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The Name's Nami, Chatsunami! Let's Discuss 007 First Light
43 Plays18 hours ago
In this action packed episode, Satsunami is joined by Martin aka the Loch Ness Ghostbuster once again with a licence to thrill by discussing the latest James Bond game 007 First Light. But after waiting 14 years for a decent Bond game, is this really the game with the golden fun? Or did it leaving us from Russia with no love? Well grab your Q watches Pandalorians as we dive in!
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Transcript
Unexpected Co-host: Martin the Ghostbuster
00:00:03
Speaker
Martin, I'm in position for the Bond review. Do you read me? Wait, who's this? Wait a minute. not Is this Martin McAllister? Wrestler extraordinaire slash frequent co-host? No, this is Martin the Ghostbuster. Walkness Ghostbuster.
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm going to have a word with Zencaster after this. Seeing as you're here, fancy reviewing the new Bond game with me? Sounds great. Let me just finish absolutely down this bridge and we'll get started. Whoops, gotta go.
Guest Introduction: Aston Martin, Loch Ness Ghostbuster
00:00:32
Speaker
You know what? I'm not even gonna ask. Welcome to Chatsunami. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode Chatsunami. My name's Satsunami and joining me today is none other than the one and only Aston Martin himself. It is the Loch Ness Ghostbuster. Welcome back. You were only here last week.
Excitement for 007 First Light
00:00:55
Speaker
No.
00:00:56
Speaker
I know, I'm like a bad penny, I keep turning up. But yeah, how you doing tonight? I'm good, I'm good. I'm looking forward to talking about subject this evening. As soon as had it on my radar that you potentially going to in the episode, I threw my steel-brimmed bowler hat into the ring and said, sign me up, I'd be delighted to chat about 007 First Light.
Review and Spoilers: 007 First Light
00:01:13
Speaker
yeah absolutely and what a game this is to be honest because i was toing and throwing about getting this game i'm gonna be honest because i saw the adverts i thought all right okay it's a take on the character that they're doing it before he gets the double oh and those kind of stories granted they always have a kind of mixed reception some people want to just see bond as bond you know people don't want to see the build up to Bond but then I saw more of it I thought you know what it's made by IO Interactive who have done the Hitman games as I spoke about there on Tuesday and the spoiler free version and trust me this is going to be spoiler filled so if you don't want to be spoiled then either go away and watch a walkthrough of it or more preferably if you can go play the game itself because I was absolutely blown away by how amazing this game was. And I'll tell you how amazing it is. It's so amazing that not only have I done spoiler-free review, I've done a spoiler review over on patreon.com forward slash chat tsunami, and now I've got you back so that we can talk about it in depth. A deep dive. Let's get in right into the nitty gritty and pick this whole game apart. Yeah, honestly, I cannot wait to talk about this game. But before we do, and I know, Pandalurians, you are on the edge of your seat to find out what we thought about this game. I've got to ask you first, Martin, what was your entry into the series? See, growing up and everything, have you always been a Bond fan?
Bond Films and Family Memories
00:02:43
Speaker
I was kind of thinking back on it in the run up to recording. And I just have core memories of sitting in our living room as a child on a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon with it on any number of Bond films where always seemed to be on ITV on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Always. And I just have burned into My memory banks are sitting watching Man with a Golden Gun, Goldfinger, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever. And it was always just one of those things that we could put on and just enjoy it was yes there were double entendres and not child appropriate gags and things like that but it catered to everyone in the household there were stuff that dad would get and chuckle away at and then my brother and i would like the gadgets and the cars and the exotic locales so it was very much always just oh a bond film's on let's just put that on and watch it he Even if we'd seen it 10, 20 times before, were never kind of just, oh, we'll just give this a mess. It was stop what you're doing and just sit watch escape for an hour or two. It is quite interesting that you mention that,
Censorship Challenges in Bond Films
00:03:46
Speaker
that it is. I'm hesitant to say it's family friendly when I'm thinking things like Licence to Kill, especially. We were talking about that before we came on and it's like, think of all the films, that's probably the most heavily censored one Yeah, I think I read somewhere the BBFC at one point were wanting to be in kit either a 15 or an 18 because there was that much objection to the scene of Felix getting fed to the shark in Act 1 that the BBFC were aghast that this could be part of the narrative and the only way they saw it was to be suggesting a higher rating. Thankfully, Smarter Heads prevailed and we got the film that we got, but I can't even... to begin to imagine where we would be if Bond films were to that point inaccessible to an entire demographic. Yes, today they're still marketed as grown-up films, but the older entries in the series, they very much are family viewing to a degree and it's of household or parents' discretion whether the little ones get to watch it or not. Because I do find it funny that that rating board said, oh yeah, a guy getting fed to the shark is where we draw the line, but guy getting put into a pressure chamber and his head blown up. Or a guy getting mulched into big industrial cocaine block crushing machine is absolutely okay, we don't know. No problem with that, but the shark's too far. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we don't like sharks. They saw Joe as one too many times and went, are you joking, guys? Come on.
00:05:09
Speaker
but Yeah, I totally know what you mean though, because I was trying to think back to my own experience as well. And I think if I had to blame anyone, it would probably be my dad for that. He likes the James Bond films, you know, they scratch that itch, don't they? Of that kind of fulfillment that although Bond is definitely the worst spy in existence, let's face it, you know.
Bond's Cultural Impact and Iconic Status
00:05:33
Speaker
What's your name? Bond James Bond. Oh, come on. Flashing forward a wee bit, talking about the game, but there's a bit in that where one of the characters turns around and says, Oh, Bond's not your real name, is it? And he kind of looks from side to side. Yeah, sure. I was like, oh god, they're calling him out. But despite that, when you watch these films, you're not really watching them to critique his spy work. You're watching it for these scenic locales, for these bombastic action sequences, the cool gadgets, the absolutely incredible score and everything. You know, he's a cool action hero, essentially. And it's amazing how he's permeated himself into pop culture this is something i was talking about back in tuesday there are that one of the things that i was really surprised that and it's kind of twofold because i couldn't remember the first bond film i watched it must have been a roger moore film because i remember watching a few of my dads but i also remember watching things like golden eye tomorrow never dies you know the whole spectrum of the pierce brosnan run and i love the pierce brosnan run to me You know that way when you say, oh, he's my Bond, I feel as if for me, he was the most iconic at the time, but going back and re-watching all the films and everything, you can see the pros with them, you can see the cons. Personally for me, and this might be sacrilege, but Timothy Dalton, I would say, between him and Pierce Brosnan, they compete for my most favourite, as it were. But there's just so many good things and bad things about every Bond. You can't really say that about George Lazenby, mind you. The guy only had one film, and he had a horrible, ending to the film.
00:07:10
Speaker
It's like, we'll give you the most, well, up until no time to die, we'll give you the most depressing Bond film ending ever. And it's literally, we were talking about this before, but it's literally the reason why neither of us can say we have all the time in the world with a straight face without thinking, oh God. It's terrible. Yeah, that is just a heartbreaking scene. But yeah, yeah the other thing that I was really surprised at thinking back, because I thought, yeah, yeah, obviously I watched the films, I loved the films, but the games as well, they were so formative for me, honestly, to play things like GoldenEye 64, Nightfire, GoldenEye Rogue Agent to a lesser degree.
Bond Video Games: A Nostalgic Dive
00:07:49
Speaker
You know, there were so many of these games that Were you the same as well? Absolutely.
00:07:54
Speaker
I've always been a gamer since I think the first console we had in the house was a Mega Drive. And we've always had whatever most popular console has been of whatever generation that is in the house. And it has been... You know, we got the N64 for Christmas. We got with Mario 64, but thankfully, eventually we managed to get Goldeneye to play on it. One that doesn't get enough love from more recent, well, I say more recent, everything kind of feels like an eternity away from when they start mentioning all, but was Everything or Nothing. Oh yeah. That was a great one where they've actually managed to get Pierce in the game. They had Willem Dafoe, they had Shannon Elizabeth. they actually felt like a Bond movie as much as it did a game. There was one When was that? Must have been sort of 2010-ish was Bloodstone. I very much felt some of the DNA of Bloodstone kind of went into first light. Not huge amounts, but I could certainly feel that they were taking some cues from what has come before. Which is pretty much what the entire franchise has done over the 60 plus years that it's been around now. is It always honours what has come before it and takes that and just takes it to the next step and leaves its mark for whoever comes afterwards. No different than Lazenby following Connery. Then Moore came in and they all just had their own little twist but there was still that core Bondiness that fed through them all. Recently, I was posting about this on social media, mind you. can't remember if I sent you the pictures as well, but I went on a bit of a shopping spree on eBay to try and collect some of the games that I haven't played in the Bond series. Like, as you were saying, Bloodstone, and Everything or Nothing, From Russia with Love. It's like games that I've kind of played smidgens of in other people's houses, but I've not really played the full thing myself. So there'll probably be a week off work where I'll be like... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to Vietnam. Yeah, sure. I'm going on holiday. Totally not. Sits down and rubs hands. My time has come. Exactly.
00:09:53
Speaker
and Get the PlayStation controller out. So, I mean, I bought them. bought Bloodstone. A lot of games that I haven't experienced, so I'm so excited to play them. But the one I'm not excited to play, and I did buy it, despite my friend's warnings, as it were, was 007 which...
