007 First Light Is Incredible
[Modern Review] Patrick Gibson's Bond delivers the best game I've played in ages.
At last the wait is over and IO Interactive have unleashed 007 First Light on the world. I’ve been waiting for this game for a long time.
With no incumbent, theatrical Bond, No Time To Die almost half a decade old and the last, non-smartphone James Bond game releasing all the way back in 2012 this has proven to be a massive occasion from a number of different perspectives; for Bond fans, this is the first proper Bond project released under Amazon and the first actor to portray Bond in the post-Daniel Craig era, for gamers it is the return of an IP that delivered absolute classics like GoldenEye and Nightfire but perhaps most importantly, this has been quite the moment for Britain, culturally.
I’m bilingual going on trilingual (всем привет, hola a todos) and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked people from the ex-USSR or Latin America what their image of Britain is and had James Bond come up alongside Big Ben, the most bland tea blend on the planet (there goes my citizenship) and red telephone boxes as symbols of the UK. For those who don’t live in the UK, even the BBC: essentially British state media, was celebrating the launch of this game.
Since the last Bond film came out, her majesty the Queen passed away and we’ve gone through 4 different prime ministers, so I’m happy to see that at least one British institution is left standing, perhaps shaken but not stirred.
After a very long wait, it’s my pleasure to finally bring you this review of 007 First Light.
Agent Under Water
007 First Light opens aboard a helicopter in the night skies above Iceland where a certain trainee Aircrewman: James Bond is flying with the British SAS who are on a classified asset retrieval mission against unknown foes. Before the crew can land, multiple surface to air missiles are launched from the island, blowing the helicopters out of the sky. Bond, James Bond, almost drowns but manages to make it to shore, picking up his -previously only depicted in the novels- trademark cheek scar in the process.
The hypothermic, untrained, sole-survivor Bond is given a less than 1% chance of survival by the MI6 handler who guides him through the rest of the mission but the young Bond’s natural tenacity, courage and cool head under pressure allow him to pull off the impossible and MI6 recruit Bond on the spot.
The helicopter crash and first 10 minutes or so of 007 First Light.
IO Interactive made it clear from the beginning that their James Bond origin story was going to be something different; the Bond of the novels was from a naval background and so was the Bond of the big screen, until Casino Royale made Craig’s Bond a former-SAS serviceman. As such, this was a point of worry for me coming into the game but I’m very happy to say that the basic building blocks of the character we all know and love are well and truly intact. Let’s face it, the Royal Navy doesn’t quite have the reputation it once did so the decision to link a modern Bond with the internationally respected SAS is one bit of retconning I have no objections to.
It helps that throughout this opening and the rest of the game, Patrick Gibson’s take on a younger, less experienced 21st century Bond is phenomenally acted and excellently written, of the many quips and conversations present I can think of very few that don’t land or weren’t handled well.
This isn’t Casino Royale. At the start of this game, Bond doesn’t even know how to fire a gun properly or how to fight but the prologue and again, the acting and writing do a superb job of separating Bond’s natural talents from those he’s taught; the entire first mission and tutorial is a motivating, playable training montage. James isn’t made to look stupid or incompetent in First Light, rather he is headstrong, impatient and raw, he has the heart of a hero, a natural charisma and an inexhaustible font of courage but lacks the skills and experience of his on-screen counterparts.
A long time ago, in my old wish list post for this game, I mentioned how every new actor playing Bond had the task of convincing you that they were 007, through their performance, their aura or the way the actor could sell action or wear a suit. Back then I was worried that Patrick Gibson Bond’s younger appearance, mannerisms and the difficulty in pulling this off inside the medium of video games meant that I’d never buy him as Bond, well…
This younger Bond hasn’t quite developed the cruel edge of the elite 007 yet but by the middle of the game, Patrick Gibson had fully won me over. If the plans to make this a trilogy come to fruition then I can’t wait to see this Bond become more seasoned over time.
I have heard a few grumbles online over Bond wearing distinctly un-Bondlike clothes like salmon shirts, shorts and having gadgets based on things as un-classy as wireless earbuds but to that I say…
And although I sort of get this point, I’d suggest that Bond has always been a mirror of the style and trends of the times, rather than a distinct look. We don’t associate Bond with smoking anymore but in the novels and with Sean Connery, he was often seen with a cigarette between his lips and Roger Moore’s Bond had a preference for digital watches.
