Announced back in 2020, IO Interactive is currently developing a new James Bond game with a "wholly original story." Not much has been revealed about the game since then but in a wide-ranging interview with IGN this week, IIO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak share some new details about the upcoming game.
Project 007 is being fully developed, published, and funded by IO Interactive, the Danish developer best known for creating the Hitman and Kane and Lynch franchises. IO Interactive's most recent release was Hitman 3 in 2021. It was the eighth game in the stealth video game franchise that follows the contract killer Agent 47 across the world as he assassinates various targets.
"We absolutely feel like 20 plus years of training for the agent fantasy, creating an agent that travels the world and globetrotting whatnot, has given us some know-how on that," Abrak said, comparing the two franchise. "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."
It's also a completely new and original story starring a "new Bond," one that Abraks says has been "built from the ground up for gamers."
"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."
There have been numerous James Bond-inspired games released over the years, but the franchise has had a mixed record when it comes to adaptations. To date, the most popular James Bond game has been GoldenEye 007,a first-person shooter developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for Nintendo 64 back in 1997. The original game was recently re-released in January 2023 on modern Xbox consoles and Nintendo Switch.
Despite the lack of success in the video game space, Abrak still believes James Bond is an "extremely powerful" franchise.
"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.
"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."
Unfortunately, no concrete plans about the game were shared in the interview. However, Abrak promised IO Interactive will share more in "due time."
"I don't have an update today, but believe me, it's itching here as well to be talking about it soon," Abrak said. "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. We are also very excited and when we are ready with that, we'll be opening up."