Lights

As soon as Hitman devs IO Interactive were revealed to be making a Bond game, I was on board with it. Agent 47 and 007 have a bunch in common, at least in terms of the sneaky, shooty, or stabby stuff their jobs entail, so IO’d be putting a fresh twist on a kind of game it’s already proven great at making. There is a difference though, and having killed Le Chiffre in Hitman over the weekend, I feel like I understand it better than before.

IO exec Hakan Abrak has offered his view on how 007: First Light’s Bond will play differently to 47 in an interview with IGN, which I’m glad to see also saw him emphasise that the studio aren’t done with the Hitman series.

In addition to Bond’s humour being more British and involving less flamingo disguises than Hitman’s, Abrak described the difference in how the two games feel to play like this:

“You have definitely glimpses of IO Interactive, as you would know from Hitman games as well, but it’s more front foot. It’s less of an analytical mind, chess play, where you sit and meticulously plan. All the clockwork things in Hitman where if you do this or do this, where Bond is more impulsive, more reckless sometimes. It’s more like he’s just taking things and acting and handling it more as they arise.”

That’s all well and good to say, but the experience I had half-heartedly roleplaying as Bond while taking on Hitman’s Le Chiffre contract has helped convince me that this new 007 won’t just feel like 47 in a nice wig. I walked into reskinned Paris as the usual bald barcode boy, dressed in a sharp tux for maximum Bond vibes. Rather than getting on with the job right away, as per usual, I decided to mess around in ways I thought befitted his Bondulence.

I slowly moseyed up the red carpet, pausing in order to pretend I was hobnobbing with various dignitaries, and stopping by every unattended wine glass in order to simulate taking advantage of the free drinks. Once I was inside, I had three potential opportunities to secure an invitation to a super secret Casino Royale-ish poker game. The first one I flubbed by losing ten million government-bankrolled chips in a roulette flutter-off against a billionaire.

Surprised a bit by that failure, I decided to take things a bit slower with the other two possible invite providers. One involved killing a guy for an American agent, which is pretty Bondy. The other hinged on serving a lady a shaken, not stirred, martini, which is even more Bondy. After spending some time chilling at the bar pretending to chat up a group of NPCs who weren’t fussed in the slightest, I decided to go with the latter.

Then, a notification sprung up neatly informing me I’d missed the window for all three story opportunities to get into the poker game.

The contract didn’t fail, but I still panicked a bit, wondering if I might miss Le Chiffre entirely if I didn’t act fast. Cue a rush to the top floor by shimmying up the drain pipes, the hasty acquisition of a guard uniform, and the absent-minded pilfering of some random scissors. I watched Le Chiffre and his guests play for a bit, then the intrusive thoughts took over and I lobbed the scissors at his head, sending his body flying up into the air.

Cutting my losses rather than trying to go for the second target, I narrowly survived clambering over a balcony while surrounded by gunfire, then snuck into an evac chopper licking my wounds.

I got the kill, but under Hitman rules, being impulsive, reckless, and just making things up as I went along hadn’t exactly rewarded me too handsomely. Sure, it was definitely because I was playing like a bumbling idiot, but had I been playing First Light, where the Bondiness will be not just accepted but embraced, maybe things would have gone differently.

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