Finally, 007 First Light is going to tell me about James Bond’s mother

James Bond games are part of my DNA. From Agent Under Fire to Bloodstone, suiting up as Britain’s most iconic spy is a gaming thrill unlike any other. But for all of his console adventures, there’s barely a mention of his past, leaving that responsibility to the character’s multi-decade history in literature. 007 First Light could be set to change that, as a blink-and-miss-it moment in a recent IO Interactive interview hints at Bond’s childhood.

For some folks, learning about James Bond’s childhood probably isn’t what they want to see in the new Switch game. The Young Bond series from Charlie Higson and Steve Cole remains a part of Bond lore I thoroughly recommend exploring. There are brief mentions of his parents and childhood in Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice and the short story Octopussy. “My father was Scottish, and my mother was Swiss,” Bond says in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The Bond family motto is revealed to be “The World Is Not Enough” in the Pierce Brosnan movie of the same name.

So, when I see that IO Interactive is baking Bond’s heritage in the world of 007 First Light, it makes me thoroughly excited. It’s new ground for the character’s gaming outings. In the studio’s extended interview with Game Informer, you can glimpse a monitor, noting that Bond can pick up a deck of playing cards, but there’s a small inclusion of lore attached to their description. It reads that the deck in-game is referred to as “Swiss-German playing cards of the same type that Bond used to play with his Mother when he was a kid growing up in Switzerland.”

Their purpose in terms of gameplay isn’t specified, but the descriptor adds that “Bond instantly grabs the item with a hand swipe after interacting with the prompt.” Perhaps they’ll factor in Bond’s Poker antics, or maybe they’re just part of a collectible set to encourage exploration of the game’s open-ended levels.

Notably, the monitor also includes a mention of ‘mementos’, which the developer says are “mission souvenirs and small trinkets related to the location.” If IO Interactive is already weaving in lore to items as mundane as playing cards, it makes me wonder what else we can expect to find out. It reminds me of the backpacks you can find in Marvel’s Spider-Man, each of them containing small tidbits about Peter Parker’s experiences in Insomniac Games’ Spidey universe.

With First Light establishing a new canon for James Bond, we’ll get to see what IO Interactive believes is worth molding into its vision of Bond lore. The movies carry a somewhat complex canon. While Daniel Craig’s tenure is a complete reboot of the series, elements like the Bond family motto still carry over, as made clear by Bond’s cufflinks in 2012’s Skyfall. However, Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix Bond’s deaths during a climbing accident in the Aiguilles Rouges near Chamonix, France, remain a consistent notion in Bond history.

In both the Young Bond series and Ian Fleming’s works, Bond eventually enrolls at Eton, as his father ensured he would attend college here from James’ birth. This follows a period of going into care under his Aunt, Charmian Bond. She is most notably fleshed out in the books Silverfin and Blood Fever, with a small mention of her in 2015’s Spectre within parental documents inside Bond’s apartment.

During my time on our sister site, The Loadout, I spoke about my hopes for the game, then titled Project 007, shedding more light on Bond’s origins. The studio is already considering multiple entries, with IO Interactive CEO and co-founder Hakan Abrak expressing in 2024 that “I would love players to look back on multiple Bond games by IO and go, ‘Wow, that was quite a journey!'” If First Light sticks the landing, it might just happen.

Alongside my 007 First Light preview at Gamescom last year, I also got the chance to speak about casting Patrick Gibson as Bond and how the studio shaped this version of the character. There’s a lot to dig into there, so do check out those interviews with art director Rasmus Poulsen and senior producer Theuns Smit.