“We were allowed to make our own digital Bond, which would not depend on a Bond actor,” IO Interactive director Hakan Abrak told Danish Broadcasting Corporation. This means that we will not see Daniel Craig or Pierce Brosnan’s resemblance coming to the game – the character will be totally unique and unrelated to Bond’s previous performances. “We also created a completely original story, and you could easily imagine that a trilogy could come out of it,” added Abrak.This suggests that Project 007 may not be just a singular game. It can be a series, as well as Hitman, with new locations and missions every iteration. Abrak also revealed that IO Interactive is expanding and planning to hire many more employees to fulfill its ambitions. “Today we are 200 employees and I hope to be more than 400 employees in the coming years,” said Abrak.
Abrak also told the meeting at which IO Interactive convinced license 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 controls the rights to the James Bond franchise. Broccoli was “expressionless” at first, but he quickly accepted the idea. Abrak says the “studio background with the Hitman universe” and his vision for Bond “went straight to the heart” of Brocolli, who gave the go-ahead for the project. Abrak also noted the usefulness of “good Scandinavian charm” instead of the “big American arm movements” that Abrak thought EON was probably used to.The previous account of the interview suggests that Broccoli mentioned that she did not think previous Bond games were “valuable enough” and that they portrayed violence “because of violence”, but these quotes were apparently cut from the interview at the time of writing .
For more details on Project 007, check out our ad coverage here. You can also watch our video, which talks about why a Bond game from the creators of Hitman has great potential.
Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.