Over the weekend, the Indonesian Game Rating System (IGRS) seems to have accidentally leaked major spoilers from a few upcoming games. Headlining these leaks was IO Interactive’s upcoming James Bond game 007 First Light. As caught by VGC, a video featuring footage directly from the game was leaked online. This video is noted as featuring quite a few spoiler-heavy moments, including the game’s ending.
Along with 007 First Light, Bandai Namco’s Echoes of Aincrad also seems to have suffered from a similar fate, with a video featuring many of its major plot beats and cutscenes having been spotted online. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced and Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse were also noted as being part of the leak. However, videos for those haven’t yet started making the rounds online.
These videos are typically submitted to ratings boards directly by developers and publishers in order to get an accurate rating for the game on the way to its release. However, typically, these videos are kept private in order to prevent leaks like this from happening. Unfortunately, the fact that these leaks happened and the videos are circulating online means that players looking forward to these games will have to be careful when scrolling through their social media feeds.
007 First Light is being developed for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2. However, while the other versions will be coming out on May 27th, IO Interactive has announced that the Switch 2 version is being pushed back to “later this Summer.” In a statement, the company said that it is “looking forward to bringing you the best game experience possible across all platforms.”
IO Interactive has previously spoken about how 007 First Light will be an origin story for the character, and how the studio wants to make sure that players can appropriately “feel like Bond,” complete with the freedom to improvise without it feeling out of place. In an episode of its “Beyond the Light” series of videos, head writer Michael Vogt said, “In Hitman, you are kind of able to go spectacularly out of character at any given moment, but you can’t really do that with Bond. That feels wrong. He’s too established.”
Rather than approaching things like in a Hitman game, in 007 First Light, IO Interactive instead wants to encourage players to improvise their way through missions. “So, your Bond can be more of a brawler, or he can be clever and talk his way out of situations, or he can stealth around and use gadgets. Those are all valid choices. So, we use choice as a way for players to feel clever and to think on their feet like a proper 00 agent, but without ever actually breaking character,” he explained.
In February, 007 First Light got an extended version of the trailer first released back in December. The trailer gave us a better look at one of the game’s antagonists—Bawma, as played by music legend Lenny Kravitz. The trailer revealed details about the characters, including the fact that he is a leader of Aleph, a black-market arms network that spans half the globe.
