After years of anticipation, developer IO Interactive has officially shed more, well, light on its upcoming James Bond adventure, 007 First Light, marking their bold entry into the James Bond universe. The game is not only IOI’s first major release since 2021’s Hitman 3 - later rebranded as Hitman: World of Assassination - but also their first title built exclusively for current-gen consoles. Powering the experience is IO’s in-house Glacier engine, a proprietary tech platform that has evolved significantly since its debut with Hitman: Codename 47 back in 2000.
In a conversation with IOI’s Chief Technology Officer, Ulas Karademir, the studio’s ambitions for 007 First Light became clear. “Our engine is quite modular... It’s not like Unity or Unreal,” Karademir explained. “It’s very easy for us to add new stuff... so we have a huge separation between the networked engine, the engine editor, and the resource server. That makes it easier to innovate without tearing the whole thing apart.”
