The James Bond franchise is preparing for two reboots: one on the big screen and one on consoles. While the film is still hunting for its 007, the video game already has a new actor and a new mission.
IO Interactive, the studio behind the Hitman series, is bringing Bond back to gaming in “007 First Light,” the franchise's first major title in more than a decade.
Patrick Gibson — who played the young Dexter Morgan in last year's Dexter: Original Sin — has stepped into the role of a rookie MI6 recruit at the start of his career.
Watch the official trailer for the game below:
While Gibson's Bond is among the youngest versions of the character, Narrative & Cinematic Director Martin Emborg leaves no room for doubt about the game’s approach, as he reveals in a new featurette for “First Light” that they're “dialing the action to twelve”:
“I think it's safe to say that we're dialing the action to twelve on this one. We wanted a physical Bond, we wanted fighting to be visceral and brutal and violent and super-fun and exciting.”
Instead of a stealth-first, bloodless Bond, “First Light” embraces raw physicality.
Players will be able to slam enemies into walls, throw them into one another, and improvise with the environment, alongside plenty of traditional gunplay.
Related: James Bond Fans Warned To Prepare for “Woke” 007 in Movie Reboot : Disney Fanatic
Emborg also emphasizes that the new Bond isn’t a composite of past versions but a total reimagining, saying, “We wanted to make something that was fully original. So he's young, he's irreverent, inherently charming, funny — but he's not yet cold, not callous. He has that impatience of youth built into him.”
The result is a 007 who’s inexperienced but still dangerous — the brutality isn't toned down, just reframed through a younger agent who hasn’t yet built the walls around himself. In that sense, IO’s Bond may even feel more unrestrained than the movies’ mature versions.
As for the movie reboot, it remains to be seen how the filmmakers will handle the character, who has so far been played on the big screen by Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig.
“007 First Light” launches in 2026 on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Are you excited about playing “007 First Light”? Let us know in the comments!
