Bond Begins
17th October 2024
IO Interactive confirm their first 007 game will be an original origin story
By MI6 Staff
It has been almost four years since IO Interactive, best known as the studio behind the Hitman series, announced it was taking over the James Bond video game licence. With only a couple of updates since then (2021, 2022), gamers have been left in the dark about how the game development is progressing.
Hakan Abrak, CEO of IO Interactive, spoke to IGN recently for a wide-ranging interview, but had some updates on the illusive 'Project 007' that has only seen a short teaser video in all this time:
"We absolutely feel like 20 plus years of training for the agent fantasy ('Hitman'), creating an agent that travels the world and globetrotting whatnot, has given us some know-how on that. But obviously 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 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 completely beginning and becoming a story, hopefully for a big trilogy out there in the future. And equally important and exciting, it's a new Bond. It's a Bond we built from ground up for gamers. It's extremely exciting with all the tradition and all the history there is there together 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."
"When we look at the movies, it's one of the top three IPs out there, it's extremely powerful also because it's been, what, almost 15 years since the last game. So it's been a long time. It definitely is something that is not overexposed in gaming. We actually see that as a strength that we can do something very special and hopefully... There's a lot of people out there who think about GoldenEye as the classic. And I love that game as well myself," Abrak said.
"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. 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 on the movies."
"I don't have an update today, but believe me, it's itching here as well to be talking about it soon. So we are following our plans. The production's going amazingly well and we will soon be talking more about it. I know it was a little teaser, not a lot of information, but there's a lot of cool stuff coming up," Abrak said. "We are also very excited and when we are ready with that, we'll be opening up."
There is no release date for 'Project 007' (working title).