Fans have shelled out hard-earned cash for 007: First Light, making it a smash hit for developer IO Interactive.

But with more than 3 million sales in the first two weeks, there are still questions about the game's profitability and, of course, its ideological direction for James Bond.

'We are well above our forecasts at this point.'

The truth is, the James Bond video game franchise has chugged along like a broken locomotive for the better part of 20 years, with First Light being the first console release for the iconic brand since 2012's 007: Legends, which was viewed quite unfavorably.

However, with help of IO Interactive, Bond has been ported from a mostly nonexistent gaming environment to a fairly good and playable game.

Your gameplay, Mr. Bond

First Light looks and feels an awful lot like the Hitman games — which IO Interactive makes — utilizing stealth elements and interactive characters as its bread and butter. Where the titular hit man has in his repertoire multiple costume changes and the use of closets or containers to dump dead bodies, 007 employs gadgets and persuasion.

On to the game. After getting through a gigantic user license agreement, followed by an exhaustive privacy policy, fans eventually get to find out how Bond became 007.

Gamers will love the fly-by introductory sequence that breezes through game mechanics in a fun way, making it feel like the opening montage of a movie.

However, this introduction eventually turns into several boring training missions where Bond is forced to make decisions in the dreaded "mash X or Y" style to work through scenarios that don't really matter. For example, after being poisoned, Bond must choose to inject one syringe or another; the antidote or something else. The game prompts you to press both at the same time; if you don't, nothing happens. Bond injects both anyway, and the story continues.

The unfortunate beginning is the game's worst part. Soon some mission freedom is allowed. After making their way through forced many forced pathways, gamers eventually land on an extremely James Bond-esque title screen, complete with a Lana Del Rey theme song and a (PG) sex scene. It's once again an immersive, movie-like environment.

Once the story moves into actual missions, though, the game settles in to remind you of Hitman in all the best ways. You can beat up anyone you please, wander around the mission looking for secrets, and, in very Bond ways, manipulate enemies.

Fake surrenders, radio frequency poisonings, and malfunctioning vacuum cleaners are just some of the dynamics at play as Bond infiltrates rooms and gets key intel, satisfyingly providing multiple pathways to complete a mission.

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Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

Diversity or nothing

While the game is the best we've seen from Bond in more than a decade, one can't help but notice that certain elements do feel like an Amazon-backed tribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion was force-fed into the game.

The first stirrings come courtesy of Moneypenny, played by Kiera Lester. Instead of going with how Lester looks in real life, her appearance is warped into a heavily androgenized and non-feminine version of herself, complete with baggy "boss lady" suit pants.

Moneypenny sassily introduces you to M, the leader of British secret service, MI6. This role is now played by British actress Priyanga Burford, a Sri Lankan woman who was significantly de-aged for the role.

Burford previously played MI6 scientist Dr. Symes in 2021's live-action "No Time to Die," which of course makes no sense in the game context unless her character took a huge pay cut and became a scientist later in life.

Yet the rest of the game, including all of Bond's fellow spies, puts the woke away, delivering instead the classic English personalities we have all grown to love. You have to relish the drab disgust with Bond that wafts off of "Walking Dead" actor Lennie James' John Greenway.

Any trace of what would otherwise seem like typical progressive-style diversity is reserved for nondescript MI6 scientists and background characters, all of whom are given slapstick one-liners and buffoonish behaviors.

The player therefore gets an impression that the DEI-scented British government roles are there to quietly make a point. Moneypenny long served as Bond's flirtatious counterpart, but since she is now emptied of any feminine charge, the flirting moves to fellow secret agent Cressida, who is quickly framed up as a possible love interest.

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A pretty penny

As reported by Game Developer, IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak has said he's "very confident" the game will be profitable for the studio, after reports that it had an eye-popping production cost north of $200 million.

"We are well above our forecasts at this point," Abrak said.

Yet Steam charts, often used as a barometer for game performance, had First Light peaking around 71,000 concurrent players on PC, which reportedly represented about a third of the game's sales.

This does not look good for a game of this magnitude or budget. Current players have been floating around 19,000 for the past few days at the time of this writing. These figures have First Light barely breaking the top 100 of the charts.

Nevertheless, when all is said and done, 007: First Light represents a significant step forward for the franchise, marking the first game of its kind worth talking about in around a quarter-century. All it took was kind of copying another successful game.

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