Bond has also always been the height of British male fantasy, he takes the 3 great pillars of British male desire: adventure, fast cars and beautiful women and excels at all 3 of them. IO Interactive did a fantastic job of writing this fantasy for a Gen Z Bond; what most older people, especially in the UK don’t understand is that the life of the Gen Z male is largely an exercise in unmet potential and emptiness: we are the most educated, most healthy and most worldly generation but there are no jobs, Covid destroyed our upward mobility and the prizes we all work towards are worth much less and much harder to obtain than they were 30 years ago. The very idea of having the opportunity to be seen and to show off what we can really do and not to be filtered out by an algorithm, the way Bond does in the prologue, is what makes this a distinctly Gen Z male fantasy.
Getting back to the game, this prologue in Iceland has a very Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes feel to it that I really enjoyed. While First Light in general lacks the freedom of a modern Hitman game or of MGS5 it makes up for it in immersion; it’s difficult to cock this mission up and the environment doesn’t hold any real dangers but you feel cold, outnumbered and outgunned while playing, which is what matters.
After triggering an explosion so fierce it was probably seen from Norway, Bond escapes Iceland, rescued prisoners in-tow and First Light’s opening song -also called First Light- by Lana Del Rey plays.
I… don’t really know what to make of this song.
Let me get my praise out of the way first: I love both the visual element and the lyrics to First Light. The chess imagery and the shadowy female figures tie in wonderfully to some of the locations and characters you meet in this roughly 15-17 hour adventure, as do the lyrics; David Arnold: the musical alumni of 5 separate Bond films worked on this song too so the instrumental element is fantastic… but I think First Light has taught me that I don’t like Lana Del Rey very much. Sorry, Lana heads? Reys? Whatever you call yourselves.
Lana’s whispery-breathy vocals grate on me the more I listen to this song and explore the rest of her music and they have an unpleasant, overproduced feel to them, like someone pissed about with the audio track on Audacity before it was added to the video. I also find her black and white, sad girl image a bit cringeworthy but at this point I’m just being mean, put me in front of a microphone and the besht you’ll get out of me ish a middling Sean Connery impreshion.
Lana made it known publicly, on more than one occasion in the past that she really wanted a Bond theme under her belt so even if I prefer Nearly Civilized by Esthero, I’m genuinely glad she got the opportunity to do it, Bond themes are such perfect time capsules of the musical eras they come from and I have no doubt in future that First Light will sound tastefully of its time in the same way that Everything Or Nothing and You Know My Name do.
I'm Just Looking
007 First Light’s presentation and performance might be the one area where I seem to differ quite a bit from the general consensus; I’ve heard the game described as ‘beautiful’ or ‘stunning’ but to be honest? I think First Light looks up to triple-A standard but not especially ground-breaking graphically.
I’ll let you be the judge.
There are all sorts of fantastic, Bondian locations to explore in First Light but as this is a heavily narrative-driven experience, I’m going to try and stick to what was shown in the trailers before I write the spoilers section.
007 First Light runs on the Glacier Engine: the same as the newer Hitman games which contributes to it looking similar -but not playing like- the World of Assassination trilogy, furthermore I do think First Light is much better looking than those games; the WoA trilogy, especially the second game, was dogged by budget constraints so it is pleasing to see IO in a well-deserved stronger position financially. Getting back on topic, it’s the performance, character models and the finer details that bring the presentation down a notch for me.
My gaming rig has an RTX 5070 and an i7 12700KF with 16GB of RAM, this is a seriously beefy machine capable of running all games on High at 60FPS and even some -like the recent Resident Evil Requiem- on Ultra at 60 with Ray-Tracing turned off; I’m not saying this to boast, I’m just trying to convey the equipment I’m working with here. Despite this power, I found myself running First Light on High with certain options scaled back to account for the unstable framerate. Issues weren’t constant but during moments of high population density, say, an undercover visit to a corporate gala or a chess tournament, my FPS count would find itself in the lower 40’s. There were also a number of rooms I entered and models I saw that were lacking in detail and jagged shadows are not an uncommon sight in First Light.
Despite all this, I'm happy to report that in my first playthrough, during Tac-Sim missions and now into my second run of the campaign, not once have I experienced a crash while playing First Light.
I’d like to go into detail on First Light’s sound and music but unfortunately, a lot of it is gentle ambient like in Hitman and most of the big, bombastic action scenes’ music hasn’t been uploaded to YouTube yet but I will do my best with what I can find.
