‘007 First Light’ Exists Thanks to Daniel Craig and ‘Hitman’

Just yesterday, IO Interactive revealed its first gameplay from its James Bond game, 007 First Light. While it’s set in its own continuity, it’ll still have some ties to the films and books—in fact, those ties are how IO got the reins of Bond in the first place.

Press like IGN got to visit the studio prior to the recent unveiling, and it was there game director Hakan Abrak revealed part of IO’s pitch for the game was sculpting Daniel Craig’s face onto Agent 47, the star of its stealth-action franchise Hitman. This Craig sculpt was “just for demo purposes,” said Abrak, “to give an impression of what these living, breathing spaces mean in an IO game.” The demo was set in the 2016 Hitman’s Sapienza level, a fictional Italian town with a compound in the caverns with the level’s villain working on a virus. Among the Hitman reboot trilogy, it’s also a fan favorite that lets players get into some Bond-like situations to complete their missions.

With that demo, Bond’s license holders MGM and Eon saw “our angle would be [trying] to deliver a 360 experience where … [you can] explore the part of the Bond fantasy where he is in social spaces where he is using not only his fisticuffs,” continued Abrak, “but also his charms and bluff and figuring out different ways in those social spaces to overcome the obstacles or get what he wants. How would a charming Bond fare in a situation like this where he doesn’t have to necessarily resort to violence?”

The 007 First Light reveal also featured multiple avenues for Bond to infiltrate places, from bluffing his way in to swiping credentials and regular sneaking. This being IO’s first time with an established IP, Abrak said the team wanted to “put our creative fingerprints on this as well. So we weren’t interested in a gamification of a movie or maybe where it’s about technical prowess only…or just taking some bespoke scenes from a movie and realizing them in gaming.”

007 First Light will release on March 27, 2026 for PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.