When I was younger, I went through a phase where I was fascinated with Ian Fleming’s espionage agent du jour, James Bond. Specifically, I was fascinated with the history behind the character — which includes no small piece of Fleming himself — and how he wound up becoming the cultural icon he is today. And while I’m not a Bond aficionado by any means, I flashed back to that time while watching the first gameplay footage of IO Interactive’s upcoming adaptation, 007 First Light.
The studio debuted the footage today as part of a special gameplay reveal, showing off Bond’s pre-007 beginnings as a fledgling intelligence officer and his rather flexible approach to investigation and espionage, which will serve him well in his future career. They also confirmed the game launches on March 26, 2026. The footage covers the first mission of the game, with developer commentary detailing the game’s gadgets, combat and stealth systems.
First Light follows Bond when he’s a young stripling with an attitude problem. While he’s still a far cry from Fleming’s rather cold-blooded officer, you can hints of that character in the dry wit (he’s genuinely funny, which I wasn’t expecting) and the ease with which he deceives allies and even other intelligence operatives when the occasion calls for it. Honestly, I got the feeling even from the first trailer that this was going to be an adaptation of the original Bond, as this is the first time I can think of that 007 is shown to have a facial scar, one of his only distinctive characteristics in Fleming’s novels.
License to Kill — but only as a last resort
Notably the gameplay footage itself was a bit choppy, and it’s easy to tell this is still an early build of the game. Some of the action bits look like they could be the not-fun kind of chaotic, and some of the transitions from stealth to combat look like they may struggle to find a balance between the two. But overall, everything they showed of the gameplay preview looked promising.
Bond looks less mechanical than his Hitman counterpart, Agent 47, and some of his options are less evil, for lack of better word. I don’t think you’ll be able to do mission runs where you kill every single civilian on the map — Bond, the character, doesn’t have the option to do that. In fact, the only time that Bond can fully let loose is when he’s given license to kill, a command the player will receive on-screen.
We’ll have to see how well IO Interactive’s signature approach to missions, which offers players freedom to either find or ignore clues, context and opportunities, translates to Bond. But what I’ve seen already looks plenty Bond enough for me. Bond’s actor, Patrick Gibson, even strikes the right note as an original take on the character from what we’ve seen so far. The game launches on March 26, 2026 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.