun-based combat and stealth-based gameplay.
“The reason for this approach is that the Bond experience is much more focused on narrative, and very often on a ticking clock of some kind – so leaving the player to their own devices in a World of Assassination style sandbox doesn’t cater to the needs of an action/adventure game like 007 First Light,” explained Emborg. “Social stealth and infiltration are huge components of the game, but it simply needs that extra narrative focus that Absolution had.”
007: First Light is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2 on May 27. For more details, check out its recent story trailer, which focused on Bond’s character. PC players might also be interested in the fact that its RAM requirements have been lowered.
