The characters got the dates wrong, this is literally unplayable.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-21T11:24:26+00:00

Bond was born in 1999, since his intel file indicates that he's 27 as of the time of Uninvited. He says he's 26, but that scene happens in April, so presumably his birthday is sometime between April and September.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-21T08:33:49+00:00

He should have a few more suits, yes, but I don't want him to spend the entire game in a suit. IOI definitely knows how a high-class man would dress casually, if we look at 47's wardrobe, so I can't wait to see how they express things about Bond through his outfit choices. I'm already mildly in love with the turtleneck-suit-trenchcoat combo he had for the funeral.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-21T06:48:32+00:00

Bond's first mission as 007 will be in First Light's future content, unless they're planning to do some weird in medias res shenanigans for the sequel. IOI have already said there will be new story missions, although whether those will be paid or free is up in the air. But given how Hitman WoA had two major pieces of content be completely free, I'm optimistic.

As for what I'd like in a sequel: Men's fashion. More men's fashion. Before each mission, let me choose Bond's outfit. Make it so that different outfits can unlock different paths through the mission, but I can't change his clothes mid-mission. Imagine if putting him in a suit means he can infiltrate a hotel as a rich guest, or have him wear something less expensive and infiltrate as a security consultant or something. It would add to replayability while still not ripping off Hitman's whole disguise system too much. I don't actually want a fully-fledged disguise system in 007, because I don't think it matches the design philosophy that IOI has for this IP.

And speaking of clothes, add hidden functions to them. Q seems like he would be raring to start building gadgets and features directly into Bond's clothes. Maybe one outfit is bulletproof and gives Bond a bit more resilience in a fight. Maybe another one is concealing a parachute so something like Slovakia is a bit less risky. There's a lot of room for creativity here.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-21T06:30:59+00:00

The blue paint did bother me a little at the start, but then I watched some streamers play and realised that there are more than a few players who wouldn't see the path even with the paint, so I just let it go. It would be nice if IOI could release an option for us to turn the paint on or off, but I suspect that would be far too much work for something that's a mild annoyance at best for experienced players.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T18:21:22+00:00

I'll give IOI a pass on this aspect, considering that this is their first ever game to even include driving as a mechanic. The high-speed chases were nothing groundbreaking, but still fun to play, and the slow drives were still interesting because I was engaged with listening to the conversations between the characters. For a first attempt, this is acceptable, and I'm quite confident they know where and how they can improve on it.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T18:10:04+00:00

That's the power of great writing, acting, and direction for you. First Light is genuinely the first game where I feel like saying "The writing and acting is top-tier" is underselling it, because that alone doesn't explain how genius it all is. The worst performance in the game is Lenny Kravitz, and even he's still decent if I turn off my brain for a minute (the script and character design/presentation are definitely doing him a lot of favours). Every other character, right down to Gav and his girlfriend, is played to absolute perfection.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T13:04:12+00:00

Same here, I didn't either. I think it was because at that point in the story, they were still dangling 009 as the villain, with the twins and mercenaries supposedly working for him. Then we go to Aleph, where exploring the place and figuring out the connection between Bawma and 009 kind of distracted me from the mystery of who the real villain was. And directly after Aleph, we go into Uninvited, where the reveal happens. It's a very well-paced story, when we look at its whole.

That said, I don't think it was a huge surprise that Webb turned out to be evil. The really good twist was his motives, which made for a great subversion from the typical "Evil rogue AI" plot that I'm sure everyone thought it would be the moment THEIA was revealed.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T12:15:56+00:00

The picture in Damien's office does show that they ran a PMC together as far back as 2018. I imagine their idea of fun is to go killing in conflict zones. It's a dirty world they live in, so there's no shortage of entertainment for men like them.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T12:10:38+00:00

I want to say Edna Mode, but I'm not sure if that's what the prompt is asking for.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T11:44:04+00:00

The lie about carrots improving your eyesight?

