Gadgets have always been a core part of Bond’s arsenal. Whether it be poison dart pens or laser watches, 007 isn’t generally someone who’ll run and gun with an SMG. At a recent preview of 007 First Light, I spoke to Tom Marcham, Senior Combat Designer at IO Interactive, about the challenges of designing and developing the gadgets Bond uses in the game.
I asked Marcham about the process of designing new gadgets that’d make sense in the action game. He said that gadgets were “one of the things on the project that went through the most iterations.” Gadgets are vital in 007 First Light as they not only allow you to take out enemies quietly, but they also open up various paths and opportunities in the game’s open sandbox areas. You can open locked doors with a laser pointer or make enemies run to the nearest trash can with poison darts to distract them just long enough so that you can sneak past.
However, Marcham says some of the team’s original ideas didn’t quite work in the world of Bond. When I asked if he could tell me about a specific draft gadget that didn’t work as they intended, he said, “If I tell you about them, they’ll sound really cool. We had a couple of gadgets that felt like Bond had magic powers. Just immediately, we were like, ‘Bond doesn’t have magic powers.’ So that pushed the tech too far to the point of being unbelievable.”
He wouldn’t tell me exactly what any of those magic powers were, or why they seemed so cool, but he went on to explain why they want Bond’s gadgets to fit into a certain style. “That’s not the world we’re in. It’s not a cyberpunk game, or a far future, or anything like that; it’s modern day. We were very keen to make sure that we stay in this believable world of Bond. Bond has always been a very authentic IP. It feels like it could be happening, but it is slightly elevated,” Marcham said.
Maybe Bond had a wand, Harry Potter-style, or something that allowed him to throw firebombs at unsuspecting enemies. Marcham’s right, as fun as that would have been, gadgets like that would really fit in the world of James Bond. I’m not sure Q and M would approve.
If you want to see our thoughts on the gadgets that did actually make it into the game, check out our 007 First Light preview. I played three hours of the game and came away very impressed.