The Failure of 007 Legends
00:10:11
Speaker
yeah that you Judging by that reaction, it doesn't fill me with hope because I've seen the gameplay. It looks like going to suck bad. I would dev advise just you know take that game, in its case, into your garden, burn it, and you'd probably have more fun than you will playing that. Yeah, I have genuinely never heard a good thing about 007 Legends. But one thing that I find absolutely wild about 007 Legends, it is so infamous. It's like the Sonico 6 of the James Bond series because it is just so... Again, what's the opposite out of Revere? They want to bury it like an ET cartridge. It's not despised, is it? Well, maybe. From Russia with no love, I think, is the term of Oh, golden Y, as it were. It's just like nobody, nobody touches us with a barge pole. But the crazy thing is that came out in 2012. And that is the last mainline Bond game that we ever got. That is absolutely crazy because technically was reading a thing on Wikipedia and I was like, yeah, surely there's... something in between here and there's a game called I think it's Cypher it's an iPhone game essentially which there's nothing wrong with that but it's not like a mainline bond game so we've had to wait 14 years just to get another bond game I just thought that was wild I thought surely there's something else nope not at all I was honestly getting such withdrawals I was like you know what i want to play GoldenEye Rogue Agent
00:11:51
Speaker
That's how desperate was. And even then, that was not a good game. I remember buying a copy when was at uni for like 50p out of CEX. I was saying to my friend, oh, you're going to play this? And then we played it and it sucked. That's all i can say, it sucked. Absolutely sucked. I was like, I like the idea of it for being a what if story, but... Yeah, the fact that the Bond games, there's been popular ones, there's been ones that definitely have fallen down the wayside. I mean, I'll tell you how popular GoldenEye 64 is. It is so popular that people have started modding different Bonds into
GoldenEye 64's Lasting Appeal
00:12:23
Speaker
it. Someone actually modded a, I think it was The Spy Who Loved Me, the whole story, the whole film, into GoldenEye 64. Absolutely insane. It's amazing what some people could do. That's incredible. No, honestly, I would recommend looking up on YouTube because when I was watching that, thought, oh, right, he's only got a level or two, which is still impressive. But i mean, he did have a fair few in it that you can play if you're playing on PC. But the fact that that game is the most revered and then you've got the co-op ones like Nightfire and so on. Yeah, for this one, this one had some big shoes to fill, didn't it? Oh, absolutely. Pretty much make or break a studio as well. Oh yeah, even one as big as IO Interactive. See, without any further ado, I think that's a great place to jump into the music sequence. Unfortunately, the budget doesn't go that far to hire Lana Del Rey. Miss Del Rey if you're listening, we're huge fans. ah ah We'll be right back after these messages. Welcome to Chatsunami, a Scottish variety podcast that discusses topics from gaming and films to anime and general interests. Join me, your host, Satsunami, as well as the rest of our Chatsunami team for our takes on these very important pop culture topics. Sir, it's clearly a trap. I accept your pain! That happens three times in the film. Every time that general goes, don't do this one thing, he goes, do you know what I'm gonna do? It's the exact thing.
00:13:46
Speaker
He does as well. She had the pointy teeth. What was that about? She looked like Bilbo when he wants the ring back. She turned into... I just want the lightsaber one more time. Parasite says, no, you will get back into your office and work. No, says the man in Zoom. yeah Trousers are for the working man. You're bursting into your hotel room. Honey, we need to go.
00:14:10
Speaker
Leave the kids. We can milk an audition. Oh!
00:14:17
Speaker
That's the worst thing you've ever said on any of the episodes. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then you can check us out at our website, chattsunami.com, as well as all good podcast apps. As always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.
00:14:33
Speaker
Stay classy and have banana. This has been chattsunami. I'm sorry.
00:15:01
Speaker
Hey kids! Are you looking for a new favourite fortnightly video game review podcast? Then boy howdy have we got the show for you! We take a different game every two weeks and we review them, just like a book club!
00:15:13
Speaker
You can find us on all good podcasting platforms. And some of the sketchy ones too!
Podcast Promotion and Game Introduction
00:15:20
Speaker
Simply search for The Game Club Podcast and join the club today.
00:15:28
Speaker
want to make you a spy. ah didn't give it
00:15:34
Speaker
is immature and reckless ahs strong thrilleeking issues with authority meet our new star elu with bog to montton one i want to make you a spy
00:15:51
Speaker
Sinjin's Might, my
00:15:57
Speaker
009 is a master manipulator. To catch him, we're gonna need eyes everywhere. When you ready, Bond?
00:16:07
Speaker
What about the girl? A means to an end. Well, that's an interesting pick-up line. Whatever his endgame is, we won't see it coming.
00:16:27
Speaker
and we are back. So let's talk about 007 First Light, which is, as we said, this is an absolutely incredible game. i think that's the major spoiler going into this, that we both love this game. And going forward, speaking of spoilers, this conversation will contain so many spoilers. So please, for the love of God, if you haven't played this game and you've got the chance to play it, go play it.
00:16:51
Speaker
Genuinely, go play it. But As I said, the plot focuses around James Bond played by Patrick Gibson. Don't worry, I'll get on to him later because fantastic. But Patrick Gibson plays 007 before he's 007 and think he's an SAS airman in training, isn't he? He's with the Royal Navy. He's a sort of air crew on a helicopter and we join him heading off on a mission alongside what we'd like to be the SAS guys off to a secret installation in Iceland. And like most missions that involve Mr Bond, they tend to go a bit awry to begin with. Speaking of what was saying in the intro about Goldeneye Rogue Agent, I actually got flashbacks to that. I don't know if you remember the intro of that, where it's like you have to invade Fort Knox in a training simulator. You're playing as, well, the Rogue Agent, but you're fighting alongside Bond. And Bond's like, oh, this'll be a piece of cake. And they literally... He dies and they spoilers they dies in the intro of that game. falls down the shaft and is like, oh, this is not the game I thought it was going to be. the equivalent of the guy in the board movie going, I can't wait to get home and see my girlfriend. Dead. 100%. It's like, oh, God, you can't kill me, I'm a title character. Not in this game.
00:18:06
Speaker
but Yeah, that's what they reminded me of in a way, but yeah, when you get there, it is very cinematic, you know, well, not you personally, but the helicopters crash, and you have to essentially survive against this, I think it's a militia group called Arrowhead, and they're looking for something in this installation and you have to go in there and you get guided by an MI6 handler and you're told, oh, the odds are terrible for you being able to pull off this mission. And he does a Han Solo and he goes, never tell me the odds. And spoilers, he pulls off the mission. Can I just gush about one particular moment? Please do. the moment when you finish the mission and you escape with some of the scientists and you've got the detonator on your hands to blow up the islands that they were going to blow up anyway but you have it and then you know they do the very stereotypical oh mi6 would never jeopardize this station and bond turns around and goes i'm not mi6 and he presses the button i knew it was coming but was like perfection just Yeah, it's just that one-liner response that just punctuates that entire sequence and you get a good idea of who he is, how he acts in just one single sentence because he knows at that moment in time he's really got nothing to lose. So if he's going to go, he's going to take the rest of them with him. That of course leads into the absolutely amazing music sequence First Light sang, as I jokingly said, by Lana Del Rey, who, as far as I know, apparently she's wanted to sing a song for a Bond film for absolutely ages. Yeah, I believe it was for, i think it was for Spectre. She submitted a track. and the Broccoli's turned it down so she went and ended up releasing it anyway under a I think she call itbs called it, it was called 24 but she's been showing her interest in kind circling the franchise for a long time now so all good things come to those who wait is definitely the adage that would apply to this. Oh, 100%. And it is a fantastic song. I have to say, when I first heard it before the game came out, I thought, yeah, it's alright. Yeah, it's okay. It's very Bond sounding. But after listening to it especially in the context and everything, and getting to watch the opening, oh my god, it might be one of my favourites, genuinely. It is such a Bond theme. And I know that sounds weird saying, oh, it's a Bond theme and a Bond game, but oh my god, the visuals as well. Oh, this will sound like a weird thing to say as well, but one of my favorite types of visuals in the bond opening is see when they have the massive statues and everything and they're falling like especially goldeneye goldeneye yeah when they're pulling down the russian revolutionary statues and everything and it's all the hammers and sickles falling through the reason i bring that up is because in this one they've got the big chess pieces that are blowing up and yeah i was just like that is bond that's That's just a quintessential Bond opening. Yeah, they've managed to nail the style of the actual title sequence down perfectly. mirrors what we've been given over the last few years. And that song, it just, it's perfect. It really is. It's got that, again, that Bond DNA. We've got fantastically talented singer, and we've got David Arnold, who has been an important part of the franchise for... We're on there, 30-odd years now, coming up, since Tomorrow Never Dies. He's been in and out of the franchise, and it feels like a Bond theme. It really just does. They've managed to marry up the visuals to the actual song perfectly as well. You get that kind of da-da-da-da-da, and it just, yeah, it's very hard to articulate how much of a great song this is, and how much of an earworm it is as well. I think I was very much like you at the beginning, i was like, okay yeah it's a bomb theme yeah i like it and over time especially as in the run-up to the game's release we didn't really have much maybe until a month or so out sort of publicity wise we had the song so that ended up on my spotify and it was a song that was quite often played a couple of times a day just because it was like that was feeding the anticipation and kind of ticking me over if they put this much thought and consideration into the title sequence and the song how good and how much thought have they put into the actual story and the gameplay and the characters. And as a barometer of what we were expecting in hindsight now, that is just perfect. It's the perfect level of what it should be. And they've nailed it. Absolutely delivered it. And I mean, the whole soundtrack is just absolutely fantastic, isn't it? Because they do this amazing thing throughout where they hint towards the Bond theme, but they don't really lean fully into it until the very end. And oh my God, we'll get to that. But just the ending and then it's... du ah did it did it Oh, love it. Before that, we've got stings from things like... I mean, especially on Her Majesty's Secret Service. I not watch it Oh, I did not expect that. It's weird because it's one of the, as far as I remember, it's one of the only ones that doesn't have any vocals in it in terms of Bond themes. But it's still one of my favourites because it's just so iconic every time it pops up. It gets you hyped well. It's a great hype song and probably will age me again a bit. But I always remember seeing the very first teaser trailer for The Incredibles ah and they used the Honor Majesty Secret Service theme as Mr. Incredible is attempting to be. to fit into his old fitting superhero uniform and having to suck at his gat but that is a great theme everyone thinks a bond and they think of the james bond theme but you do have the honor majesty secret service you've got 007 as well which was in from rushable love you only live twice and at want to say diamonds are forever and that's another theme that pops in but yeah the quarry scene when that first musical sting hit i was just like oh are they doing it are they doing it and then the whole sequence kicked off and it just it made you feel like you were born at that point oh absolutely It's honestly hard to explain to people who, again, I wouldn't say you have to be a diehard Bond fan to enjoy this game, but those moments are kind of like the cherry on top of the game, where it's like, you know, you think, all right, this is cool, you're driving this huge. I don't even know what you call it. It's like a huge monster of a... It's like a giant dump truck. It's just a massive dump truck. hi And knocking down scaffolding and running over mercenaries as you do. Oh, of course. It'd be rude not to in a Bond game, you know.
