That opening stretch leans hard into close combat. Bond breaks grapples, throws punches, and gets away with more than one dirty trick during the tutorial. The tone recalls the cheeky, sneaky protagonist energy of a PS2-era Rockstar title, and the spirit of one of Rockstar's best games from that generation carries forward here.
Capture-the-Flag and Agent Greenway
James Bond, Cressida Bright, and Lennox Monroe decide not to wait: why put off tomorrow what you can do today? In their case, that means tackling the next day's capture-the-flag training mission ahead of schedule. Inspirational words for superspy bootcamp, even if the mission itself is mainly a test run for earlier stealth and combat lessons.
The aftermath is where the mischief pays off. The trio holds up their trophy with pride while Agent Greenway reads out the mission brief the following morning. He cannot fault them for the ruse. As Cressida puts it, the first rule of spycraft is to expect the unexpected, and the group swagger off to enjoy a free day off.
Those juvenile antics are rare elsewhere in 007 First Light. Bond and his peers are not mid-teen high schoolers, but the setup mirrors Bully's Bullworth Academy. MI6 bootcamp functions like a boarding school packed with young would-be secret agents instead of prefects.
The social dynamics reinforce the comparison. Cressida reads as a blue-blood posh girl, easily slotted as a prep. Monroe and Bond start off more antagonistic than friendly, with Bond clearly occupying the bully role. James carries the near-painful charisma of a high school jock who gets by on a wink and a flash of pearly whites.
Nightclub Training Mission
The Bully parallels deepen during the nightclub mission. Loud music, no teachers, and plenty of girls to chat with make it the kind of environment Bully's Jimmy Hopkins would have wanted, and Bond meets it with equal excitement.
A bathroom brawl puts combat back in focus as Bond quickly knocks out the angry boyfriend of a girl he may or may not have flirted with. The night out becomes the setting for the squad's next training mission. Bond slinks through a crowded dancefloor and uses his wiles to reach the VIP section, in line with Jimmy Hopkins' school of trickery. The key difference: Jimmy was too young to go clubbing in Bully, while James gets to live out that fantasy.
Even the way James fails the task by taking too long knocking out all the lackeys in the club feels Bully-coded.
Beyond the club, 007 First Light contains dark and upsetting moments, but its first few hours still leave room for genuine joy and silliness. Young Bond behaves as chaotically and emotionally as a teenage boy, reveling in the strange new world of spywork and subterfuge as much as the simple joys of being young and dumb.
Placing such an iconic character in those parameters makes him immediately more relatable. Even without a Bully 2, 007 First Light's opening hours already carry forward that same rambunctious young-adulthood energy Rockstar fans remember from the PS2 era.
Featured names
- Jimmy Hopkins
- Cressida Bright
- Lennox Monroe
- Agent Greenway
- Bullworth Academy
- Senior Staff
- English Literature
- Digital Dragons
- Resident Evil
