007 First Light releases in just two days’ time, but developer IO Interactive had decided to give players desperate for the first proper James Bond game in fourteen years a sneak peek of the game in action, uploading the first 13 minutes of the game onto YouTube.
Granted, this appears to be because footage of the game leaked online over the weekend, in its description for the video, IO writes that “since a few users got hold of the disc early, watch the first 13 minutes of the opening mission in 007 First Light, as intended on day 1.”
Spoilers ahead, obviously. But the footage mostly depicts Bond looking very wet and cold, after a helicopter he’s on enroute to a mission gets shot down into the ocean. Emerging from the flaming wreckage and staggering out of the sea, Bond proceeds to sneak inland, clambering along cliff-faces and avoiding enemy patrols, before infiltrating a sprawling enemy camp with a giant dome at its centre.
It’s a quite a serious, low-key opening (explosive helicopter crash excepted) which is interesting given how the pre-release trailers focussed on playing the Bond hits. Atmosphere-wise it reminds me of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, with a very similar art direction and tone. Mechanically, though, it resembles more of a trad action adventure, with a lot of cinematic camera pans and Uncharted-style climbing.
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It’s indicative of the debate that has surrounded First Light since it was first properly revealed, namely how much it will (or won’t) follow in the footsteps of IO’s Hitman games, particularly its acclaimed World of Assassination trilogy. Joshua Wolens recently got hands on with First Light, and came away concerned that it played too much to the studio’s weaknesses:
“On the surface, Bond might seem a natural fit for IO: all glitz and gadgets that make it feel like barely a skip away from the world of Hitman,” he wrote back in April. “But what I saw had me feeling that the studio has not leaned into its strengths, trading the absurd clockwork worlds of Agent 47 for a more tightly choreographed, linear, and ‘cinematic’ game that IO has never been all that good at.”
Whether the segment Josh played is indicative of the full game remains to be seen. But we don’t have long until we find out one way or the other. First Light isn’t the only IO game rapidly approaching over the horizon either, as the studio says that its long-in-development fantasy RPG is ‘Very, very far’ along also.
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