00:24:35
Speaker
ah Yeah, honestly, the music in this game is just so darn good. It is absolutely incredible. I genuinely couldn't believe it. When I'm hearing the beats and everything, i was like, okay, so this game starts like a Bond game. It sounds like a Bond game. are they going to mess this up? And Again, spoilers, no, they absolutely didn't, but I just thought it was absolutely incredible the way that they laid into it. And yeah, have you got any thoughts about the soundtrack as a whole? Just from beginning to end, even just in the quieter moments, it just, it feels right. It listens right. And at the moment, I'm just waiting for there to be an official release so I can download it and have it at hand. And if there's a physical release of it, or whether it be on a CD or on final update, definitely be picking up. I'm a big fan of scores and orchestrations that are used in both games and TV and film. I've gone to plenty of concerts where we've done the live orchestra with a film in the background. But yeah, it's just, it's like you were saying about the whole Bond theme as well. It gets dotted in, it's little breadcrumbs the whole way through and it just builds and builds and builds and you reach that crescendo at the very end and you get your full-on Bond theme and it just feels right. It feels earned at that point. He's earned the number at that point. And it is just, that is your kind of perfect goodbye for now to the game. And I think it adds to the cinematic feel of this game because that is one thing I genuinely did not expect of this. Minus maybe a couple of exceptions that we've seen gaming-wise for Bond. Most of the Bond games, although they do have a story, they always focus more on the action. They never really had any slower moments, even with GoldenEye 64. And I kind of know why, because it was the early days of the Nintendo 64, so they couldn't really waste time with slower moments going through here, there, and everywhere. But at the same time, the game knows when to slow down. It knows when to speed up. It knows when to hype you up. It knows when to say, okay, let's take a step back. And yeah I was so surprised that there's literally several scenes where you go into James Bond's apartment. If you're looking for the action, then you definitely won't like these sections. But the fact that you can slow down, explore the apartment, explore how they characterize this character. Because one of the things, and when I was looking up some of the things that other people were saying, I genuinely was so shocked at some of the things even I missed. If you go into, i think it's like the kitchen or something, when you're with your fellow aspirational 00 operatives, Cressida and Munro, then you can see post-it notes put up. That is just such a cool way to characterise them. You know, you've got, oh, Munro, tidy up after yourself. And there's literally about four post-it notes for Bond saying, call this person back, call that person back. And then the last one's like, seriously, Bond? It's a great Easter egg as well, because I was looking at that and was going, oh, yeah, he's a player. And then I was like looking at the names. was like, Carly.
00:27:35
Speaker
ah Adele. ahha Tina. Yeah. You're very smart. A nice little nod to the ladies of the past there. But yeah, they've done their world building incredibly well. you know, those quiet little moments that... if this game was breakneck pace from beginning to end it would be exhausting it would be actually exhausting to try and play through it so it's nice to just have these little downbeats where you can explore around kind of get a little bit of lore into the world lore into your characters build that relationship as well as you say with munro and chryseda particularly because that comes back quite important later in the story. It humanizes them and it got me actually feeling for these characters more than generic soldier A would be in any other game normally that I would play that your character would spend time with as your quote-unquote buddy character. But yeah it's just those little beats. I mean I'm going to skip ahead a wee bit but never thought in million years I would have a quick time event where I have to learn how to put on a bow tie. Yeah that completely Completely blindsided me as well. Because again, it's one of those subtle things that you think of James Bond and you think, oh, the suave, sophisticated, he'll know how to tie a bow tie and everything. But there's a lot of elements that he doesn't really know yet or he hasn't solidified himself in that particular area of his life. again as you said the bow tie and q helping him like a dad i don't know i just thought that was such a nice touch to be honest yeah and i mean there are a lot cuties throughout the game but there wasn't any where i thought nah i don't think that works or anything but i did get mass effect 3 flashbacks see when you're in the training camp in malta and you have to do the push-ups and monroe starts counting going one two and he says he's gonna count to 100 for anyone who doesn't know there's like a pull-up minigame that you can do in mass effect 3 totally optional but if you want to put a particular character in the place but you sit there for the full 99 you're like yeah i'm gonna do it and that's what i was expecting with this and it's like oh thank god they just skipped ahead for that Because, yeah, that's actually a good jumping off point because after the events in Iceland, you get invited, well, invited, you get summoned to MI6 where you have to give a debrief and the new head of MI6M, who is played by, an apologies if I butcher the name pronunciation, is Priyanga Burford. She does an absolutely incredible job as well with this role because what I like about it And I know, you know, I won't go too deep into it, but there was a lot of people before complaining about the game and everything about how M was M, you know. And all I could think of, and I'm going to say what millions of other people have said, have you not been watching Piers Broste and Daniel Craig with Judy Danger's M? Yeah, that's all I can say to that. Yeah, even just giving individuals like that the brainpower it takes to think about them. It's just not worth it. It really isn't. It's just making a statement for the sake of sowing discord amongst people. So we've said it. We'll move on. And that is it. Because honestly, there's so many good things to talk about this game. And you're right, it's not worth thinking about it. But what will say is, they're wrong. Moving on.
00:30:48
Speaker
and Honestly, I think the cast in general are just absolutely fantastic. You know, you've got Keira Lester, who plays Moneypenny. You've got Lenny James as John Greenway. Oh, we'll get to him. But he began as one of my least favourite characters and then became one of my favourite characters by the end. I was just like, absolutely incredible. There were definitely certain points playing through. i know we're kind of jumping all over the place here in the narrative. But there were places in the playthrough I'm sitting there thinking, is he the baddie? Is he going to be the baddie? No, they're not going to make his mentor turn out to be the baddie and he's going to have to take him down at the end. Oh, the betrayal. And it was just, oh no, he's actually just a man who feels like he's been betrayed and has shut himself off. And over the course of the game, Bond manages to reinvigorate this man who felt like his best days were behind him and that he couldn't trust anybody. And yeah, Lenny James just... There's nothing that Lenny James does that he doesn't knock out of the park. He has consistently been one of my favourite actors since... whoa... since a long time in fact. I think since Snatch, actually. Going back to Snatch is as far back as I've been aware of him. Oh no, he's a great actor, genuinely. There's honestly just so many. I'm going through the list here. I mean, I want to give a huge shout out to Alistair McKenzie who plays Q. 10 out of 10 i could not believe how perfectly the cast half of these characters i was like okay we've got this person that person oh i might as well have given them a standing ovation at that point i'm you nailed every character and of course we will get on to talking about bond as well because i feel as if he needs his own section but oh honestly it's Really interesting to see the progression of these characters though, going back to him meeting Em and everything. And they don't get off on the best foot, but they're not at odds with one another. They're not yelling at one another, being like, oh, you suck. No, you suck. Which wouldn't be very Bond-like. They're having a healthy debate about what is the best method to achieve the same ends. Oh, yeah. And and I think that Em clearly recognizes that Bond has potential to do well, otherwise she wouldn't have offered him the opportunity to go in into the training program. But she values his input, even though she knows that he's not always going to be the smartest or most correct method of doing it. It kind of reminds me of that line from Cine Royale where, again, Bond's just been promoted to 007 and M says to him, I need you to be half monk, half hitman. It's that kind of nurturing, pushing you in the right direction, but also taking the feedback from them as well. That is what genuinely love about this game, that they don't just treat Bond as, oh, he is 007, but he's just 007 before he's 007. They don't treat him like he's the same as he would be after getting the rank, because there is this sense of somewhat vulnerability with Bond. Skipping back to Iceland, there's a moment where he's in a struggle with one of the mercenaries, and it involves a gun, and the gun goes off, and the mercenary dies. And you can see the conflict behind Bond's eyes. It's the, oh, I've just killed someone. You know, he's not a cold-blooded killer. It's the first time he's had to, albeit in self-defense, he's had to take a life. And you can see it on his face, in the performance, that it weighs on him. So, yeah, it's just really well done. I was going to bring up another scene that happens later on, but I will save that, definitely. All I'll say is it involves a scene between him and Greenway, his mentor. I'll save that for later, of course. But yeah, going back to after he meets him, you know, he ends up in the double O program, much to his mentors this May, because he sees him as, he really talks down to him. And I find that really clever piece of storytelling where he says, oh, meet our new recruit, Airman Bond. You know, he's not saying, oh, here's James Bond or here's Mr. Bond. He's saying, Airman saying, you're nothing more than just an airman and it's funny as well that the double o's are treated in quite a dismissive way they're dismissed by other people and then my six and especially with the sas there's a scene where and it feels like an american teen movie where it's like you have to sneak and grab the flag at night time it's like pulling off a prank with the SAS I'm like how do we get to this moment but what ends up happening is if you listen to the SAS soldiers you get this dialogue you can over here where they complain about babysitting the 00 agents and how oh they want to be spies but they're not real spies and blah blah because in the canon of his story, the 00 program went on until about 2014, and then they shuttered it, and then they brought it back again for this game. Personally, I've said it before, but i'll say again. I wish they had shuttered it in 2012 to coincide with 007 Legends. I just think that would have been very funny, but...
00:35:39
Speaker
Nice little meta in-joke there, yeah. Yeah, but that's the thing, because whenever we see Bond and whenever we see a 00 agent, we always see the 00s as this kind of mythical group, don't we? We never really see them as... No one talks down about 007 or 009 or 6 or whatever. They always say, oh, it's a 00 agent, he's going to save the day, blah, blah, blah. So it's really interesting to see that subversion. Yeah, they're never really shown as being capable of the odd occasion they're shown as, you know, they're killed in action. But for the most part, as you say, they are these gods among men, going off on a completely slightly different tangent here. You know, one recent thing that played really well with that was Kingsman the Secret Service. You had this amazing intro where you had your Bond-esque character turn up at the front door with his witty one-liner, a very fast-paced, cool action sequence, and then he's dead. And it's just like, oh, So to humanise these agents and these characters, to show that they're not perfect, that they are just people that have been given an opportunity to do some good. And again, this is something that I absolutely love about this game, because I don't know about you, but whenever I watch the other films, I kind of wish that they had the inclusion of other 00s and the only ones that I can think of off the top of my head are I want to say it's Spectre that I think it's 004 or something like that they get an off screen mention that oh they need the Aston Martin this weekend and then Bond steals it spoilers but I remember even in GoldenEye we've got the 006 reveal and then unfortunately in Octopussy that's the other one where 009 gets killed in action dressed as a clown And it's like, oh, wow, this was an interesting start to a film. But, you know, it's like I always loved seeing other double-Os, that it wasn't just, oh, Bond is a one-man. I mean, he is a one-man army, technically, but I like to see the fact that MI6 wasn't just hinging on Bond being the be-all and end-all, you know? Although, technically, he is, but he is still that hero archetype. So to see the six other agents plus him... It was really cool to see him interact with them, to form relationships, to even go out on a night out in a club, which is a great mission. As you said, it humanizes them. And I'm going to be honest, to begin with, I was like, I don't know about Cressida and Monroe. Yeah, maybe. But as you got to know them and everything, was such a breath of fresh air, you know, to be able to see this. I mean, one of the maybe, and again, this is more in nitpicky thing but i always found it funny how whenever we saw cressida no matter whether she was in the training or she was on the night out she always had her lipstick on and everything and i know obviously that's because they just wanted to use the same model and there's nothing wrong with that but i just kept looking at her thinking is that like q branch lipstick it never comes off it doesn't smear it's standard issue shade yeah exactly
00:38:40
Speaker
I was like, damn, Cresida. Although that is one slight, again, this is more a nitpick, but I kind of found it odd that MI6 would allow a double agent to take part in the programme that was also the daughter of a politician. Yeah, yeah. because her father is the foreign secretary in this game, and she leads a very bougie lifestyle, let's face it. But, I mean, it's kind of the pros and cons, because loved the diversity of the 00 agents. I thought having the men and women in there was just fantastic, because I thought if they all looked like Bond, can you imagine how easy it would be for enemies and things to be like, Oh right, here's a Bonzo lookalike.
