“The Key Is Treating Them like Real Characters And Not Just Eye Candy” 007 First Light Narrative Lead Talks Reimagining James Bond And The Bond Girl Trope

With the first trailer for 007 First Light, IO Interactive revealed that it’s taking 007 somewhere he’s never gone before in video games. There have been more than 30 James Bond games in the past 40 years, and every one of them has featured a 007 based on the films. Almost every version of Bond, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig, has lent their likeness to a game (sorry, George Lazenby). With First Light, IOI will introduce us to a brand new Bond who is distinct from any big screen version: the first original 007 in games.

During the IOI Showcase earlier this month, I sat down with Martin Emborg, First Light’s cinematic and narrative director, to talk about how the studio is approaching its own version of 007. Emborg explains why IOI wants to break from tradition by avoiding connections to the films, why exploring Bond’s origin story is interesting for his team, and what he thinks about Bond girls.

Bring Bond Back To The Beginning

While there are many directions IOI’s Bond game could have taken, Emborg says First Light was always going to be about how James Bond became 007. “Having it be an origin story was a foundational idea from the very beginning,” he explains. “That does put you on a trajectory of what you want to investigate and what that means for the character.” Emborg says bringing a fresh take to the character without the baggage of what’s come before was an interesting challenge.

Emborg believes that there are certain core qualities James Bond must always have, things that, he says, Bond was born with. “He’s someone who will stop at nothing,” Emborg says. “If he believes that something needs to happen, he will absolutely make it happen.” Of course, Bond has got to be charming too. In First Light, we’ll get to see the aspects of Bond that have always been intrinsic to his character, as well as the characteristics he develops once he becomes 007.

“Irreverence is a big part of who Bond is, too. He doesn’t really give a sh*t. [His attitude is] ‘I’m coming through!’ right?”

Making 007 Their Own

On distancing the game from the films, Emborg says not synthesizing what everyone already knows about 007 was a key tenet of the project, and that their goal was to create their own unique version of the character. “We’re not cherry picking or making it a kind of Frankenstein of existing things,” he says. “We’re truly going back. We’re looking at Fleming, but it’s a contemporary game. It’s a tangible task to figure out what it means for the character and what he would do as a 26-year-old now.”

“I think this version of Bond is probably more relatable than what we’ve seen before,” Emborg says. “He’s a younger guy stepping into this world, and you get to step into it with him.” Examining how the intelligence world changes him, how it sets him on a trajectory to become a “callous and cold” spy, will be part of his character arc.

One clear signal that IOI is taking 007 in a new direction is the scar he has on his face. While his nemesis, Blofeld, is known for having a facial scar, none of the actors who have portrayed Bond in film have one. “That’s telling everyone who is into this kind of stuff that we’re going back to Fleming, we based our guy on Fleming’s version,” Emborg explains. This, more than any other detail we’ve seen so far, would indicate we’re getting a very different 007. How do you navigate being an international spy with such an identifiable mark on your face? Emborg isn’t ready to tip his hand on that one just yet: “I won’t spoil how that fits into the story.”

How 007 Fits Into A Contemporary World

For Emborg, a lot of the things that define James Bond are timeless. His confidence, his ingenuity, his relentlessness, and his irreverence are qualities he had in Fleming’s post-war stories, and they’re qualities he’ll have in First Light, too. And while bringing a young Bond into a contemporary timeline does change some aspects of what we know about 007, the way he interacts with the world and solves the problems in front of him won’t change.

“Whether there’s smart phones or electric cars, I don’t think Bond gives a sh*t, he treats everything like a tool,” Emborg says. “He uses things in ways they aren’t intended, he breaks things. That’s something we lean into in a big way when it comes to the world around him.”

When we talk about Fleming’s Bond and how the films, particularly the Connery ones, interpreted those novels, we have to talk about Bond girls. The sultry seductresses with suggestive names, who occasionally reveal themselves to be femme fatales, are as iconic to 007 as Aston Martins and Walther PPKs. Emborg thinks the Bond girl trope, which hasn’t aged well in many cases, is something First Light will avoid.

“The trope comes from [instances] when [women] haven’t been treated as characters,” he explains. “We have a cast of characters that is pretty amazing and a lot of them are women. There are definitely beautiful women there, but they’re treated as real characters instead of eye candy.” Emborg references the original Bond girl, Honey Ryder, from 1962’s Dr. No “[We don’t have] oh, she’s walking down the beach and like, that’s it. We treat them as characters and they’re there for a reason.”

007 First Light is scheduled to release sometime in 2026. In the meantime, you can get a taste Bond in the new Hitman crossover featuring Mads Mikkelson as Casino Royale’s Le Chiffre.