The first time you hear a version of the Bond theme in 007 First Light is when Bond does the classic move of commandeering a vehicle that looks utterly useless and somehow, he still manages to drive it like a maniac. This score punctuates one of the many moments of the campaign that brough a toothy grin to my face.
007 First Light’s best set-piece is accompanied by this epic version of the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service theme song. I don’t even like that film, even after its reappraisal by Bond fans but the music is iconic and it lends perfect gravitas to what is the most chaotic firefight of this whole adventure.
I can’t find this one anywhere yet without spoilers in the title but there’s a late game boat chase that features an awesome, instrumental rendition of First Light that reminded me of David Arnold’s work on The World Is Not Enough and the River Thames Chase in that Bond opening.
I’m not a big player of third person shooters but in my experience, they have a tendency to have rather limp/weak sounding weapons, I can confirm this is not the case with First Light.
Youth Is No Guarantee Of Innovation
My biggest fear with 007 First Light was that this was going to be a reskinned, 007-themed Hitman game; Hitman isn’t really my preferred subgenre of stealth but I have a lot of respect and fondness for that franchise, however, I also feel that the World Of Assassination trilogy lost a lot of the dark aesthetic and puzzle-like design that made the older games so great. As a result, I wasn’t entirely convinced by IO Interactive the same way everyone else seemed to be. The gaming community also seems to have forgotten that time they tried to fire Agent 47’s voice actor.
Happily, I am eating my words now, feasting on them in fact. 007 First Light doesn’t play like Hitman at all. There are comparisons to all sorts of franchises being espoused on the internet and what I would say is that First Light is somewhere between 007: Everything Or Nothing and Uncharted 4 with a dash of Hitman; from Everything Or Nothing it takes its well-developed hand to hand combat, its focus on a lengthy narrative and near-future technology, from Uncharted 4 it takes the feel of its shooting, that signature Sony climbing system and the feel of its driving and from Hitman it takes its engine and the chameleon-style stealth through exclusive events or crowded locales.
There are 5 pillars to the gameplay of 007 First Light: Hand to hand combat, shooting, stealth, gadgets and driving. Famously, it became so difficult to get Bond games out on shelves after 2012 because Eon Productions: former producers of the Bond franchise, weren’t entirely pleased with the legacy of Bond games as unsophisticated shooters and felt that the character hadn’t been portrayed as anything more than a gunslinger; as much as I love those classic Bond shooters, it’s hard to disagree with that second point but you have to wonder, do they watch their own films? Anyway, I mention this because 007 First Light was mostly produced under Eon’s tenure and it shows; a lot of the shooting in this game is back-loaded to the last 3/9 chapters, this gives the game a pleasing sense of escalation as you progress and it also means that the majority of the time, you do actual espionage and stealth.
The highlight of the experience for me was the hand to hand combat and the gadgets. Bond has so many different moves in this game, you can clinch people and start landing knees and uppercuts or throw them, barge into enemies, charge them into walls and over ledges, throw punches to the gut, kicks, parry enemy strikes, dodge and throw objects, including your gun: everything you could want to do, you can. Fights are frantic and fun with the right combination of moves able to make any brawl look choreographed. There were times when the Daniel Craig films seemed embarrassed to be associated with classic Bond and the silly gadgets were often the butt of jokes but IO interactive gave the people what they want and the gadgets returned and in greater number and quality than ever; I don’t want to spoil them all but I will say that classics like the laser watch are included, the different ways in which you can use each gadget are a treat to discover on each level and the pen in this doesn’t just explode… it fires missiles.
The stealth and driving are solid in First Light but the former does that modern gaming trope I really hate where a lot of the best routes are made abundantly obvious by chest-high, magical invisibility grass and the latter teases you for a reveal that never really comes; I hate to drop a mild spoiler here but this bugged me enough that I feel it justified: the Aston Martin Valhalla, teased in both trailers and throughout the game, is only given to you to drive for about 30 seconds in an enclosed arena. Lame.
Something I adore is that when Bond is caught you can actually bullshit your way to safety a lot of the time. Hit Q and Bond will ‘Bluff’ and convince the guard that he’s a health and safety man or an IT guy working late, this is of course pure Bond and many of these fake stories made me chuckle.
