- 007 First light Game director Hakan Abrak says the game was always planned as an origin story.
- He says the team approached MGM and had ideas for a young Bond story that were “non-negotiable.”
- He adds that there were weekly feedback meetings, but IO was always in charge of the story.
IO Interactive has confirmed that 007 First light It was always intended to be a young James Bond story and collaborated frequently with franchise owner Amazon MGM Studios.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at an event adjacent to Summer Game Fest 2026, game director Hakan Abrak discussed the game’s conceptual phase and confirmed that first light “It was always supposed to be a young Bond story,” and the pitching process to MGM and Bond IP co-owners Barbara Broccolo and Michael G. Wilson was “hugely intimidating.”
Abrak recalled that the casting process took place in a room adorned with old books by James Bond novelist Ian Fleming, a grand piano, and “the atmosphere of the story was so thick you could walk right through it.”
When he and other members of the IO team came in to pitch, he recalled that the MGM principals entered the room and were “completely silent” before telling the developers to go ahead and present.
“We presented the story, presented our approach and why it would be different from other Bond games,” Abrak said. “[They were] very quiet, and then Barbara just says, after a while, stone-faced she just says, ‘I quite like it,’ and then the room erupts immediately after; [they said] “These guys are so cool, like they didn’t really get it, I wanted to stay calm and everything, but deep down I was like ‘ugh,’ that was something.”
The game director noted that he thought IO’s opening speech was “a little risqué” and that the team had a lot of ideas for introducing aspects of Ian Fleming’s novels, such as James Bond’s scar, and creating a coming-of-age story for a young man “where it’s not like he’s figured everything out.”
Abrak said the team didn’t want to recreate a “perfect digital version of Daniel Craig, I love Daniel Craig, but I just wanted to make something that felt original.”
“More importantly, what we also told them was that we want to go for the players, we want to create a Bond for the players,” he said, explaining that some young players might not have a family connection to Bond like the previous generation.
“Us [wanted] take that risk and introduce a new Bond for gamers,” he said, “We want to make a Bond for gamers, not the gamification of a movie. It’s difficult [to go there] with non-negotiable things, but this was not negotiable for us. If we were to do this, we needed to get this freedom for this approach. So this was very, very clear from the beginning.”
While IO had creative control over the story, Abrak said there was input from MGM as well as several casting sessions before Paddy Gibson was cast as Bond. The team also had weekly meetings with Eon Productions, the British film production company that primarily produced the Bond film series.
“Although the story was written by IO and delivered by us, we received a lot of comments,” he said. “I think we had a certain affinity and we had something to start with, like Danish dark humor, dry humor, but getting British humor right, there [was] There is still a way to go.
“It’s been a huge help and we’re really interested in it, and I think for the younger generation of Eon creators that we meet and the art of film, which [was] attached to it as well, it was very, very exciting for them to do it, because they were actually making a new one [Bond] from scratch.
“It was a collaboration; they were very involved, but it was always IO, doing the story, doing the characters and things, and then getting feedback and working closely together.”
007 First light It is now available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is scheduled to launch sometime this year.
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