007 "First Light" News Thread

007: First Light
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My guess is actually this is more from Hakan Abrak himself. Not to make a total villain out of someone, we will never know, but I think most of these ideas about episodic and “ever evolving” came directly from him and not some publisher overlord, based on past interviews. And not being able to use them in the campaign itself is probably more of a creative decision imo, to keep it more clean and in line with canon 007. Just like the the “license to kill” system.

At the same time, if First Light is as good as it seems, Hakan being game director does mean something. We will see, but directing something like this is not nothing. And probably we wouldn’t have IO today if it wasn’t for him buying it out and kinda saving it in 2018. Also, the “ever evolving” part also meant that we are actually getting new, sometimes good stuff for Hitman years after release. Which, as an old head, I do prefer to the six year drought after Blood Money. So I feel ambiguous about him honestly, but mostly thankful for what WOA has given me personally.

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I decided to pre-order after all. I went for the Amazon edition with the classic tux.

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You know one point they got wrong.

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I feel like they could have had the traditional style hits in First Light. I guess it’s a bit late now to suggest that though lol.

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941

I think the word “just” is doing a lot of work in that sentence… like he isn’t only an assassin…

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942

Technically he’s supposed to be a spy and saboteur. Being an assassin is a secondary part of his job, only being done when necessary to complete his main objective or if specifically ordered to do so. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, more often than not, whoever the current iteration of M is wants him to bring back the bad guys alive for interrogation.

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943

Bond has always been a swiss army knife. When he needs to be a spy, he’s a spy. When he needs to be an assassin, he’s an assassin. When he needs to be saboteur, he’s a saboteur. It’s all at the whim of whatever M wants him to be on that specific mission. More recent films may have changed that up a bit, but going back to the original books and the earlier movies, Bond was whatever M needed him to be.

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944

Yes, that’s pretty much what I said. It’s just that being an assassin is lower down on that totem pole. Or to use your Swiss Army knife analogy, the main thing that gets attention on a Swiss Army knife is typically the main knife blade. The second thing is usually the corkscrew. The third thing is usually the can opener. And so on. In the case of comparing Bond’s duties in order of usual expectation, the main blade is being a spy, the corkscrew is being a saboteur, and the can opener is being an assassin. And so on.

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Oddly, the tools on my own swiss army knives that get the most use are the tweezers, scissors, and file (probably in that order). The actual knife is like 4th or 5th.

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Once again, and I think you should probably get this tattooed to your forehead at this point, man: you are weird.

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I would, but I loathe tattoos. Maybe a nice patch for my jacket though!

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948

Glad to know I’m not the only one out there.

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949

I’ve never watched this channel but this interview with Director Hakan Abrak just popped on my feed.

“It’s not a Hitman game, but it is an IO Interactive game.”

Hakan admits GTA’s delay gave the studio some more breathing room to polish and release.

He compares First Light’s TacSim to Hitman’s single-player live-service content, promising lots of added content over time, and presumably new gameplay experimentation. (On a personal note, I’m happy and excited that this mode will exist. Playing through the main game a couple of times, making different on-the-fly choices, will be fun, but IO smartly knows that you need a hook to get people to keep booting up your game. I don’t usually care for this single player side content, like what the Resident Evil games have, but I think TacSim challenges will keep me coming back for more.)

“It’s running on Switch” … but obviously not well enough, yet.

In the context of Mindseye: IO Partners, the publishing wing, is a different thing from IO Interactive. The experience has not turned IO Partners off of publishing, but they might want to be more involved in the games they’ll be publishing, in the future.

IO’s close relationship with the community that they’ve built over the past decade since becoming independent is something that is pivotal moving forward.

Speculation about Project Fantasy’s funding partner. Hakan neither confirms nor denies. He does affirm that Project Fantasy is in “a very healthy place,” and later states that they’re “very very far into” it.

Finally, he looks forward to “getting into the weeds with Hitman again,” noting that there hasn’t been space for that recently with First Light and Project Fantasy, but that the team “cannot wait to get into the engine room and upgrade, invent, innovate Hitman” for us again :smiley: .

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Things About Hitman You Just Found Out
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I just hope IO wont become one of those publishers that leave no breathing room for the devs.

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951

This is looking good in terms of the amount of variety, even if it’s more linear than WOA.

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Can interact with the tablet or drink, you have objectives.

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I have a few concerns around this. If this is similar to Hitman’s escalation contracts (which from the trailer appears to be the case) I don’t think it will be enough by itself unless they really put some effort into designing some fun missions. Because let’s be honest, escalation contracts really didn’t live up to their initial promise until the 3rd game and the paid escalations came in.

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My guess is their focus has been the campaign first, so it might be a little underwhelming with escalations in TacSim. But at the same time, IO is the company that gave Freelancer for free two years after release of H3, so they’re probably gonna come up with some great stuff later.

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Imagine if they had the rights to the film villains and they could drop them into TacSim similar to Elusive Targets!

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Wait, why wouldn’t they have the rights to the villains? Most of them weren’t created exclusively for the movies, being based on Ian Fleming’s books. What rights do they have? Just the Bond name itself? I wonder how that worked… what deal would give IOI the rights to Bond, M, Q, Moneypenny, etc., and not include the rights to things like LeShiffre, Blofeld, Dr. No, etc.?

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I don’t know, what rights they have, but I’m pretty sure, they don’t have the rights to use the faces of the actors who portrayed the characters in the movies. As far as I know, that is a different kind of rights and you would have to get that from the actors themselves (or their agents, families, or whoever is responsible). Like with LeChiffre in Hitman, I’m pretty sure they had to get the rights for the character from Amazon/MGM/Whatever and the rights to use Mads Mikkelsen from, well, Mads Mikkelsen.

They could for instance bring in a Blofeld in the game, because they should have those rights. But they couldn’t use the face of the fifteen actors who played him over the course of the movies, except, they get the rights from them.

At least, that’s my guess. Rights to a franchise should include the characters. But of course it doesn’t include the actors.

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957

That does make sense and I can totally understand them not having likeness rights to the actors. Bond himself doesn’t resemble any of the actors who have played him (even those in my favorite Bond movie of all time - Casino Royale). If they can use the names of the major villains but not the faces, they would be able to include those characters in special missions or escalations or whatever Bond will have (Tactical Simulations, I think).

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