James Bond is 26 in Io Interactive's upcoming 007 adventure
I chatted with the franchise director for 007 First Light, the first big James Bond game in over a decade. It's a single-player origin story.
Jonathan Lacaille, 007 franchise director for Hitman studio Io Interactive, wasn’t exactly sure when his studio’s James Bond was born.
“Good question,” he told me yesterday, at a showcase event in Hollywood for all things Io, including 007 First Light. The recently revealed game is a 2026-slated third-person James Bond adventure (the first big new Bond game since 007 Legends in 2012).
But we can probably guess 1999, maybe 2000.
“26,” Lacaille told me, when I asked the age.
The timing of the game isn’t really “set in stone in the game,” Lacaille told me. “But it’s kind of a modern day.”
The main point, though, is that Bond is young, younger than he’s been in the movies, and drawn from the character’s portrayal in the books that birthed the world-famous super-spy.
Io’s deal to make a 007 project was announced way back in 2021 and got its official unveiling—a name, a trailer, a content unlock incentive for signing up for an IOI Account—just this week during Sony’s State of Play showcase.
Io always wanted to make a game about a younger Bond, Lacaille told me.
“The gaming audience is younger than the moviegoer audience,” he said. “So we're thinking, ‘OK, I think an origin would be a lot more relatable.‘“
Their Bond is drawing from the source material that precedes the films. “We got a lot of inspiration from the books, so the version of Ian Fleming,” Lacaille said. He noted the scar on young Bond’s right cheek, which is referenced in Fleming’s writing.
Io isn’t revealing a ton about 007 First Light just yet. A title and a trailer, yes. No extended gameplay sequences yet. Definitely no details about who is playing Bond (or M, or Q, etc). That’s for later in the marketing plan, though the marketing campaign is, by design, going to be short.
”When we started to have a more firm date for the release in mind, we started to think about the roadmap, mostly because we didn't want to do a campaign that lasted for years,” Lacaille said. “Because there is so much content on the market today, there are many, many games.”
They wanted to show the game and have it release not too long after—as in not multiple years.
About half a year ago, Io began talking to Sony about how they might be ready to finally unveil their Bond game.
“We approached them and tried to find out if they had a show coming soon, if they'd room in the show we'd be interested, and how we could build the segment together.”
That PlayStation showcase aired this past Wednesday. Then Io talked a little more about Bond during the Summer Game Fest kick-off on Friday afternoon and on Friday night at Io’s own showcase, which also covered the latest in Io’s Hitman series (it just got a Bond crossover), and next week’s externally developed, Io-published Mindseye.
(The Io event in Hollywood was a throwback to E3 publisher showcases of old: packed with hundreds of reporters, influencers and business people, with a set of live presentations, gameplay for Hitman conducted on stage, and even a show-closing dance number by people wearing glowing outfits modeled off of Hitman, Bond and… maybe Iron Man. No hidden message there, I understand; just a quirk of the dance troupe’s costuming. Io had studied other publisher events to get the feel for how to do one of their own, Lacaille told me. “Did you ever watch the famous Konami one?” I asked. “Yes, I know it,” he said. “Did that influence the show at all? “No, no no.”)
Back to the idea of making a game set in the era of a younger James Bond, one who is straight out of the air force and training to be the super-spy the public now knows him to be:
“We need to introduce old characters to a new audience, so M, Q, Moneypenny, we can't assume that all the players know them,” Lacaille said. “So we took a nice twist on them, thinking about…what these people looked when they shaped Bond. Because he's not the same character that we know in the movies.” He’s more brash, strong-headed, it seems. “He's discovering his charm, and things like that.” Q is an older man, Lacaille said, and might teach him a bit about being classy.
The game’s younger Bond also isn’t a double-0 agent yet, not licensed to kill, as the code-number indicates in the lore. So, no killing in the game?
“He’s going to come across moments, as you see in the trailer,” Lacaille said, acknowledging that their Bond does rack up a body count. The game will explore what the license to kill means, Lacaille noted and there will be “some [gameplay] mechanics around that as well,” but gameplay details won’t be forthcoming until this summer.
As for Lacaille himself, he’s now four years into his tenure at Io, the rapidly expanding studio that has one of its offices in Malmö, Sweden, not far from his previous employer, Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment.
“When I overheard that they were probably working on this game, and when I saw the announcement, it was just across the bridge. I know lots of people working there. I got super excited because there hasn't been a game, a James Bond game in 10 or 12 years,” he said.
“And I was thinking, it's such a huge opportunity to actually make history, to bring back a Bond game.
“People can only talk about GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64,” he said, referring to the 1997 classic, the famous 007 game revered for both its solo campaign and its splitscreen multiplayer. “‘Oh, James Bond, multiplayer,’” Lacaille said, reflecting on the game’s reputation.
“We like to work on something else and [so] people will remember this game, not just that one back then,” he said.
That’s no slight on GoldenEye, but it’s an indication of this new Bond game’s focus. Single-player only. Made by a studio that specializes in secret agents. Out next year. More details to come.