IO Interactive's James Bond game will feature a young 007 'that the gamers can call their own'

When Hitman developer IO Interactive revealed that it was working on a James Bond game in 2020, we saw it as an ideal bit of licensing: "Take out the bald assassin, stick in a British secret agent, and Hitman and its sequel are basically already Bond," we wrote at the time. But in an interview with IGN, CEO Hakan Abrak said IO's take on the character might be a little different from the fellow we're used to seeing on the screen.

"James Bond is a different IP. It's a huge IP. It's not our IP. It's actually the first IP that is not our original IP from [the] ground up," Abrak said. "But what's exciting about that project is that we actually got to do an original story. So it's not a gamification of a movie. It's a completely [new] beginning and becoming a story, hopefully for a big trilogy out there in the future."

It's also "a new Bond," he continued, "built from ground up for gamers. It's extremely exciting with all the tradition and all the history there is there … to work on this together with the family of creating a young Bond for gamers; a Bond that the gamers can call their own and grow with." (Presumably the "family" Abrak is referring to there is the Broccolis, who produce the Bond films and control the rights to the character).

I'm happy to hear IO is doing its own thing with the Bond game, although the promise of an original story doesn't set me too a-tingle. With all due respect, Bond stories tend to follow a fairly well-structured formula, and are differentiated more by the actor in the role—the suave Bond, the old Bond, the hard-ass Bond, the shoulda-had-a-better-agent Bond—than by the momentary narratives in which they exist. But, formulaic or not, there is some freedom in that: You can stick Jimmy in the middle of a ridiculous outer-space laser battle or have him brutally beat a man to death in a grubby public crapper, and both make for valid Bond stories.

Abrak said that while James Bond is "one of the top three IPs out there" in terms of movies, it's been a long time since we've seen a new Bond game, so it's not "overexposed" on that front, which he thinks will be a benefit for IO. "I don't want to speak too big about it, but I just hope we'll do a thing that will define James Bond in gaming for years to come," he said, which quite frankly strikes me as speaking pretty big about it. "And that is not only one game, but that we create a universe for gamers to own for many years to come that we can grow with that next to the Bond in the movies."

As for when we'll get a proper look at the new game, Abrak said work is "going amazingly" but offered no specific time frame, saying only that "we will soon be talking more about it."