007 First Light

Players control James Bond as he goes through training and executes missions to become a fully-fledged MI6 agent. The game is played from a third-person perspective, with occasional quick-time events and cutscenes.

As Bond, players participate in operations to advance the story, culminating in him "earning the number". Players may choose to complete missions aggressively, fighting enemies and taking them down, or by using bluffs and environmental items to slip past enemies and talk their way out of trouble.

007 First Light depicts an original narrative that draws inspiration from the novels and short stories by Ian Fleming and the film franchise featuring the character. Described as an origin story for the character, the game follows a young James Bond (Patrick Gibson), who is portrayed as a 26-year-old, inexperienced MI6 agent tasked with a mission that, when completed successfully, will grant him his 00 status.

The game features new iterations of Bond characters such as M (Priyanga Burford), Q (Alastair Mackenzie), and Miss Moneypenny (Kiera Lester), re-imagined to reflect their roles in shaping Bond's early career. The game features original characters, such as Bond's reluctant MI6 mentor and former 00 agent John Greenway (Lennie James), Bond girl and thief Isola Vale (Noémie Nakai), psychology and game theory expert Selina Tan (Gemma Chan), flamboyant arms dealer Bawma (Lenny Kravitz), Bond's training colleagues Cressida Bright (Jessica Rhodes) and former SAS trooper Lennox Monroe (Chris O'Reilly), and Bond villains Sir Nicholas Webb (Anthony Howell), his son, Damien (Bart Edwards), and their personal assassins, the Murto Twins (Anssi Lindström).

007 First Light is the first major game featuring James Bond following a hiatus resulting from the critical and commercial failure of 007 Legends (2012), which saw publisher Activision having its non-exclusive licence to produce video games using the James Bond intellectual property (IP) revoked by Eon Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in January 2013. The IP licensing agreement for IO Interactive's game was later brokered by Delphi Interactive with Danjaq, the holding company that owns Eon Productions, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Hitman series developer IO Interactive met with Eon Productions to pitch their own vision for a James Bond video game as they were developing Hitman 3 (2021). According to company president Hakan Abrak, the studio was under the impression that "[Eon] were not looking for a game", having grown dissatisfied with the action-oriented style and gameplay of the latest console Bond games under Activision. Chief creative officer Christian Elverdam stated that a move away from relying on weapons to complete missions was an integral part of the studio's pitch to Eon, citing their work on Hitman as a game where violent solutions were actively discouraged, as an example of how Eon were convinced by IO Interactive that there was a "sophistication" in how the developers approached espionage gameplay. IO Interactive emphasised its interest in pursuing an original interpretation of James Bond, divorced from any of the prior literary and cinematic incarnations of the character, as they wished to apply a similar effort to creating their own narrative for an existing IP as they did for any of their original projects and characters. This includes the likeness of James Bond himself, which is not derived from any of the actors to portray him on film, a first for the character in a playable capacity since James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire (2001).

007 First Light received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

Writing for Eurogamer, Rick Lane felt that 007 First Light "isn't the Bond game that I wanted from IO Interactive [...] [b]ut I had a great time with it regardless". He especially praised the game's writing, noting that "almost every line lands with wit, soul, or both", and describing it as the best-written AAA game since Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Lane commended Bond's characterization, noting how the "younger and more unrefined" Bond present in the game was also "perhaps the most empathetic Bond yet", but felt that "the real surprise in First Light is how strong the secondary cast is", praising the variety of the game's original characters.