00:39:19
Speaker
That must be a MI6 agent. If you think about it, you're one of going to have people, male and female, from different backgrounds, different ethnicities. Yeah. That's who you want working as your super secret spies. If it's always going to be a six foot tall white man with brown hair and a scar under his cheek, then like you say, there'll be memos flying left and right between holiday volcanoes saying, keep an eye out for this guy. I mean, you're not wrong. Put in parentheses, not the one with the cat.
00:39:47
Speaker
Sitting on his lap, the other guy with a scar under his cheek. yeah, okay. If in doubt, just ask him his name, he'll tell you. There you go. No, really, he will tell you. Yeah, I honestly love those characters. I kind of wish we saw more of them, but at the same time, I felt as if we got a healthy dose of them. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that is the thing, though. I love how they brought modernity to the world of Bond in this game without it being two gay kids, kind of, you know, to be like, oh, look, we're in the modern world. do We don't need gadgets and things like that. It's like they managed to blend that silliness of Bond for a character that's nearly been going for 65 years, which I thought, but Jesus Christ, that is absolutely insane. But to have a character that literally started during the Cold War, you know, the golden age of spies and to get them from that to 2026 where everything seems believable and it is silly but at the same time the silliness also works into the story i honestly cannot praise the story enough for the way that they handle up everything everything's just spot on honestly yeah it They don't pussyfoot around certain subjects, which in the last year or two have been kind of more and more pushing forward to the public eye in regards to what AI can do and is it AI a tool or a potential downfall for us? But yeah, they've rooted it very much. Every Bond entry, whether it be the films or the games, they are always a product of their time. They are a time capsule showing what the world was like at that point. And for 2026, First Light has pretty much kind of encapsulated what the world, for the most part, is kind of feeling like at the moment. I honestly couldn't agree with you more there. One thing that a lot of people complained about when they were looking at this was things like the product placement as well. This episode, sadly, is not sponsored by Coca-Cola, but if you are listening, please, I'll do it for a free can of Coke. LAUGHTER
00:41:45
Speaker
But, you know, was like, oh, you had vending machines with Coca-Cola. Although I did laugh when you go to the resort in Vietnam and you're drinking a Coca-Cola. I thought, of course it's a Coca-Cola. But there's always been product placement in a bond.
00:42:00
Speaker
Absolutely. There's always, from watches to cars to airlines to everything, they've always been in there. That's how these things get made with the sponsorships, you know, so to be, oh my goodness, he's drinking a can of Coke. The Coke machine in Q Branch maybe took it a step too far, but, you know, having the bar in Vietnam stocked with a Coca-Cola, I don't really see much problem with Yeah, because if I remember correctly, I think Die Another Day got ridiculed for that because they had all the tie-ins, the product placements. They were just absolutely swamped with it. Yeah, for this, again, I don't think it's any more egregious. One thing that I do think is funny, though, and it's something that you mentioned about it being a sign of the times and being a time capsule, because you're completely right. All of the bonds, whether it's the games or the films, they're all reflective of when they were made. So you wouldn't really expect, unless it was set in the past, but you wouldn't really expect a modern Bond game to have the same elements as one that's set during the Cold War or set just after the fall of the Soviet Union. You know, you don't expect things like that. And there was a lot of people who were complaining about some of the cameos in this game. Some of them I knew, and then others I was like, who the heck is that? I genuinely did not know, even for someone who's online all the time and promoting the podcast, I was like, I have no idea who that man is. But they had Jacksepticeye, they had Cappy Lame, aka the guy who points at obvious things. They had Shroud, whoever that is. i think he's a Twitch streamer. Yeah, thank you. for sure he's a dr stupid but You know, they had a lot of these and people were complaining, saying, that's it, the game's ruined, two out of ten, I'm cancelling my pre-order and it's like, oh no, come back. But the thing about that is, I played through the entire game, I feel as if the most egregious cameo in that entire game was the Coca-Cola version. The only game I know of that did that where kind of grabbed you and went, oh look, we've got someone famous. I
00:44:10
Speaker
think it was Mass Effect 3 when they put Jessica Chobot in it. Oh, God. And she was one of the main characters and she ended up as a crew member on the Normandy as the reporter. That was just too in your face. See, that was baffling because I only played Mass Effect, I want to say, two years ago from start to finish, from one to three and then Andromeda. Obviously, I've played that long after 2012. So when that person popped up, I thought, who is this weird woman and why does she want to live in the basement of the Normandy? And then I had to look it up and I was like, oh yeah, it's that person. But I was like, who you? Sorry. But there's only two exceptions I would say in this game that feel kind of in your face, but I wouldn't say overly. I would say it's more wasted potential. And that is, of course, Gemma Chan, who plays Selena Tan. Yeah. she is a psychologist slash your mentor figure in the tax emissions and lenny kravitz who plays apologies i could be butchering the pronunciation again but bathma both my yeah that character for jama chan i think she's a great actress and everything i've seen her in things like humans and that and i haven't seen her in eternals apologies but i can't bring myself to watch that film you're an element so much yeah thank you I'm just a fight about why I'm sorry but I can't do it I know Robb Starks on it from Game of Thrones like I know but I feel as if it's weird that she was in the title sequence and the only reason I remember that is because she's there when the bishop's getting blown up in the middle It's like Gemma Chan, Lenny Kravitz. And you see both of their names. I'm like, oh, great. What massive role are they going to play in this? And she literally, after you talk to her in the Q Lab, it's like, oh, bye. She's upstairs. Yeah, that's it. Kind of forgotten about. So you never really see her unless you go to attack some missions. But is she not going to do anything else in the story? No, no, no. She's there for one moment. A very handy segue to bring up one of my only biggest gripes I have with this game is if you're in the story and you go to the Taksim, you have to exit to the main menu to be able to get back into the story. You can't come out of the Taksim again. So... It doesn't feel very gamer friendly, but you're totally right. They made a big deal of having Gemma as part of the cast. They did like a whole reveal that she was joining the cast and then to kind of just, like I say, shove her up the stairs in the corner, a Q branch with her little VR machine. She does feel slightly wasted. Not so much for Lenny. I mean, I feel like he's got a key role to play in carrying the story along, but you could take Gem out and it would not make any difference at all. And it's a real shame because, as you say, she's a really talented actress. Because when I talked to her, I was like, oh, is she going to be one of the people when you go back to Q Branch that you'll talk to her or something like that? And it's like, nah. What do you mean, no? Nah. You just, you don't. Go to tax them if you want to have a gab. But until then, nah, you don't get to. Lenny Kravitz, you're right, though. He is, and I don't mean this as an insult, but you know in Bond films, there's always that kind of dip in the film where it's like he actually has to do spy work and you're like, oh, great, here we go. This is the kind of lull in the story that he's involved in where you're hunting for 009 you go to this place called Aleph, which is like this. such a cool idea. Is this a city that's made up of all these shipping containers and things? And it's a big bustling and thriving community. And it's cool because it's like this kind of mini empire that they've established, but MI6 are well aware of them and they let them... Because I was even thinking that. was like, why are they letting them get away with this? And Lenny James, not to be confused with Lenny Kravis, Lenny James says... oh, it's because, like he says to Bond, oh, it's because it contains the chaos, you know? It's like if they just decided, oh, we're going to drone strike them or something, then they're just going to spread out everywhere, whereas here you can keep an eye on them. And I thought, it's so cool to see the idea that MI6 aren't just going around destroying everything, they've got an eye on everyone in the intelligence community. It was just such a cool idea. Proper den of thieves. Yeah. And the whole kind of... almost a degree know keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer we know where you are if we wanted could wipe you out at a push of a button but you're more used to us just having your own little carved out section of the world to do what you want to do and as long as you don't step on our toes then we'll just leave you be for the time being because one of my favorite lines of this game actually comes from that level when you manage to blag your way up to the top and you're going take out Bathman in exchange for putting his right hand man on the pedestal and everything and he asked for tickets to Man United I had to do a double take of that was like did he just say Man U I was like what it's just so out of nowhere I thought that is actually hilarious I love this game I think it's just for Lenny Kravis I feel as if his character he's a character that I think he got kidnapped and he became a child soldier and everything it's very tragic but he'd definitely sounds like a celebrity doing a celebrity voiceover because he's got the thick american accent and everything and it's not like there's a mixture or anything i don't think he's bad see by any means i don't think he's bad he's line deliveries but in the context of his character i had to do a double take being like so everyone else has a very harsh and gritty accent and he's like hey guys what's up like what sorry i Yeah, it's not quite Madonna level bad in Dying Ever Day. No. In fact, it's nowhere near that. But I totally agree because they do his profile and they're like, oh yeah, he was abducted as a child. He's a child soldier. He became basically pirate king in Africa. And he sounds like he's from anywhere USA. It's like, okay kind of takes you out of it a wee bit but then the flamboyance of the character kind of just takes the edge off that you can believe that you know he maybe is just it's an accent that he puts on or he loves watching tv shows and films when he's not you know pirating ships and running gun markets and all this other things it's this he's putting on that character as well he's very flamboyant in his presence even when he's know up on his pedestal looking down at all the people in the market giving his little speech it's an interesting character and I was a bit afraid of stunt casting as well, but I feel like he does well to serve his purpose in the narrative, and then at a key point, when help's needed, he's there to actually provide Yeah, he doesn't outstay his welcome, have to say, which quite interesting the way they juggle the characters, because, I mean, speaking of characters, one of the shout-outs that I need to give out is... See the NPCs, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but see the way that IO Interactive have just created this world you genuinely feel as if you're involved in. It doesn't feel like, you know in the old Bond games where you'd have NPCs standing around and they would do nothing? Or maybe they would say one or two dialogue lines like, are you okay? What's going on? And, you know, they wouldn't really talk to you. But between going through the club mission, which is fantastic, you overhear people talking about their nights out and everything, and it feels so realistic. And when you go to the chess tournament in Slovakia for all the time in the world, you can hear the party goers talking about this and that. You can hear the maids talking in MI6 as well. my god, I was genuinely blown away. See, when you go into MI6 and you hear the office workers just chatting away, and if there's any game that can make me remember a character like Basil from Accounting, that is doing a grand job, because I'm like, what do you mean one of the characters I'm invested in is Basil from Accounting, who is also Bond's fanboy? was like...
