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007 First Light | Image: IO Interactive
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At a time when we’ve been waiting patiently for any news of everybody’s favourite secret agent’s next appearance on the big screen, Sony just went ahead and dropped a pretty sizeable gameplay reveal for the upcoming 007 First Light, while also telling us when we can get our hands on it.
First Light is a new take on the often reinterpreted character, clearly eschewing the book-and-film series’ various canons to present a new origin story: one unique to this much younger version of Bond, played by Dexter’s Patrick Gibson. Created by IO Interactive, the people behind the incredible Hitman series, 007 First Light looks particularly promising in a industry finally taking licensed games seriously. Plus, it’ll be hitting consoles and PC on March 27, 2026.
If you haven’t seen the deep dive into the new James Bond game, check it out below.
Looks pretty good, right? Well, choppy performance aside (there’s still time to fix that, by the way) there’s a bit more packed in that 36 minutes that we can tease out with a bit of digging: so here’s a few things we learned about 007 First Light.
Bond has a Backstory
As a rule, Bond’s backstory is usually pretty muddy. He’s a secret agent, after all, and tends to keep his history pretty close to his chest. First Light seems to be taking things pretty closely from Ian Fleming’s original novels, with Bond joining the secret service following the deaths of his parents after a mountaineering accident.
After a few years in the Navy, and a few too many run-ins with authority, Bond is headhunted by MI6 and begins his journey to become the infamous, charismatic agent we all know today. In First Light, we’ll see that process play out and, in some ways, will get to determine what kind of agent this version of Bond is. The tag-line is ‘earn the number’ which, yeah, makes sense. You’re not 007 yet, but you will be.
Free-Form Gameplay takes Centre Stage…
Now, this may not be a surprise to those of us in the know given IO Interactive’s pedigree, but 007 First Light is going to feature open-ended, mission-based gameplay. It’s a third-person action-adventure, in a similar style to IO’s Hitman series, where you’ll be dropped into “breathtaking locations” with a goal to accomplish, and decide yourself how you’ll proceed.
Is your James Bond a silent assassin, keeping to shadows and eliminating guards as they pass his hiding place? Or is he more of a ‘shoot first, sneak later’ kind of agent? Or, does he aim to keep the body-count low, using gadgets to infiltrate or his natural British charm to bluff his way past potential encounters?
We see a bit of that throughout the gameplay demo, with Bond chatting away with porters and guards before his cover is blown and he’s just another hired helper, as well as having multiple ways to tackle any given situation.
I’d honestly think it was just the kind of overpromising many developers are prone to do at a game’s announcement, only to reel it back in as you get closer to release, but this is IO Interactive. If any developer can nail the kind of free-form infiltrating a game like this requires, it’s the team behind Hitman. I’m hopeful.
…but Narrative is a Star Player
A focus on gameplay doesn’t mean the game’s story gets thrown to the wayside, though. In First Light, Bond will be tracking down a rogue agent—009, specifically—who, according to MI6, is a master manipulator with an end-game they likely won’t see coming.
Why send an unproven, unreliable wannabe agent to track down a skilled defector? If 009 is as intelligent as MI6 thinks, they probably know everything the other 00 agents will do to track them down and can avoid them, but Bond is an unknown, a wild card, and likely MI6’s best chance at tracking its former agent down.
We see as much in the gameplay reveal, with Bond taking the initiative in a mission and, in the end, landing on 009’s scent.
While we don’t have much idea of what to expect from the story of 007 First Light, it’s clearly going to be a particularly cinematic one, with IO Interactive likely relishing the chance to write a more charismatic and talkative character (no shade to Agent 47, of course).
There are a Ton of Classic Bond Goodies in the Trailer
Bond has always been tied to real-world products, from his signature appreciation of cars and watches (especially when they’re deadly weapons in their own right) to his love of Vesper Martinis, shaken, not stirred.
In the 3 minutes and 14 seconds of the initial teaser trailer footage we spotted a whole bunch of Omega watches, including an unreleased model, as well as the fact the man himself is driving an Aston Martin again—probably the Aston Martin V8. In this new demo, we got to see a few of Bond’s new toys, including a specialised watch that allows him to hack and interact with the world around him.
These are all undoubtedly geared up to the extreme by Q, with Bond seen accidentally kicking off a hidden thruster on a nearby dirt bike with the press of a button, and are likely to play a key role in the new agent’s success in tracking down his mark. I honestly can’t wait to cruise around in a Bond car, especially if there are hidden machine guns or something.
It’s Launching on 27 May, 2026
While we’ll be learning more about the game in the coming months, we know it’s set for launch early in 2026. And, while it was shown at PlayStation’s State of Play, and all the focus was on the launch on Sony’s platform, 007 First Light is also coming to Xbox Series S/X, Steam, Epic Games, and the newly-released Nintendo Switch 2.
2026 is already looking pretty stacked for great games, with The Duskbloods, Saros, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Nioh 3, Fable, and, obviously, Grand Theft Auto 6 set to launch (not to mention a potential Elder Scrolls 6). Now, we’ve got one more reason to look forward to next year.
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