Shooting in 007 First Light feels great. Unlike a lot of games with 2 separate combat styles, you can switch between brawling and shooting with seamless elegance; nothing makes you feel more Bond than disarming a goon, throwing him over a ledge then tapping the slow-motion ‘Focus’ mode to headshot his mate before he can even get a shot off. Unfortunately, this pillar of gameplay is somewhat marred by the fact that there just aren’t any interesting weapons to use. You get to use the usual mix of non-descript European pistols, Western assault rifles, KRISS Vectors and a sniper rifle as with most action games but they really needed some wacky, Bondian weaponry; the laser gun from Moonraker is something of a Bond game classic so I was surprised not to see it show up at least once.
At a stretch, I could say that enemy variety isn’t high but the AI is smart enough and combat encounters so spread out and well-paced that this never proved to be an issue. The game is made up of 9, 90 minute chapters, you have gun fights in maybe 6 of them, usually lasting 10-15 minutes.
The highlight of 007 First Light for me is the chapter set in a Vietnamese resort, this mission just hits every important Bond note with perfection.
You get the classic Singeon Smythe Bond alias, a long section where you swan around a fancy resort undercover, bugging guests and collecting intelligence, Bond can’t help himself and decides to fornicate with a fellow guest and once night falls you don a classy white dinner jacket, Connery-style and get into some real action. I don’t want to spoil the entire level but there came a point where I was sat on an evening, beer in hand, stalking a platoon of enemies through the Vietnamese underbrush and in a fancy villa, setting traps, using distractions and picking them off one by one when all I could think was “Goodness me, this game is amazing.” Stealthing around this level made me feel like I was playing Metal Gear Solid 3 and I don’t think I can give any higher praise than that.
There wasn’t a single level I didn’t enjoy in First Light, though if I had to criticise I’d say the penultimate mission felt as if it went on a bit too long and had too much platforming for such simple mechanics.
There are challenges to complete for each mission and the Tac-Sim mode, which allows IO interactive to reuse maps for score-based challenges with leaderboards and the player can unlock suits and weapons with in-game currency here but as of now, the mode is quite barren with only the promise that long-term support will be upheld.
Not The Only Spy Out There
Before we get into the spoilers section, I wanted to highlight just how well-cast First Light is and how much I enjoyed spending time with the majority of these characters.
My favourite of the characters was Lennie James as John Greenway, which was a surprise to me because this character starts the game as your usual hard-ass, drill sergeant type; this is also an original character created by IO Interactive, not pulled from a film or novel. Even in the earlier stages, Greenway comes across as harsh and unfriendly but never as cruel or abusive of his rank and as the adventure progresses, watching him slowly learn to see Bond as more than a fluke (and seeing Bond grow to respect Greenway in earnest) provides some really great moments.
This may seem like overblown praise but I’m going to say it anyway: Alastair Mackenzie is the best Q since Desmond Llewelyn. John Cleese never had the time in the role to build much of a rapport with the audience and was too overtly comedic and Ben Whishaw always came off like a LinkedIn IT guy to me rather than an eccentric quartermaster but this Q, in my opinion, is as good as you’re going to get short of reviving Desmond, rest in peace, legend. Rather than copying the Desmond Llewelyn routine of getting annoyed by Bond, this Q acts as something of a father figure and a warmer figure of authority who actually cares about the agents, it’s very charming; there’s a sweet moment between Bond and Q where he teaches Bond how to tie a bowtie properly, it made me smile to see Bond’s youth and Q’s cool granddad-ish sensibilities highlighted so well.
I can’t really talk about the villains of this story because it’s a bit of a reveal so instead, I’ll mention some funny cameos.
The only members of this cast I wasn’t too keen on were Kiera Lester as Moneypenny and Priyanga Burford as M.
They give convincing performances and I never disliked any of their dialogue but neither actress was given much to do beyond playing very bland versions of these characters; this version of Moneypenny has none of the wit and charm of Naomie Harris on the big screen and Burford’s M doesn’t have the presence or the intimidation factor of Judi Dench’s M. It takes a special talent and presence as an actress to fill a role traditionally associated with an older, austere gentleman but Judi Dench is a British national treasure and has that ability in spades, Burford, in my opinion, does not.
Bad Intel
WARNING: This section contains heavy spoilers for the plot and ending of 007 First Light. If you’re planning to buy the game then please skip ahead.
There’s actually quite a lot to 007 First Light’s plot and the marketing for this game really lead us towards thinking it was going to be one kind of story when in-fact, it turned out to be something else entirely. I’ll try and be as concise as I can with my explanation and critique but honestly? A lot happens and this is easily the best story a 007 video game has gotten.