00:51:58
Speaker
oh this game 10 out of 10 for that it really immerses you it doesn't just make you feel as if you're the main character and everyone else around you is the npc it makes you think right you have to plan out where you're going who you're going to listen to who you're going to get close to who you're going to take out i'll have always been really good at that though in the hitman games it was one of the reasons when i heard they were doing it and everyone on the internet was like it'll be hitman but with a james bond rees skin and now could of sitting there thinking well if they create their worlds and their stages levels chapters whatever you wish to call them if they put the same amount of kind of just character again something that we seem to coming back to but it's that world building and character as well of it makes a world feel alive it makes a world feel lived in rather than having your generic skyrim style npcs who just stand around walking on a preset path doing nothing not saying a word until you interact with them the the nightclub
00:52:55
Speaker
as you said was the perfect example that way you've got your woman in the red dress and her proper landing guys a boyfriend who comes to fight bond because he chatted his bird up it's real it feels real rather than just a generic game stage that you must go from point a to point b and yeah you get invested and to a degree as well it might i can only speak from my experience but i found i quite enjoyed just walking around listening to little pieces of these conversations and some of these conversations as well are kind of they hide important mission intel in these conversations where you get an opportunity to eavesdrop so bond will take a seat or he'll lean up and pretend to be on his phone and that's listening into what's these people are saying and it will open up new avenues for you to progress. And you get the little moments where you can see the animation in his face, he's putting it all together in his head and he'll smirk from time to time or he'll roll his eyes. It's just those little human touches that really seal it for those sections. minorly annoyed me about those sections. Like, I totally agree with you. I think the attention to detail and him looking over his shoulder. I think I've got screenshots of that where he's just smirking and it's like a meme image almost. Like, that's amazing. But it...
00:54:10
Speaker
kind of annoyed to me when you were right in front of them and they were talking about mission sensitive information and it wouldn't unlock that path unless you were in that exact spot that spot yeah you had to listen and i get why because it could be maybe you were halfway across the map or you went by them and then all of a sudden that unlocks and goes, oh, you can go here. and And it's like, well, I wasn't near them. So I get it from a technical standpoint, but that's when it started to feel a bit as silly as it sounds, it felt a bit gamey that you had to do this particular thing. How dare they make a game feel like a game? I know. Damn you, IO Interactive. Damn you for putting game in my James Bond movie. That is something, okay, I'm going to touch on this briefly, and this might be the most sacrilege thing I say about this game. I would say personally, see in terms of the gameplay, I think the gameplay is good. I think that it's got a lot of cool elements and things, but to me, I would say it's probably the weakest part of the game and I don't know if that's just because i was terrible at some of the fighting missions or it's because the story's so good because when I say it's the weakest part of the game I don't mean by any means that oh it plays badly or oh it's not great if anything I think it just reminded me a bit too much of you know Sleeping Dogs yeah and that's like the equivalent to the first time I watched the film The Raid and it just changed action films for me about like how Sleeping Dogs changed action action games for me and like hand-to-hand combat and yeah you know it's just me pining sadly for that game in the past but some bits where it was like i was expecting more arkham asylum countering and then sometimes it didn't work sometimes it did work it was annoying when you were getting pummeled and kicked on the ground and it's like no you don't have a license to kill and it's like what do you mean i've got a football team just kidding me to No, no, no. His boot is on my throat. Can I kill him now, please? No, that doesn't count. That doesn't count.
00:56:15
Speaker
But it was just moments like that and others where you could kind of brute force your way through. Like you could use the laser watch or the sick dart, which they are great gadgets and everything. I did really enjoy using them. But I feel it as if that's more a problem with the way I was playing the game rather than with the game itself. I could choose not to use those things. particular gadgets i could choose to tackle the game in a different way or go a different direction so again it gives you that versatility but sometimes it just fell flat for me especially with the boss battles again i don't think they were bad by any means but they just annoyed me sometimes when i was beating someone and they just wouldn't go down and i'm like would you die
00:56:58
Speaker
but' like odd Yeah, the boss battles were... I definitely agree with you that in those regards, in the context of the boss battles, they were the weakest part for me, definitely. There was no real, oh wow, that was really cool moment. They were very much punch, punch, kick, punch, run away, hide, punch. But I've just started, literally just before we started recording, I've kind of just started my second playthrough. The first playthrough I played it very, not played it safe, but... kind of just went with ever how I felt the flow for me personally on my style of going through the game on that first run through was so I'm going to be interested to see how much I can change it up and I feel like the TAC sim section for being able to actually do some of these sections in different manners once I will start releasing more availability for certain sections or gameplay styles and things like that there's going to be a lot of replayability so you can actually try sneaking by or do a gadget only run or go full assault. But I would also come back to the fact that in a Bond movie he doesn't go full action hero John McClane Rambo style and just start shooting everything that moves in front of him. It's again these moments of quiet investigative work, sneaking around and then you'll have these peaks of action and then it backs down again and it peaks of action. The Nightfall section is a good example of that, where it is very slow to begin with, and then it picks up in the middle, quietens down again, and then it goes full bombastic towards the end of that chapter. So I agree with you, yes, it's definitely the weakest part, but by no means are we saying it's bad. It's not bad gameplay. It plays really well. It plays really intuitively once you get the hang of it. But... The opportunities to try again and go back and just do it differently are a win for me. And it's one of the reasons I've been going back to the Hitman World of Assassination two or three times since it all launched. And that right level of sandbox, not hand-holding narrative style gameplay, they found a nice kind of level ground between the two of them. This is going to sound like a weird nitpick as well, but I've got to get it off my chest.
00:59:00
Speaker
Just speaking of gameplay and presentation and things, do you know the one thing I was really disappointed at? See the pause menu? Maybe it's just because I've been spoilty with the GoldenEye 64 menu. Yeah, you were wanting the GoldenEye 64 theme kind of playing in the background. Yeah, it was. It felt kind of like, oh, it's a modern menu. Oh, okay. Yeah.
00:59:23
Speaker
We're not getting Greg Kirk open for this now. We're just going to leave that. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Again, that is not a detriment to the game. I just feel as if that is obviously a design choice. And I mean, even with the menu itself, I like how when you play through the game, it does that spec ops align thing where the menu changes depending on where you are in the game. I think that's really cool. But the actual when the game starts and it's just like a PNG g of Bond just standing there. And it's a cool image, don't get me wrong, but I'm like, eh, I'm Where's the bombasticness of this? But again, as I said, very, very minor. If I was putting that in my list of complaints, then you would know something was wrong with this review to be like, yeah, no. The pros to this game vastly outnumber the cons to Oh, 100%. I mean, there's two particular things that actually want to touch on for that. There when the game knows to pull at the heartstrings and when the game knows to invoke the rule of cool. And I'll go on to the heart first, where there's two missions in particular I'm thinking of and you'll know them judging by your reaction there. I can see where this is going. Yeah, the first one is, of course, the mission All the Time in the World, which as soon as I read that name and any Bond fan who read that went, oh no, someone's dying in this mission. Obviously not Bond because you've got another two thirds of the game to go through. So you build up this relationship with the double agents admittedly some better than others like obviously munro and cresida they are at the forefront of that but still love that you know being able to go out to the club with them munro going from this very antagonistic oh you're just a posh boy who did you talk to to get this program and then he's just like a really good friend to bond and i love that relationship which then makes it all the more heartbreaking when you're in Slovakia at this chess tournament and you see a bellhop that, I mean, initially you're supposed to be hunting 009, who is initially billed as the primary antagonist, and then later you find out that it's not the case, we will touch on that, but you see a bellhop that's acting funny, and that is one of the things I absolutely love when you find out who it is. So it's the Myrtle brothers, or sorry, Myrtle twins, who are these two Finnish assassins, It reminded me so much of, say, the Bond villains in the past, where they've got their assassin that they put out to do their dirty work and things. It actually reminded me of, you know, in The Living Daylights, they've got, I think it's Necro or Necros. You know the... Oh, yes, he's got the exploding milk bottles. That's the one! Yeah, the one who takes out Green 4. That's the only thing I remember about that scene when he's like, Green 4 to base, and then he punches the guy out. It's like he puts up a Bond-esque fight. I'm like, my God, that guy had to get beat down before this villain was getting away with it. He had to work for his milk. But he reminded me of that, or can't remember the name of them, Kiddin something out of Diamond. Oh, Kiddin went from Diamonds are Forever. That's the one, yeah, was like the double act and everything. I don't know, I just loved that whole aesthetic of it. I didn't like the boss battles, mind you, but other than that, I loved them in the story and what they kind of represented in that. But yeah, during that particular moment where you first come into contact with them, you say to Munro, oh, keep an eye on the bellhop, and then you don't realise that, of course, there's two of them. They're pulling the old Jurassic Park. Just when you think you're looking at one, there's always one off to the side. Clever, Assassin.
01:02:50
Speaker
you know but yeah unfortunately you come across munro and he has been killed by you know i don't know which one by the way i was raging because when i first saw him and this is something i said to you at the time but i genuinely thought we were gonna have a 006 scenario on their hands where he was gonna come back he was gonna be working with the bad guys that he had faked his death and yeah unfortunately no he's properly dead and i was like oh that is very very depressing and a bond game i know but it was heartbreaking but then what's worse is you try to diffuse the bomb and you do diffuse the bomb by literally just ripping it out the wall when you're like yay i did it and then much like the assassins there is another one um that blows up and that is heartbreaking because you end up finding cressida who's been pinned under this beam and her leg she ends up becoming paralyzed because of it and it's just so heartbreaking to see how these operatives who they're competent and they're unknown it's like a johnny english situation they're unknown in the spy world yet they all get picked off and the only ones that really survive it's bond cresida and there's another one that goes mia i think it's nash it's the scottish one he goes mia so i wonder if they're potentially laying down some groundwork for a future reappearance Yeah, that would be interesting to see, because I'm going to be honest, when I saw the Golden Mask guy, I thought, yeah, that's definitely Munro, that has to be Munro, and then turns out it's not.