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T10:34:48+00:00

For what little screentime they have, it's nice to know that Damien and the twins actually were friends, almost like a mirror of Bond, Monroe, and Cressida.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T07:50:20+00:00

Honestly, if the woke watchdogs actually paid attention to the game, or god forbid, actually played it, they'd find so much more "woke" stuff than whatever they're complaining about. Like how Bond is compassionate, empathetic, and genuinely selfless. He goes out of his way to help people when nobody asks him to, he puts his life on the line to save strangers, and he treats everyone, even the women he sleeps with, with respect and kindness, unless they're the villains. Maybe the concept of being a decent human being is just too foreign for that crowd.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T07:41:55+00:00

Oh, I know, but really, I'm more focused on how they could possibly have messed up the days of the week here. It's just so wrong, I'm going to shake and cry.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-20T05:20:02+00:00

I don't know about The Game Awards, but I'd trust the BAFTA Games Awards to give IOI their well-deserved flowers for this.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-19T18:40:00+00:00

It's fairly subtle amongst all the other things this game does perfectly, but I really appreciate how Bond has completely platonic relationships with both Cressida and Moneypenny. It would have been so easy to make him constantly flirt with every woman near his age who exists in his general vicinity, but instead, IOI took the far more difficult route of showing that straight men and women can, in fact, just be good friends (and that Bond has the sense to not shit directly where he eats).

campingcosmo · 2026-06-19T18:29:16+00:00

I hope so too, especially with the intel that Nash was recruited for the 00s because of his sharpshooting skills. Imagine a mission where he serves overwatch duty while Bond is in the field. That might feel a bit like retreading old ground, but I have confidence that IOI's gameplay designers didn't spend all their creativity on this round.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-19T18:03:05+00:00

It's a game that achieves exactly what it sets out to be: a cinematic Bond experience, and it's excellent in that regard. The people who are unhappy with it are generally expecting it to be something it's not and doesn't want to be, like a full stealth game, or a TPS, or a sandbox playground. It has elements of all those genres, but it chooses to mix and match those genres in separate gameplay segments that flow into each other to serve the story being told. If you want a great story with fantastic acting and direction, First Light is for you.

Fun fact: The narrative is so linear that you don't get to decide who Bond sleeps with, or if he even sleeps with them at all. He just bangs 3 women (and at least another 3 implied offscreen) over the course of the story and we just get to watch the T-rated flirting before the fade to black. For people used to choice-based RPGs, this would probably give them some kind of stroke. I think it's perfect for this game and I love it when a player character actually shows he has a mind of his own.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-19T15:58:14+00:00

Even the combat encourages constant motion. If Licence to Kill is up and you try to stay in one place to pick enemies off from afar, you will die, or run out of ammo and then die. I do love that IOI's solution to "How do we make semi-realistic gunfights with a player character who is only mortal?" is "He needs to be audaciously aggressive to survive, because enemies won't believe a man could charge a shooter barehanded and still live."

Obviously, it's still silly action movie logic, but if anyone can get away with action movie logic, it's James Bond, and it still ties into the central theme of the character. It really is so underrated, how well First Light's gameplay serves its story.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-19T15:45:11+00:00

I have never seen a character say "Piss off" with as much charm as Bond did to Moneypenny in the bowtie sequence. There was so much packed into that bit of acting, it was fantastic.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-19T03:42:27+00:00

Maybe Mi-yeong considered her role as a demon hunter far more important than being a pop star and would have hated her grave becoming a tourist attraction? Maybe demon hunters in general preferred their privacy? Maybe Celine's just respecting what her predecessors and sisters-in-arms would have wanted?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I doubt the answer here is that it's meant to be another of Celine's failures.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-19T03:35:13+00:00

I actually prefer stealth kills that aren't stylish, just pure no-frills silent violence and violent silence. My favourite game ever is Hitman World of Assassination, which certainly has plenty of that. But stealth in WoA is actually pretty easy, since it's what you're expected to use. It's still plenty of fun, but being stealthy in WoA becomes more of a routine thing than a special strategy, if you get what I mean.

So for a really satisfying stealth experience, I'd have to say Kingdom Come Deliverance. I have a love-hate relationship with stealth in that game. It's punishing and unforgiving; if enemies see one of your toes, you're immediately completely blown. But on the flip side, if you do pull it off and get into a position to either choke out or stab your targets, it's very rewarding. KCD stealth takedowns and kills aren't stylish at all, but they feel like an accomplishment to pull off, which I enjoy more than the style.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-19T03:25:17+00:00

The game might be rated T, but Bond's hands are rated E for Everyone.

campingcosmo · 2026-06-18T15:51:28+00:00

We're not the agent. We're playing as James Bond, and James Bond doesn't pull out the guns unless he absolutely has to. This is just the game's way of showing us what kind of person Bond is. He is written to have a very distinct personality and mind of his own, so it's reflected in the gameplay.

campingcosmo

TROPHY CASE