A 007: First Light developer has opened up regarding different perspectives on how the James Bond character should be portrayed.
007: First Light will release in the last week of May 2026, and it will be the first new James Bond adventure since the Daniel Craig films wrapped in 2021, with “No Time to Die.” It’s also the first James Bond console video game experience in over a decade and the first major Bond project since Amazon took over the IP.
As such, there are a lot of die-hard Bond fans thirsting for the best possible portrayal of the character. That said, this character has appeared in on-screen media since the ’60s and has been played in various ways. Roger Moore famously added a lot of camp to the character; decades later, Craig plays the much more stoic version. In the ’90s, Pierce Brosnan tried to play a balanced version of the character.
This begs the question: What is to be expected from the portrayal in the upcoming video game? In 007: First Light, Bond is portrayed by Patrick Gibson, and the game’s storyline centers on a young James Bond trying to earn 00 agent status. Now, the senior combat designer working on the game is weighing in on why differing opinions about how Bond should be portrayed are a good thing.
007: First Light Dev Says No-Opinion Bond Would Be ‘Dull’
Speaking in an interview with Eurogamer, Tom Marcham explained that everyone’s differing opinions on James Bond are what make the character exciting. He believes that casting a James Bond in a medium is a widely discussed topic and that the little bit of controversy around the forthcoming portrayal in First Light is a positive for the studio.
“Everyone has their favorite Bond. If we made a Bond where no one had any opinions on them, it would be the dullest Bond ever made. So the fact that we’ve got a little controversy on that, I think it’s a good thing,” he said. “I think every time a new James Bond is cast it’s talked about in every part of Britain, so let’s have it happen to us, let’s have people discuss it. I’m curious to see… One of the things I really like about Paddy’s performance of Bond is how much he grows on you throughout the game as well. So it’d be interesting to see what people think when they actually play through it.”
The game’s narrative director, Martin Emborg, also discussed the unearned confidence visible on the young Bond’s face throughout the game. He says the character is just as strong as any previous Bond and believes the arrogance, while unearned, makes for a good character in this origin story, which serves as a good entry point for a potential new audience.
“I think [Patrick Gibson has] done an incredible job, and he’s definitely someone that has so much charisma that the more time you spend with him, the more you like him,” he said.
Recently, one of the developers who worked on the EA James Bond games commented that the Batman Arkham quadrilogy would have served as a better blueprint for the Bond character than the options available to EA in the early 2000s. Read those comments here.
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