01:04:22
Speaker
But the other scene, of course, between that scene and the scene where, unfortunately, you build up this relationship with but John Greenway, as you were saying at the very beginning, he is this very cynical, burnt-out agent, And then Bond basically makes them see that maybe things aren't as bad. And then we get the On Her Majesty's Secret Service level where I should have seen it coming, to be quite honest, when they played that theme for. He gets shot and yeah, you have a big fight with the big bad guy with the golden mask and we will reveal him soon. But yeah, then unfortunately he passes away. And I don't know what's worse, that whole scene where once again we get to see Bond's vulnerability throughout the game. He goes through as being this smart arse and, you know, very quippy. And they go from this antagonistic relationship to kind of throwing the banter back and forth. And then all of a sudden he doesn't know what to do. You know, he is just so heartbroken. He's like, I don't know what to do here. And that is a side we never really see much of with Bond. I mean, we've seen it on occasion, like with The World Is Not Enough, when he has his relationship with Electro King, or especially with Vesper and Casino Royale. That's the quintessential recent one as well. But we never see that kind of him not knowing what to do. Or not being openly admitting it either. Yeah. You know, just, and I think, for that moment as well the whole way through greenway's being air cream and bond bond this bond that in his final moments he turns to him and he calls him james and it's just it's an emotional gut punch really because i didn't anticipate greenway dying i thought like munro he was my other candidate for being the main villain by the end of all in all the lead up they were going oh he's 009's a master manipulator and i'm thinking hang on is greenway actually 009 yeah kind of playing everyone but think afterwards, it's the moments after these losses when Bond goes back to the flat in London that he was sharing Cressida and Munro and Munro's trainers are by the door and Cressida's bags are all packed for her moving out. Or when Bond goes back to MI6 after Greenway dies and M's trying to console him. And she says, but i don't remember the dialogue per se, but she refers to Bond as the first light that Greenway saw in a long time. Oh, is that when Q says it? Sorry. It was at Q, sorry. It was just, oh, that is actually... I wasn't expecting this level of depth, of emotional depth to a Bond game. ahh Maybe just from what we've had in the past, but i was just like, oh, this is top tier game writing, narrative writing right here. There's been very few games that have kind of just maybe kind of have to take a break for a few minutes just because it has made that kind of impact. and Things like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us... they're few and far between for those human moments and that even just with the third filled whiskey glass and having a toast to him in the lab is just yeah just it shows that we keep circling back to this but it humanizes everyone in this you feel for all of these characters even secondary characters like munro bombed His relationship with him, as you said before, they were butting heads. There was this, you don't belong to be here, you've wormed your way here, you've not worked for it. And by the end, they're brothers in arms. They have that close connection and they love each other to a degree. So that loss is felt not just by Bond, but by the player as well. and I mean, it is just heartbreaking seeing the whole story unfold because it's honestly hard to strike that balance between let's have a wish fulfillment action game where you're playing as James Bond 007, even though he's obviously not 007. something at this point but you've got that but then you have to balance this sentimentality beside it and it can be so easy for it to fall into cheesiness you know to be like oh not monroe and then move on immediately but they allow you to ruminate on it they allow you to sit there and go oh my god because what happens as you were saying when you go back to the flat and i knew immediately what was going to happen when i read the quote-unquote suicide note from bond And he reads it and he goes, oh, that can't be good. I'm like, I'm going to get attacked, aren't I? I was half expecting Cressida to be, you know, when the woman's on the bed and she's got all the gold over her. was expecting something to have happened to her, like Goldfinger, or, i mean, if you're a filthy heretic, like Quantum of Solace, if you will, but... Yeah, that's definitely going to happen. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen. She's safe in the Amalfi Coast, apparently. Again, I was expecting her to come back as a villain, but she didn't come back either. or No, she pretty much just disappears. So does her father. There's a funeral for them all, for all the agents KIA'd, and they've drawn very heavily from Skyfall for that scene. But yeah, they kind of just, it's like, okay, bye, and away she goes. Yeah. Her presence is still felt by her possessions. And I imagine at some point we've all been there where we've lost someone we care about. And the only thing that we have left of them is what they possessed, you know, what they coveted, whether it be, you know, in Manuel's case, it's his trainer collection. It's his free movie poster. So it's a moment we can all relate to. As you say, It's it's not a moment that you expect in a James Bond game. Because one of the things, and I mean this in all the positive ways, but the advertising for this game is insanely deceptive. Because every time I saw any advert for this, it was like, oh, look. you're in Vietnam and you have to chase down the bad guys. Oh, you're in this explosive car chase. And that does happen, obviously. Don't get me wrong. That is the action set pieces that they want to sell the game with. But what they don't sell in between, which is a nice surprise, is just those, as we were saying before, slow moments where you get to talk to the characters. You get to see their hopes for becoming double O agents, for serving, it's going to sound weird saying, serving king and country, not queen and country. tree but you know it's just absolutely incredible to see that there's so much depth in a James Bond game and granted the only downside to that I could see is if you're well actually twofold that if you want to just play the action sequences again then you're going to have to play through all the slower moments but what is also cool is you can actually choose what part of the level you can dive back into so I was looking out of curiosity because there was one particular level wanted to play rhymes with shmoo bra But you can actually choose. You can choose to skip all of the bits before sneaking around or having to do XYZ. And obviously playing it through the first time, I wouldn't recommend that. I don't think you can anyway. But yeah, it allows you at least if you want to play those particular missions, then you can. And I think that's just such a great touch. I think that is really cool that they've included that versatility into it. also allows you to there's the challenges that io have included in which again is another carryover from the hitman games so if there's a particular challenge that you've yet to complete you can find this section that will allow you to achieve it without having to put an hour or so into an entire chapter of a game just to get one little challenge which is part of a bigger level of progression that will allow you to use a certain skin in the taxon so that caters to everyone as well if you're wanting a quick bit of run and gun action you can again jump into the grand bombastic finale sections of the game or if you're wanting just to replay your favorite moments like for me going back to just do the whole vietnam level again from beginning to end and from riding in the boat until the very end with the dump truck in the quarry. For me, that is pretty much one of my favourite levels of the game. So I was very keen to go back and just play through that from beginning to end again. IOI have always done really good with their repairability and ensuring that their games have an extended shelf life. So I'm very excited to see what else we're going to get from them going forward. You're completely right because the replayability definitely is there, especially for the way that you tackle missions and things. And it is going to be interesting to see what they're going to bring to the table because they've already announced that they're doing more tax-submission stuff, which yeah, that's cool and all, but to be honest, I personally, and this is me just being greedy, but I would love to see more story DLC stuff, even if it's like a one-off mission or whatnot. They probably won't do that. They'll probably focus more on expanding the tax and stuff, but it's really interesting to see the way that they've angled this game to say, oh, here's the cool side missions that you can do, or here's the in-depth story that's going to stamp on your heart. smash it to a million pieces because the other thing as i was saying before you've got the heartbreaking moments and then you've got the rule of cool moments and i adore the rule of cool moments and this there are so many whether that is chasing someone through for example and all the time in the world where you chase 009 onto this carrier plane and you can hack it with your cue watch and you can tilt the plane left and right and i didn't realize that you could actually move while you were doing this so i was standing doing left and right and i'm like okay, why is the game not progressing? I'm like, oh, right, okay. So you've got things like that. There's one particular one I want to give a massive shout out to, and that's when you go into Q branch at the end. Basically, it's something we've not really talked about much, but you get to choose your very own Q watch, which, get granted, it's not really much of a difference, but to basically say this is an Amiga watch, you know, oh, if you want an Amiga watch, you have to... pay that's actually something that surprised me you can buy the real light version of it obviously without gadgets for nearly nine thousand pounds i'm gonna be honest unless it comes with its own gadgets i'm not paying nine thousand pounds for a watch maybe one day when the podcast becomes successful but even then that's a bit rich because think resident an evil requiem did a similar thing with hamilton was and that was seven thousand i want to say and that was two watches one for leon and one for grace at least two of them yeah who's buying these watches to be honest i mean i've seen some people be like oh check out my watch and it's like how much money do you have crazy money but yeah so you get the watch and everything and throughout the game you can use it to a bit like watchdogs you know you can hack different terminals you can use your laser watch you can use the darts and your phone you can use earbuds as well and shock wave cameras and things it's honestly cool the way that they've integrated the again as i said the modernity of the world with the gadgets you know it's like a kind of android-esque phone it's still a smartphone you've got the earbuds that are airpods it is really cool to see that integrated with it but there's a bit at the end and this is one of my favorite moments because throughout the game whenever you go to q branch you have been teased relentlessly to be like oh here's the phone box from think tomorrow never dies or golden eye one of the two gold right It's a Goldeneye, yeah. Goldeneye, yeah. Yeah. You've got the big protective bubble thing from The World Is Not Enough, because I remember it's John Cleese that gets trapped in that. You've got the knife shoe from from Russia With Love. we've got the jet pack from thunderbot You've got You've got, honestly, the tarot cards from Live and Let Die. There's just so many. There's also, and this is one I keep raving to you about, and I thought there is No way they added this. They've got the Ghetto Blaster from The Love and Daylights. I was grinning from ear to ear when I saw that. I thought, there is no way that this game is so in-depth that you've got an Easter egg to the Ghetto Blaster. Granted, it's a little bit different. but there's just so many different variants of these things. But at the very end, MI6 gets invaded by villain, and you get the watch. You basically get the keys to the candy shop, as it were, or the street shop, and you get to control all of these gadgets. And then after doing that, you think, how much cooler could this level
Underutilized Aston Martin Valhalla in Game
01:16:21
Speaker
get? And then you get to drive the Valhalla, which is their Aston Martin with all the gadgets kitted out. My only downside to that is I wish we had more time with the... value or we had like an actual driving mission but that is the highlight that was definitely underutilized and that was everything that was kind of promoted heavily in the marketing was oh we've got this brand new aston hyper car that's going to be his ride and it's two scenes including the one that you actually get to use it yeah and it's not even really a driving section at that it's you spin around yeah they're bringing it into taxon but even then i'm like yeah okay I did see Corgi releasing a model of it, so i probably will still buy it. Fair, fair.
Bond's Flirtations and Minimal Characters
01:17:03
Speaker
Honestly, when the game knows to lean into the role of cool, it genuinely, it doesn't really hesitate. Because, I mean, even with Bond's flirtatiousness, as it were, you know, that's on full display and everything with, is it Teresa Lorca? One of the eco-scientists? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, where you get the staple of the Bond franchise, the love scene, let's face it. And then Moneypenny has to scurry away because she sees it through the glass. I did love that scene where she's like, oh, tea time, gotta go. Honestly, it was done just so perfectly. And she got a lot of screen time as well, didn't she? In terms of the advertisement. Yeah, it's like, oh, go to Vietnam. I was surprised that Vietnam was so late in the game when they were bringing up saying, oh, it's this amazing thing and it's a great level, but why?