The gist of 007 First Light’s plot is that Bond -who’s handler on the Iceland mission turns out to be the MI6 supercomputer: Thea- and his 1% chance of survival aren’t the only statistical anomalies or mistaken assessments. Sir Nicholas Webb, big tech mogul who designed Thea knows the machine is faulty but the data it collects and the utility it provides to MI6 is making him disgustingly rich and politically powerful, so rather than admit the truth, his son Damian Webb -the soldier with the gold mask from the trailers- heads a PMC funded by daddy’s money to wipe out those who know the truth or don’t die when they’re supposed to.
009 Comes out of hiding to warn his old colleague Greenway that MI6 is compromised but the PMC attack the meeting, setting off the bomb in the Slovak hotel that kills Bond’s fellow agents in training.
Eventually, Greenway and Bond discover the truth which comes with 2 other unsettling revelations: Greenway, who eliminated the other, supposedly traitorous 00 agents years ago, did so under a false positive from Thea and a second supercomputer: Hyperion exists, giving Webb a backdoor into MI6, the intelligence gathered from this backdoor he intends to use to oust the current Prime Minister and to install his own puppet regime. Bond and Isolda, who is a rival spy and femme fatale who Bond meets throughout the game, go rogue to Webb’s Antarctica HQ to retrieve Hyperion. Once they find the computer, Isolda shoots and kills Webb against Bond’s wishes and tries to escape with the computer in order to sell it to her shadowy benefactors, who are heavily implied to be Spectre.
Before she can escape, Bond shoots Hyperion rendering the data irretrievable.
In the final mission, a previously thought to be dead Damian Webb attacks MI6 HQ to steal Thea so that he can blackmail MI6 with their data and sell the particularly juicy parts to hostile powers. Isolda escapes capture while Bond proves his loyalty to MI6 after his rogue Antarctica trip by wiping out the intruders and killing Webb once and for all.
For his actions, Bond earns the number and is crowned 007. I’ve skimmed over quite a lot but this is the essence of the game.
SPOILERS END HERE
I thoroughly enjoyed First Light’s story and I can’t wait to see what a sequel holds. The only parts I really take issue with are the fact that the series is going in that direction again in regards to the villains and for some reason, they had Bond quipping throughout the final boss fight. This removes all tension and ensures the audience won’t take it seriously. It’s also never explained just how this character seemingly comes back to life after Bond dispatches them a few missions earlier; it’s a bit of a shame too that a certain trainee character who is given lots of development gets dropped after the first act due to an injury.
Imagine how much worse the fight with Alec at the end of GoldenEye would have been with Bond making jokes every few moments.
Keeping The British End Up
Unless Halo: Campaign Evolved ends up being much better than it looks or Nintendo come out with something more ambitious than an N64 game with better graphics, First Light is almost certainly going to be my game of the year.
Resident Evil Requiem was amazing but Resident Evil is always good so I wasn’t particularly surprised and that game is mostly repackaged good ideas from previous entries rather than the wholly original 007 First Light.
I had a genuine -not figurative but literal- smile on my face while playing this game. The levels are fun, the gameplay is crisp and while the Tac-Sim mode and challenges won’t keep you playing for long after you finish the story, I’m perfectly satisfied with a 10/10, 25 hours of playtime rather than a 5/10, 100 hour game as seems to be trendy with gamers at the moment. As a gamer, it’s an absolute treat to see such a stealth-forward game with this amount of budget, care and attention and as a Bond fan, I could tell throughout that IO Interactive were big fans of the franchise and understood what fans of James Bond really want out of a game.
007 First Light is a must-play.
TL;DR: 007 First Light doesn’t have much staying power and the final showdown is marred by questionable writing choices but the gameplay is superb, the levels are enjoyable and you can tell IO Interactive are massive fans of the Bond IP. This is a must-play.
Join me next time when I will be listing… something I haven’t decided on yet.
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Also skipped the spoilers! I'm just about done with the Vietnam mission and dealing with the aftermath. Big smile on my face the whole time, just like you said. This is so much FUN
Man, I was eager to read your take on this game. I'm still waiting for my physical copy to arrive, but I'm glad it was worth the investment.
That's why I skipped the spoiler section of your review. I'll come back to see if it aligns with my perception. But everything else you wrote just got me more excited for it!