IO Interactive's Bond

I'll try to not just copy and paste the introduction of my next video. Long story short, IO Interactive announced a new 007 Game and… I can't think of a better developer for the job. Hitman has effectively been the closest thing to a true James Bond game for some time. It's got the espionage, disguises, and slick kills you'd expect from a secret agent.

It's kind of interesting that for all the great James Bond games that exist, most of them are traditional shooters, first or third person.

Sure, the 007 are known for their action scenes but what makes the franchise unique is Bond doesn't always shoot up the place to reach his objective. He's got the gadgets, charm, and wits to get himself wherever he needs to be.

Some of the most engaging sequences in Bond don't involve guns at all, especially Casino Royale, where there's multiple minutes of quite time devoted to 007 sneaking to security centers, or playing cards.

I then wouldn't blame IO Interactive for copy pasting their gameplay from Hitman. It'd make a ton of sense and give players a unique experience for the character. However, I also wrote about timing just last week, and in a world where Hitman is booming, and Goldeneye/Nightfire style objective based shooters are not, perhaps copy pasting Hitman would be the wrong choice.

I could see a scenario where we get the best Bond video-game ever made, and it's not appreciated, because it's too much like Hitman. Perhaps the brand's influence would be able to counteract that criticism, but based on experience, there's always a vocal crowd that'll trash any game for being too similar to another.

I mean… Overwatch became a plague, where even character based multiplayer games announced before Blizzard's FPS were labelled as "Overwatch Clones" to the point where they died out entirely.

Now personally, I'm looking forward to this 007 game regardless of which decision IO Interactive makes. I'd love an expanded Hitman game with more unique gadgets, locations, and villains, but I'd also love a return to games like Nightfire or Everything or Nothing as we've actually been lacking those types of shooters for some time…

But I don't know which one would get more pushback, and feel that IO's walking a tightrope with the brand.

Really, only one thing matters…

Don't fuck it up.