Speaking at an event adjacent to Summer Game Fest 2026, game director Hakan Abrak discussed the conceptual phase of the game and confirmed that First Light was always supposed to be a young Bond story. He described pitching the concept to MGM and Bond IP co-owners Barbara Broccolo and Michael G. Wilson as massively intimidating.
Massively intimidating
Abrak recalled the pitching process in a room decked with old books from James Bond novelist Ian Fleming and a grand piano.
The atmosphere of history was so thick you could just cut through it
When he and other IO team members went in to pitch, he remembered the MGM heads came into the room and were completely silent before telling the developers to go ahead and pitch.
After IO Interactive pitched its story and approach, Abrak said Barbara Broccolo responded stonefaced after a while.
I quite like it
Abrak said the room erupted right after.
These guys are so cool, like they didn't really get it, I was like keeping my cool and whatnot, but deep inside I was like 'phew' that was something.
He characterized the initial pitch as a bit ballsy, with ideas drawn from Ian Fleming novels, including James Bond's scar, framed as a young coming of age story.
A bit ballsy
Where it's not like he has figured everything out.
The team did not want to recreate a perfect digital version of Daniel Craig, Abrak said, but wanted to make something that feels original.
Perfect digital version of Daniel Craig, I love Daniel Craig, but it just wanted to make something that feels original.
Abrak explained that some young gamers might not have a familiar attachment to Bond like the older generation.
More importantly, what we also told them was that we want to go for the gamers, we want to create a Bond for the gamers,
We [wanted] to take that risk and introduce a fresh Bond for the gamers,
We want to make a Bond for the gamers, not the gamification of a movie. It's difficult [to go there] with non-negotiables, but this was a non-negotiable for us. If we did this, we needed to get this freedom for this approach. So, this was very, very clear from the get-go.
IO Interactive retained creative control over the story, Abrak said, though there was input from MGM. The team held several casting sessions before Paddy Gibson was cast as Bond, and held weekly meetings with Eon Productions.
Although the story was written by IO and delivered by us, we got a lot of feedback.
Abrak said the team had some affinity to start with through Danish dark humor, but getting British humor right still had some way to go.
I think we had some affinity, and we had something to start with, like with the Danish dark humor, dry humor, but getting the British humor right, there [was] still some way to go.
Abrak found the collaboration with Eon Productions massively helpful. Younger generation creators at Eon found it exciting to work with artwork from the movies and build a new Bond from the ground up.
It's been massively helpful, and we're really into it, and I think for the younger generation of Eon creators that we had meetings with, and the artwork from the movies, which [was] attached to it as well, it was very, very exciting for them to get to do, because they were actually making a new one [Bond] from the ground up.
It was a collaboration; they were very much involved, but it was always IO, doing the story, doing the characters and things, and then getting feedback and working closely.
007 First Light is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version slated to launch sometime this year.