01:17:50
Speaker
Why are we spending so much time with? And again, I think I know why. Because they certainly don't spend time on the other two eco-scientists, do they? No, one's a bit of a douche. Yeah, one's a douchey party animal, the other's a questionable one with ties to MI6, I think. Who wants his favourite yoga mat? Yes, of course, because you've got to have a yoga mat. Bond's just interested in a different type of yoga. Exactly. Keeping the British end up and all that, you know. But the other character that we haven't touched on, and these are the last ones before we wrap up, but there's three characters that we have to discuss, and
Plot Twists and Villainy
01:18:24
Speaker
they are the... Well, two of them are definite villains, and one is...
01:18:27
Speaker
probably 90% a villain, 10% misunderstood. That of course is, and this is your last chance for spoiler spoilers here, but during the story you find out that 009, who you thought was the villain of the piece, and that's another great set piece as well, because you go on this boat that's been decked out and everything. It took me longer than care to admit to realise you could vault over, you know, the flowers. to get around because i was like how the hell am i supposed to get around this why do i keep exploding i know i was like how the hell do i get by this and i looked up the walkthrough and it's like oh you just vault over this and i was like oh i was severely overthinking this but you find out that he has been unfortunately killed and he's got this conspiracy board and the wall and things is so well done and the Again, you feel sorry for 009 and what he's gone through because he has this conspiracy theory that something's going on at MI6, but no one's taking them seriously. They just see him as a rogue agent. And and then what ends up happening is you find out that Thea, who is the AI system that MI6 used, directed by the villain of the piece, which you kind of see him and you think, yeah, he's probably going be villainous. It's Nicholas Webb, this millionaire, billionaire, whatever, head of this AI for him. Very almost moustache twirling level of villainy. It reminds me of, you know, in The Spy Who Loved Me and and Moonraker, because basically they're the same film, Hunter Staseless, underwater but you know the villains and that where it's like they've had ties to the british government for years and it's the same here the webs industry had defense contracts and things with the british government for nearly a century at that point they've got close ties and everything and you're expecting all right when's this going to blow up in your face but you kind of expect that he is going to be the villains I don't think he's a bad villain by any means, but he's it kind of there, you know, he serves a point and he does that thing where he pops up, you know, at the funeral, like, ooh, I expect great things from you, Mr Bond. You're like, no, you're a bad one. You're a bad egg. Then you've got the twist villain, which I have to admit, I didn't expect this when I was playing the party mission and you come across Damien, who turns out to be the man in the golden mask. Unfortunately, that is not the title of a film, but But yeah, he is the man in the golden mask that you've seen in the collector's edition and everything. I feel as if personally he comes across as a bit of a, you know, Metal Gear revengeance. Yeah. He comes across as a bit of a villain from that because initially I think he's fine up until you drop several metal poles on him and he comes back in the juggernaut suit and everything and the mask. He's definitely like Senator Armstrong at that point. Yeah, you drop half a construction site on him, he falls God knows how many feet to his quote-unquote death, and then it's like, oh yeah, by the way, Web Industries is developing this amazing new exoskeleton for wounded soldiers. Oh, he's coming back.
01:21:30
Speaker
And then he appears, as you say, that's just a bit, it feels weird to say OTT for a Bond game, but that just feels a bit too far. Do you know what it reminded me of? You know Die Another Day when it's Gustav Graves, and he's got the exoskeleton.
01:21:44
Speaker
it's like that's what it reminded me of i was like i can't believe i'm saying this phrase but it was gustav coded it's like you know for a fact it was like did you just watch this the day before and thought yeah this is going to be cool to put this work yeah but what i love about his inclusion though and it's something i never expected because i thought all right he's the villainous billionaire and everything and nicholas is going to be like oh But what I didn't realise was when they were talking about Thea, the supercomputer that MI6 used, was just the fact that there was going to be that twist of, oh, Thea isn't 100% correct.
AI Critique and Modern Debates
01:22:20
Speaker
And it's like, what do you mean it's not 100% correct? And it's like, well, it runs off of chat GPT. What do you expect? And it's like, oh oh, they're really going there. And they did. to They 100% just went complete anti-AI, which I thought, that is actually incredible. How did you modernize this story so much?
01:22:40
Speaker
It's almost that IT crowd moment of what operating system does it run on? yeah Vista, we're going to die. exactly But then the clever part of that is that Thea is not perfect and then Damien is going out into the field with his gang of mercenary thugs and they're basically doing, for lack of a better phrase, they're doing false flag operations to make the permutations that Thea given accurate so they're twisting the narrative which without wanting to sound too much like a conspiracy theorist and getting too political that's very relevant these days as well where we can't trust everything that we see or read online when comes to what's going on in the world so that's again keeping it quite relevant i was honestly so surprised at how close to the bone this hit where i was like oh you're really going there with this story Honestly, I just, I genuinely, in the big year 26 where everywhere is trying to push AI content and everything, i didn't expect a game like this where they're like, yeah, maybe you should dial back on the grok, on the chat GPT, on the gem. and I, everything. And again, it's just such a clever idea of Webb's son who is just a psychopath. Yeah. And he basically has to clean up his dad's mistakes because he's a very maladjusted child where his mum took an overdose, I think, right in front of him. Yeah. Basically killed herself. It's really heartbreaking to read, but at the same time, when you look at what he becomes, and I don't know if he was maladjusted before or after it happened, but If he wasn't before, he sadly would have been after that fact. And he just cleans up Nicholas's failures, as it were. But the one thing, speaking of villains, I mean, other than the fact that, A, we've got like a second supercomputer in this very On Her Majesty's Secret Service type place.
Innovative Gameplay and Replayability
01:24:33
Speaker
I was like, okay, that's really cool. I like that. And we've got the totally not Tesla robots stuff. As soon as I saw them at the party. Again, this whole game is just one big Chekhov's gun where it's like they put a concept on the wall. They say, leave it there. Remember it. We're coming back to that. But when you saw the robots, I thought, oh, God, they've programmed a robot. in this game, we're going to bring those, aren't we? And they were terrifying, those things. They were. The fact that no matter what you threw at them weapon-wise wasn't going to do anything to them, and you had to end up relying on basically a giant boulder rolling around. A friend of mine sent me some first light quote-unquote spoilers out of context, and it was literally just a scene from iRobot And it was Indiana Jones running away from the boulder at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I was like, that sums up that section perfectly. But yeah, they're terrifying because I just ran around circles for them for five minutes trying to get this giant metal ball that I think was designed to rescue people in rubble and would break through pretty much anything. One thing I do love about that whole sequence though, even before it, is you manage to blag your way into this lab and you get to do certain tests and everything. And I love that because it allows you to actually play about with ways to actually defeat them. And the only way I realised that was, can't even remember which bit it was, but there's a bit where it's like, oh, check them out, they're bulletproof and then you fire at them. And absolutely, they are bulletproof. But what I didn't realise, and I thought, want I wonder what would happen if I used my laser watch on them. And lo and behold, if you use your laser watch, it takes away their armor.
01:26:09
Speaker
Yeah. Granted, you still have to shoot them a bunch of times, but you can actually defeat them that way. But it doesn't help when you do that to one of them and five more come at you and you're like, no, no, no. Laser, laser, run, run. Get a battery. It's not sustainable. But yeah, using the wrecking ball is definitely the way to go. It's the way that you can learn things as you go through the game and as you replay it. It's really incredible. It's incredible that they give you the tools to explore, to think, right, okay, how am I going to tackle this particular moment? How am I going to tackle that? How am I going to scope it out like a real spy, you know? It's just fantastic. It's almost like one of those old choose-your-own-adventure books where you would get to a key point and it would ask you, if you want to do this, turn to page four. If you want to do this, turn to page ten. That's the closest kind of equivalent I can think of. They're providing you the hints and the tools. The story remains the same, but the way that your story plays out can be completely different. I didn't know the laser would do that to them, so I'll be checking that next time I play free. Oh no, definitely do. It makes it a whole lot easier. Because again, it's that thing that the game doesn't specifically tell you. And I don't know if you've seen those memes going around recently, but it's like games made in 2026 and it's over explanatory. It's like, oh, careful for that person. you have to use this. oh, I've grabbed a coin, I've grabbed another. know, it makes fun of over explaining and basically pointing at how you should defeat them. Whereas that, they give no inkling, they give no clues or whatever. You just, you do it and then you're like, wow, that's brand new information. You can use that to just advance for the next level. And again, you learn through trial and error for a lot of this game, whether to do certain things one way or do them the other.
Mysterious Isola and Spectre Ties
01:27:57
Speaker
But speaking of doing in a certain way there is one character left that i feel as if we need to talk about before we wrap up and that of course is is it isola isola well miss roth at one point as well so i did find the reveal of that quite funny when they revealed that she was using the name of think it was like french secret intelligence and she was like in her 50s and everything know like oh you look very young for a 55 year old and she's like oh very funny you Yeah, she's an interesting character, isn't she? Yeah, and I definitely have not seen the last of her. Oh, 100%. She is going to be the, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but she almost gave me Ada Wong vibes of secret agent that you have no idea about, but she's definitely going to be back. At some point in the story. Yeah, the almost perfect foil to Bond, the same way that Leon and Ada's relationship is in Resident Evil. They're two sides of the same coin. Yeah, they're both competent in their own ways, but yeah, they've got flaws, I suppose, for one another, and they use each other as a means to an end. Sometimes quite literally when you're on that yacht, but this is a PG-friendly thing. No jokes aside. She's an interesting character but the only thing don't know how to feel about her but think it's maybe because we haven't seen that lot of her yet. No. Again going back to the advertising it was almost implied that she would be quite front and centre in the story and then it wasn't until kind of towards the end thinking hang on we've actually not spent a lot of time with her aside from when we first meet her in Slovakia and when she reappears where does she reappear here again in london yeah we don't really see it again until the big climatic last two missions of the game and even then it's very fleeting appearances but i'll be very interested to find out who her employer is my money's on spectre yeah i think that's the consensus that it's definitely as long as they get the rights to spectre which has given me the shivers already thinking about that whole legal battle maybe not we'll see to spell it er yes exactly spectre cola sorry as long as they don't do the quantum thing where it's like oh yeah quantum but quantum's actually middle management for spectre and no it's an umbrella corporation oh and you know all the resident evil fans ears perked up there no no not that one but You know, it's like, yeah, hope they don't do that, where it's like, oh, it's a super, super secretive organisation. It has a place in Bond, but again, between that and Arrowhead at the beginning, when they are the mercenary group that are in Iceland, they'll probably come back at some point. Maybe not, maybe so, but I think, yeah, money's on Spectre coming back into the mix again. Yeah, Isola is... She is an enigma of a character. Because I heard a lot of people say that the reason... Not that they didn't like her, but they critiqued her by saying that she felt as if she could have been rolled into another character, like Christoph. Cressida, but at the same time, I'm thinking if you're taking Cressida out of the game, or the haha chess board, as it were, you're taking her out the equation, then Issa is probably the one that's going to replace that role, is the one that Bond keeps coming up against and everything, and again, I think it's just we haven't seen enough of her, but I'm kind of glad in a way, because that gives us more room to work with in the future that we are going to see that she's out for her own gains but who is she working for cough spectra but you know she'll be working for somebody like that it'll just it'll be interesting to see where they take her character i still think her character's great but the one thing i didn't like about her sections and there's only one section i'm thinking of is the driving sections and i don't mean this is a reflection of her character i just mean in general I wasn't a big fan of the driving sections.
