The bit where you get into the Valhalla in Q lab in the last chapter, when the music kicks in, I was literally weeping tears of joy!
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Greenway was fantastically developed. I had a feeling he was going to be a double agent before playing, but I’m pleased to find out that didn’t happen. One of my favourite characters from any film, book or game. There’s something so heartwarming and earned about eventually winning over a grumpy individual. You can tell his legacy will live on with this incarnation of 007.
And also, how good was the saw sequence with Bond moments from being cut in half? We all know what it’s referencing but can you imagine that in live action? Sweat inducing. Good narrative choice to not have Bond talk his way out of it, too.
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Did anyone notice the name given to the AKs? (Zukovsky). Also, I love the entire sequence in Vietnam. The area is so detailed and Bond is at his most confident and relaxed. Another detail to mention, it takes place in Ha Long Bay.
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Yes, definitely. Introducing Bond to shaken not stirred. That’s what great about having new content like First Light. It references existing material like Forever and a Day and by doing so helps legitimise certain elements in overall canon. A back catalogue of uses starts to accumulate.
I’m pleasantly surprised how mature the game is throughout. Roth requesting another hour on the yacht before boarding the submarine for example. I’m hoping Amazon take a similar direction because IO are showing it can be done. They’re not shying away from anything.
I’m in the Antarctica section at the moment. As a fan of OHMSS it could be my favourite location so far, despite really liking Vietnam.
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In the middle of my second playthrough, and I’m definitely picking up story bits that I missed in my first run. The story is really told very well. The twist of finding out that the 3 agents Theia pegged as moles were in fact innocent, and Theia just screwed up, is very well done. Bond initially questions why MI6 puts so much trust into Theia and is proven correct.
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Story complete. I think from a pure gameplay perspective I still prefer NF and EON, but in terms of story and providing an interactive James Bond movie FL is unquestionably the best. I’ll go back and collect everything, complete the challenges and then focus on tacsim.
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Something that affected me more than I was expecting was the massacre inside MI6. A lot due to how MI6 staff supported Bond along the way, seeing him like a beacon of hope. Q said Greenway felt the same way. I think for the story it did a lot to cement Bond as a necessary asset. He’s no longer an outsider with the Moneypenny, Q and M relationships becoming more personal. MI6 has become like a family and when everything goes to Hell Bond saves it. The least M could have done after that is make him a 00.
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Finally finished this, so a few thoughts.
Overall, it’s a good game. Definitely up there with the best of the Bond games (faint praise, I know), but I’m not sure that I can say it’s the best. It’s not the masterpiece that the media and a lot of people online are making it out to be, as there are far too many issues with the mechanics of the game for it to even begin to approach fulfilling the hype to which it launched.
First, the good. Patrick Gibson is pretty good as this version of Bond. The rest of the cast is good in their roles as well, even if I have problems with some of the characters as written. Lennie James is especially good as Greenway. I couldn’t stand the character in the beginning, which of course was the point, but I thought he did a really good job of making his transition from being a seeming opponent of Bond to his mentor by the end seem like a natural progression of a character rather than something that just automatically happens in the game once certain plot beats have occurred.
Stealth also makes a welcome return (debut?) to the Bond franchise, although it arrives as a bit of a mixed bag (more on that later). Overall, the game’s story is OK. It starts off really, really rough but then really gets going once we make it to Vietnam, which I thought was the most enjoyable level of the game. Once it got to the infiltration of the villa where they let Bond loose with a silenced weapon for the first time, I remember saying “Finally!” aloud.
The game does struggle in some of the mechanical aspects of it. The driving sequences are terrible. We get only two opportunities to really drive in a manner where you’re doing more than just holding down the accelerate button and, in both of those sequences, the cars handled quite poorly. The other sequences, as already stated, are literally just holding down the acceleration button and then making maybe one or two very slight turns.
The stealth can be quite comical at times to the point of being immersion breaking. I can’t count how many times I was having an all-out brawl with a couple of henchmen, the type of fight that wake up an entire building, while other henchmen, who are standing tens of feet away and with a clear line of sight, stand by as though nothing at all is happening out of the ordinary. It happens so frequently that it really does hurt the quality of the game in a not insignificant way.
And, the biggest pet peeve: the WALKING. My goodness, there’s a lot of walking in this game. And by this, I mean walking while listening to exposition dumps from various characters. Each level starts off with some kind of extremely long walking segment where we have to listen to exposition. I would be interested in doing another play through and time how much of it I spend just walking and listening. It’s filler for what is already a short game and the kind of passive gameplay that I really just don’t have time for. On the positive side, though, whoever did the motion capture for Bond did a great job getting the walk down.
Overall, 007 First Light is a good game, but it’s nowhere close to the masterpiece that it is being crowned as. I had moments of fun with it and found myself enjoying it more as the game progressed, as the main thing that kept me going through the very rough early chapters of it was the $70 price tag. It is the best Bond adventure we’ve had since Skyfall, so there’s that, and it’s a good foundation upon which IOI can build future adventures from, but hopefully they’re taking a look at the criticisms of the game that are out there and using some of that to tighten things up for the next go at it. The foundation is there for a great run with Bond, but it’s going to take some time for them to actually reach that 9/10 or 10/10 status that the media outlets have already crowned them with. I’d put it somewhere around a 6 or 7 out of 10.
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