Leading up to the March 27, 2026 release date for 007 First Light, developer IO Interactive has made no secret about the fact that the upcoming title will be an origin story for James Bond. In an interview with Eurogamer, audio and missions director Dominic Vega has revealed that, over the course of the game, players will also have to lead Bond into earning his own iconic theme song, alongside the 007 codename.
“Throughout the campaign he grows, and he’s earning his number – and he’s earning his themes,” said Vega, noting that “60 years of Bond, there’s a lot of sonic iconography.” This means that rather than hearing the familiar James Bond musical sting that fans of the films might be used to, 007 First Light will instead focus on brand new music until Bond finally ends up as 007.
In the same interview, Vega also spoke about how he worked with Joe Henson and Alexis Smith – a duo of composer known as The Flight – to help him create music and sound that IO Interactive hasn’t really done before with its previous titles. For context, Henson and Smith have worked on major titles in the past, including Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Alien Isolation, and both of the Horizon games.
“They’re a really great composer duo with some amazing credits and some amazing music,” said Vega. “They’re a perfect blend of the sort of orchestral mastery that is required for Bond while contributing something modern, something that players I think will attach on to as a fantastic foot forward for the 007 franchise.”
“Their sound is somewhere between the orchestra and the synthetics, and so I think they signify as a group and a duo what we’re looking for in bringing a younger Bond who is discovering this world of MI6, this world of spycraft, espionage, and intrigue – and bringing all that to life.”
Vega also spoke about how 007 First Light will make use of dynamic music to seamlessly allow players to swing from stealth, to action, to even car chases without the background music skipping a beat. He described the technical challenges that this kind of dynamic music poses for IO Interactive.
“Melody is incredibly hard to get right inside of games because of the interactivity of games, and in First Light we’ve insisted on completing our musical ideas,” explained Vega. “No matter if the player goes from combat to still really quickly, we need to get that musical motif to close. It’s really hard. And on a spreadsheet it doesn’t look great. But we find it’s really important.”
“Typical combat music and design wasn’t going to cut it for us,” Vega continued. “Music in the Bond universe is angular. It’s mixed meter. It’s off-time. It has space, it has oxygen. It has room for dialogue, and room for impact. We want to embrace that. We’ve refactored a lot of our technology to make sure that not only is it about the melodies, the motifs, and the feeling of being Bond – it’s also about how we assemble that for the player.”
007 First Light is being developed for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. If you’re interested in the upcoming title, here are 10 details you need to know.
