007: First Light was originally going to be less about James Bond and more of ‘an ensemble piece’, with ‘all the 00s working together, as they do in Slovakia’

hen I played 007: First Light earlier this year, one element of it stood out to me as unusual—and that is the arc relating to Bond’s fellow 00 trainees, Cressida Bright and Lennox Monroe. IO Interactive puts a huge amount of work into building these characters, successfully selling you on the inherently bizarre concept of James Bond having flatmates.

Yet just as you warm to these characters, they vanish from the story, and after MI6’s failed operation to eliminate the rogue 009 in Slovakia, Bond primarily teams up with his mentor, Greenway.

All of this is well portrayed. But the cadence of it nonetheless struck me as odd while playing. It turns out there might be a reason for this. IO Interactive initially intended for First Light to be less squarely focused on Bond, while his pals would have played a much bigger role in the story.

Speaking to Eurogamer, First Light’s lead writer Michael Vogt explained how the game’s first act came together. “During the training sequence, we make a false promise,” Vogt said. “Basically, we’re saying ‘This is going to be an ensemble piece, all the 00s working together, as they do in Slovakia’.

“And then we pull the rug out from under you when most of them die, and serendipitously, [Bond’s], the last man standing. He could have died in that explosion but he doesn’t, and so he emerges as the top agent. But in my very first pitch I think we were actually toying with the idea of making it an ensemble piece, that you had the different agents working together.”

Logically, this makes sense. You’re not going to put a newly trained agent out in the field on their own until you’re certain they can handle it, which given Bond’s roguish tendencies would probably take a while. But IO ultimately cut the ensemble concept short to kickstart Bond’s character development.

“The story beat that it serves is of course that it goes from all fun and games for him—he’s a young kid, he’s on an adventure, and he’s out globetrotting and playing secret agent—but after that explosion, he wakes up to the harsh reality. When M says that [00] life expectancy is very short, it’s like ‘Oh, right”. He gets it, and he matures from that, of course, and also from the guilt—maybe the survivor’s guilt—of being the one who made it.”

Vogt can’t recall when exactly this change was made, but it would explain why Cressida and Monroe feel so much like companions who are going to accompany Bond through the entire game. For at least a part of the game’s development, that was the plan.