“We have been allowed to make our own digital Bond, which will not lean on a Bond actor,” IO interactive’s director Hakan Abrak told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. This means that we won’t see the likeness of Daniel Craig or Pierce Brosnan coming to the game – the character will be entirely unique and unrelated to previous Bond performances. “We also come up with a completely original story, and you could easily imagine that a trilogy could come out of it,” Abrak added.This suggests that Project 007 may not just be a singular game. It could be a series, much like Hitman, with new locations and missions in every iteration. Abrak also revealed that IO Interactive is scaling up and planning to hire a lot more staff to deliver on its ambitions. “Today we are 200 employees and I expect that we will be over 400 employees over the next few years,” Abrak said.
Abrak also recounted the meeting in which IO Interactive convinced the licence owners, EON Productions, that the game was a good idea. According to the interview, IO had a meeting with Barbara Broccoli of the Broccoli family, who control the rights to the James Bond franchise. Broccoli was “expressionless” at first but quickly came around to the idea. Abrak says that the studio’s “background with the Hitman universe” and its vision for Bond “went right into the heart” of Brocolli, who greenlit the project. Abrak also noted the usefulness of “good Scandinavian charm” rather than the “big American arm movements” that Abrak thought EON was probably used to.Previous reporting of the interview suggests that Broccoli mentioned she didn’t think previous Bond games were “worthy enough” and that they depicted violence “for the sake of violence,” but these quotes have seemingly been cut from the interview, as of time of writing.
For more details on Project 007, check out our coverage of the announcement here. You can also watch our video which talks about why a Bond game from the makers of Hitman has major potential.
Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
