IO interactive announced they’re developing a 007 game back in 2020, sensibly codenamed Project 007. The studio mostly known for the Hitman games seems like a great fit for a James Bond title, although no details on how the game will play have been detailed since its initial announcement 4 years ago. During an interview with IGN however it was revealed that they have hopes that the game will lead into a potential trilogy.
The game is set to be a bit of a rarity for Bond games as it’s not based on any of the existing movies like most.
“So it's not a gamification of a movie," studio CEO Hakan Abrak told IGN in a new interview. "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."
Abrak also views the lack of Bond games recently as a strength due to lack of over exposure of the brand in gaming spaces.
“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."
Development of the Project 007 is also going very well according to abrak. Which hopefully means we’ll see a reveal of it sometime soon, perhaps at The Game Awards.
“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."
There haven’t been many James Bond games in recent years with the last one released being 007 legends 12 years ago. While James Bond games helped revolutionize the FPS genre and had many well received games , many of the later games had more mixed to negative reception which may have contributed to the lack of new releases. James Bond is still a very popular IP however with the movies consistently doing well at the box office. The Hitman world of assassination trilogy was a massive success both critically and financially. So perhaps IO is the studio that brings James Bond back into the gaming space in a strong way.
Want more IO Interactive news? Check out our article on their first move into publishing HERE.
