When the first gameplay footage was released for 2001’s 007: Agent Under Fire, I remember cringing at the sort-of-but-not-quite-Pierce Brosnan face model used for Bond himself. Unable to get the licence for Brozzer himself, EA went with the likeness of a similar looking actor. The result was weirdly uncanny, like you were playing as a Pound Shop 007 rather than the real thing.
It was a similar sensation when IO Interactive revealed its own James Bond last year. Irish actor Patrick Gibson stars as 007 in First Light, the first 007 video game since EA’s truly disastrous 007 Legends. His Bond has already raised eyebrows thanks to his youthful appearance (this is a prequel after all), as well as the simple fact that he isn’t Daniel Craig, or Pierce Brosnan, or Timothy Dalton or Roger… etc.
Whereas EA seemed sheepish about using a non-movie actor, even silhouetting Bond’s face on the cover art in 2001, IO is taking the opposite approach. Gibson’s face is front-and-centre in marketing materials, and his name appears in big, bold letters in the movie style title sequence. But judging by recent early gameplay previews, Gibson’s Bond might not feel entirely… Bond. After a recent gameplay session, Polygon called him “too young, too eager, and far too chatty”, and argued that he just didn’t have the “sang froid” of the screen actors.
Indeed, the question of whether a non-movie Bond can feel like Bond seems to have sparked a wider debate: whether it’s possible to feel like you’re playing as James Bond in a video game at all. Our sister site PC Gamer has posited that, just maybe, James Bond shouldn’t be in video games. Putting aside the author’s personal dislike of James “insufferable public school dickhead” Bond, the point that the quips, charisma and suaveness of the character don’t translate well from cinema to video games might just have legs – and this is coming from someone who actually is a huge Bond fan.
For my money, the best Bond films capture some of the sense of the Fleming novels. The Bond of the novels is a bit of an arsehole, one who inhabits a smoky and slightly noir-ish world of, casinos, cigarettes and moral ambiguity. The early Connery films managed this, as did both Dalton films plus a decent chunk of Casino Royale. In short, the literary Bond is not a video game character.
The cartoonish world of Moore and Brosnan, however, is much better suited to video games. It’s no surprise that arguably the two best Bond games, Goldeneye and Everything or Nothing, starred Brosnan. They felt like Bond films, because Brosnan’s Bond films felt like video games.
What I’m getting at here is that over its sixty-plus year history, the cinematic Bond has undergone some wild tonal shifts. The 007 who drove an invisible car in 2002 is not the same Bond who had his knackers whipped by Le Chiffre four years later. And those who feel that the outlandish and often comedic character of the ’80s and ’90s is ‘their’ Bond is much more likely to have an easy time getting into the spirit of a Bond game.
Unlike those Brosnan games, First Light has an additional challenge on its hands; making us feel like we’re playing as James Bond without the benefit of a recognisable face or voice. Putting aside the question of whether Gibson looks too young for the role, I’m heartened to see that IO Interactive seems to have gone down the camp route with the character. There’s even a Moore-esque dick joke in the trailer, with Bond telling a female acquaintance he’s in the business of “head hunting”.
Nobody, not even IO Interactive, is arguing that a Bond game will ever be ‘canon’. Not that the idea of canon means much when it comes to a cinematic character who has changed face five times, never gets older, and is currently dead. But there’s a certain type of Bond charm – the humorous, cheesy and outlandish type – that a game ought to be able to capture. I for one am excited to find out whether First Light has managed it.
