Despite its long-running staples of style, the James Bond franchise is always changing with the times, and 007 First Light‘s recent release makes it the first major Bond venture to truly tackle the developments of the 2020s. Not everything about the game’s approach is new — it’s hard to avoid touching some of the same topics that the Daniel Craig movies so thoroughly covered — but it freshens up things in a few key areas.This article contains spoilers for 007 First Light.The most obvious, perhaps, is Bond himself, as the new take on MI6’s most reckless agent is younger and more idealistic than before. The threat he faces might be an even more interesting change, though. Not only does 007 First Light push the villain in a direction that the Bond series hasn’t quite seen before, it also updates an old trope in a way that finally makes it feel relevant today.
007 First Light Does AI Differently
007 First Light plays its villain card gradually. Rather than borrowing Casino Royale‘s approach of announcing Bond’s primary foe upfront, the game takes more inspiration from the intrigue that the franchise has deployed for figures like Blofeld, slowly winding its way toward a grand villain unveiling. After figures like 009 and the pirate lord Bawma enter and exit the stage, 007 First Light finally reveals that AI mogul Sir Nicholas Webb and his unhinged son Damien are the real architects of evil.
It’s not necessarily hard to see this coming, as AI has occupied a villainous place in media for decades. While human-like iterations of AI have received empathetic treatments in stories like Blade Runner, the impersonal calculations of 007 First Light‘s THEIA supercomputer are an immediate red flag. It only stands to reason that the man behind it would be up to no good, no matter how well-mannered he might be.
What makes 007 First Light‘s take on the subject interesting is its rejection of THEIA’s superintelligence. Rather than being a highly capable threat bent on a nefarious agenda, THEIA is simply bad at its job. The quantum computer has been making critical mistakes for years, sending MI6 on misguided missions and leaving Damien Wayne to do the clean-up jobs.
It’s a great premise, and it’s one that actually speaks to the world today. After countless books, films, and games focusing on the threat of artificial superintelligence, the widespread introduction of generative AI has been anything but that. Rather than an actual approximation of human thought with access to unlimited resources, large language models have proven to be little more than hallucination machines so far. In its own way, that’s equally dangerous.
James Bond Becomes The Anti-Billionaire
In his ongoing attempts to cover up THEIA’s ineptitude, Sir Nicholas Webb also feels like a more legitimate reflection of the woes of modern billionaires. He’s not a mastermind with a genius plan for world domination, but an arrogant fool unwilling to see that his sunk cost will never pay off. In his mind, he’s simply paying a reasonable price until THEIA eventually hits its stride, even as the mistakes pile up with every year that slips by.
This all works as a foil against Bond, who represents a much more sympathetic human element. The Bond franchise is no stranger to pitting his instinct-based approach against the cold machine of modernity, a topic that No Time to Die, in particular, handles adroitly. Here, though, it takes on a tone that feels especially relevant.
If one key thing sets Bond apart from Webb, it’s his willingness to ask questions. Webb, like Sam Altman or Alex Karp, supports the notion of offloading the tiresome process of critical thinking to a machine that will do it for you. While that machine may make flagrant mistakes of incalculable ineptitude, it’s all worth it to avoid having to synthesize information on your own.
Bond doesn’t gain the upper hand because he’s exceptionally smart, but because he’s simply willing and able to think for himself. He never accepts information simply because it fits THEIA’s narrative, questioning anything that intuitively fails to line up or leaves loose ends hanging. When other characters are willing to take the past of least resistance, he doggedly sticks to carving out his own path.
007 First Light Is The Start Of Something New
As a whole, 007 First Light almost becomes a call to action. THEIA and the Webb duo are the villains, but they’re only able to succeed because no one pushes back or questions the narrative they present. One character doing so is enough of a catalyst to unwind the whole affair, at least once some spectacular action set pieces are taken care of.
007 First Light developer IO Interactive has always had its finger on the pulse, and this game might be the strongest proof yet. Stories about evil AI have been done to death, and calling them “prescient” simply because AI is involved is even more tired. 007 First Light makes the case that the real threat of AI lies in its vast stupidity, then deploys Bond as an avatar of the basic act of resistance. That, at last, is the story I actually want to see.
- Released
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May 27, 2026
- ESRB
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Teen / Blood, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence, In-Game Purchases
- Developer(s)
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IO Interactive
- Publisher(s)
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IO Interactive