The first trailer for “007 First Light,” the new James Bond game from IO Interactive, the studio behind the “Hitman” series came out yesterday. Set in a universe separate from the books and films, it’s a bit of an origin story for the character, depicting a 26-year-old Bond going on a mission that will take him out of the Royal Navy and grant him his 00 status. We don’t know the lead actor for the game yet, but in the trailer Bond kinda looks like Ethan Hunt. I think the game looks pretty awesome both in terms of graphics and gameplay, with a nice visual style and a mix of stealth, gadgetry and combat.
But we’re really here for the cars, and the three-minute trailer shows what Bond drives in one of the very first shots. Though “007 First Light’s” developers say the game isn’t based on any previous 007 media, Bond’s car is one that has been used in the movies before: An original Aston Martin DBS.
There’s other real cars in the game, too
The first-gen DBS was first sold in 1967 as a successor to the DB6, first coming with an inline-6 before a V8 was added in 1969. It was sold until 1972, after which it was replaced by the V8 and Vantage models. George Lazenby’s Bond drove a brown 1969 DBS in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” one of my favorites in the franchise. It’s not exactly a fun automotive moment, though, as Bond’s wife Tracy (played by the spectacular Diana Rigg) is shot and killed through the windshield. That movie’s musical theme can be heard in “First Light’s” trailer, too. You can also see a DBS being fitted with gadgets in Q’s office in the 1971 film “Diamonds Are Forever,” and of course its V8 Vantage successor was driven by Timothy Dalton in “The Living Daylights” and Daniel Craig in “No Time To Die.”
In the game’s trailer we see Bond driving fast as hell and drifting the DBS along a mountain pass to chase a villian who’s driving a red X150 Jaguar XK, an excellent baddie car choice. The banana yellow paint of Bond’s DBS sure seems like a nod to the similarly colored DBS driven by Roger Moore in “The Persuaders,” which ran from 1971 to 1972. I don’t think this chase scene is just a cutscene, as parts of the trailer make it look like the player will get to do a lot of the driving (and drifting and crashing through fences). There also is a flash of another scene where Bond seems to be driving a garbage truck through a tunnel, and in another moment in Q’s office there’s a Triumph motorcycle with a flamethrower at the back and what looks like the new Aston Martin Valhalla under a cover. We can also see other real cars like the Land Rover Defender in the background of some scenes, so there’s surely other real-life cars in the game as well.
“007 First Light” will release in 2026 on Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