Game's Success and Future Potential
01:31:56
Speaker
I don't know how you felt about them. I liked the chase in Slovakia. Yeah, that was the only one. That was the only one that actually felt exciting.
01:32:04
Speaker
i mean, the other one, you're driving bin lorry. You're driving a bin lorry down an alley in London, and that's your chase. the boat chase towards the end was quite good quite enjoyed that that actually reminded me of you know modern warfare 2 the old modern warfare oh yeah where you're like on the dinghy and it's just your arm with the who's here whatever shooting at them it gave me flashbacks that i was like oh god i'm back in 2009 the wasn't as much vehicle as I had anticipated or hoped for and I definitely definitely would have liked to have seen more of the Valhalla appear in the actual kind of main story but that's things that we can get don't know second sight or whatever we're going to call it going forward we're just beginning and And I was hopeful for this game pre-launch. I've enjoyed this game from beginning to end through the story and I'm going back in and doing the Tark Sims and I'm optimistic about what happens next and I eagerly await whenever we're going to get a sequel to this. I just hope it's not going to be, what was it to say, the development cycle on this was seven years from beginning to end.
01:33:05
Speaker
So hopefully now that they've built the heart, the engine, or well they've built whatever they need to actually get the game running, they can just focus on their characters, their story. They need to focus on the story because it's definitely one of their strongest parts. They need to focus on their characters because again, one of the strongest parts. When I say strongest parts, everything on this game, I'm not wanting to sound like I'm gushing purely about it. There are things that I have issues with, but in the grand scheme of things, there are, as I've said before, for me personally, there's very few faults with this game. For me, this is a game of the year contender. And I'm looking forward to GTA coming out later in the year, but that's a different style of game for me.
01:33:41
Speaker
For me, this is the kind of game that I would play regularly and go back to time and time and time again. So yeah, it's definitely knocked it out of the park for me. And I would highly, highly recommend if you're still sitting here after listening to us, basically go through the entire story. Go and give it a shot yourselves. Honestly, I could not agree more with you there. It one of those games that has genuinely struck a chord with a lot of people and it's not something I expected to be so popular. And I know that sounds weird to say because Bond games, at least for me, are either going to fall into one of two camps. They're either going to be, oh, they're like Goldeneye or, oh, they're nothing like Goldeneye and they fall flat, they're terrible or they just don't live up to the standards of nostalgia essentially but what i think is so strong about this game as well is it sets a solid foundation for as you said what is to come in the future absolutely and to be honest, I agree with you. I have my gripes with the game as well. But again, the gripes that I have are nothing that can't be either ironed out in patches or even in future releases of the sequel, which, as I said, I hope that I won't be in a retirement home or anything by now. the sequel comes out because it his is just it's such an amazing experience and it's something that I initially wasn't that interested because I didn't really pre-order this until maybe a week or two before release I was like yeah I don't know maybe and then I really took my luck in my hands with this one when I was like yeah I'll order from Amazon what's the worst that could happen I specifically didn't do that for Resident Evil Requiem actually had to drive out to get up because I was like yeah I'm getting this on day one there's no way i'm getting this spoiled whereas for this i was like i had no idea what to expect but i was like yeah sure we'll see what's gonna go on and it blew me away so much and it has honestly made the bond fan and me so happy this genuinely and i've said this to you i've said it to loads of people this game genuinely could be its own bond film see if you took out all the gameplay elements and you spliced it all together this could be a film and it could absolutely stand. Like, Patrick Gibson should be so proud of the way that he portrayed Bond in this because he can definitely stand up there with Pierce Brosnan, with Sean Connery, Roger Moore, George Lassenby, Timothy Dalton, you know, Daniel Craig, all of them. yeah Maybe not David Niven, but... think You're absolutely right.
01:36:14
Speaker
He has knocked out of the park and he will hopefully be remembered along the same lines as the rest of them as having been a significant part of the franchise and the legacy of what is, quite frankly, ah it's an institution at this point. has been around for 60, what are we on, 65 years? near enough 65 years yeah the boy's done good and there's been things going around online that amazon should just cast him for the next movie and i'm like no let him have his own thing without the pressure of having to do the whole cinema thing keep that separate let us have this it doesn't have to all be one interconnected cinematic universe of the games tie into the movies tie into the books tie into this we can have our own little separate adventures on different mediums and yeah let's keep it that way Yeah, because i can only imagine how different it would be acting for a massive multi-million dollar or pound film versus, again, a multi-million pound video game. Yeah, 100 million I think it was.
01:37:15
Speaker
crazy isn't it and then the first couple of days they sold 1.5 million copies which outstanding bravo to them i feel as if this is the year where we're getting such good games we had resident evil requiem we've had this game we've lego batman of all things which is a game i haven't played but i have just seen how people have been praising it to the help pragmata was a pleasant surprise for me as well really enjoyed pragmata the That's another one somebody recommended. I don't know if you recommended that to me as well. But yeah, Pragmata is one that I've heard really good things about. Honestly, it's going to be a great year for video games. I mean, we've got the new Silent Hill coming out this year. Wolverine. Is that this year? Wow. Yes, September, I think. damn. It was on the time recording. The state of play was last night, and there was good 15-minute gameplay put out of that, and that looks really interesting. Next to the 30-minute God of War one. Oh, that was so good. That looks so good. And that was a pleasant surprise. I love God of War, and for Faye's story to carry on, yeah, it's the right move. You know, that's genuinely a game series that I haven't The closest that I've had to play God of War is probably the Astro Bot levels. you play through which I love that game as well but yeah I really need to play it because I've got a PlayStation subscription I've got access to the games and everything so there's no excuse that'll probably be a theme month in the future no doubt yeah I would highly recommend them as well if you like First Light then for all the reasons you like First Light a lot them are covered by the God of War series in regards to story narrative characters music gameplay it ticks a lot those boxes as well it's very cinematic as you said so if that's your kind of game then get it definitely give them a go. Honestly, that whole state of play, although there were obviously there was always people who are disappointed looking for Destiny 3 or Sulk Song 2, you know.
Speculations on Resident Evil Remakes
01:39:08
Speaker
Oh, good. I know Sulk Song's been released, so I can't use that joke anymore. There's one channel I follow on YouTube, and every time there's a state of play or anything like that, they're going, oh, we're going to get the Code Veronica remake. We're getting the Code Veronica remake. And it's like, no, we're not. Not yet, anyway. Oh, God. If I see that Dusk golem's name one more time i think i'm gonna lose it because the amount of times i see that name pop up say they're bringing out a code veronica remake they're gonna bring out resident evil zero remake a resident evil one remake remake i'm like you've been saying you know that um jimmy neutron meme where it's like this is the seventh time you've brought this up gonna stop saying it unless you have proof that's not an ai generated image damn you thea or hyperion yeah Yeah, if you want to go for the evil AI in First Light. They're all evil. Well, yeah, true, true. Insert anything here. What I love about First Light as well is just the fact that it's going inspire a new generation of Bond fans. And it makes me think back to back in the day where we were playing Goldeneye or, I said, Nightfire, Agent Under Fire. just all of these incredible games.
Legacy of Bond Films
01:40:16
Speaker
And it solidified, you know, that diplomatic relationship, as it were, between the films and the games. And then after that 14-year hiatus, you thought, right, okay, we've got the films, but the films aren't... Again, the Craig runs very divisive. But after that, it's like, well, where do we go from now? We can't just keep re-watching the films. I mean, you can, especially if you're a British person that has ITV. Oh, every time there's a bank holiday. It's tradition. Exactly, yeah. like The Great Escape at Christmas or Chicken Run at Christmas. It's a tradition. And it's always a Roger Moore one or a Pierce Brosnan one, isn't it? They always seem to bring those ones Well, I think probably the problem they have now with the Connery ones is they are that dated and there certain actions he does that probably be frowned upon and the Dalton's are too dark.
01:41:05
Speaker
So funny enough for that, the episodes that we've done so far in terms of James Bond for Tratsunami, we've done one in Timothy Dalton, we've done one in Pierce Brosnan's run, and we did kind of a two-parter in Daniel Craig, because at the time, No Time to Die hadn't come out yet. So we did one of his run, and then we did a separate episode when it came out for No Time to Die. Again, mixed feelings, but that's another thing. I've always wanted to do, you know, like a Sean Connery series, Centred episode, but on the one hand, it's like, I want to talk about it, I want to deep dive into that o aspect of it, but on the other hand, I'm like, I'm going to have to watch Diamonds Are Forever again, and I don't know how strong a person I am to watch that. I watched it at a friend's, and I was so shocked, so i was like, is this what I've been missing out on all this time? And I don't mean that in a polite way, I mean that in a, what the hell did I just... It could be worse. It could be, you know, You Only Live Twice, where he quite literally goes Japanese. Or Dr. No, where I didn't realise Dr. No was supposed to be Chinese until I looked it up and I went, what do you mean?
01:42:10
Speaker
like, that guy? What do you mean? Those films probably will start to... It's bit of a big bear of mind that some of these classic films now seem to come with disclaimers that they, like we were saying earlier, they are a time capsule of what was going on and what the world was when they were made.
Humorous Bond Film Broadcasts
01:42:26
Speaker
But yeah, there are certain things that even hardcore Bond fans kind of go, that's not aged well. We say this as a joke sometimes on the podcast where we go, it was a different time, but it was a different time and not in a good way.
01:42:41
Speaker
60s and yeah we wouldn't get the silliness of roger moore until the 70s bear with him up until duran duran start playing or he starts fighting christopher walken on the golden great bridge that's oh god yeah do you i don't think i've watched that from start to finish i really need to finish it it's a tough one to get through it's always been one of those ones that's just you'll find it it's own but it's always about halfway or three quarters of way through Always, yeah. He's either on the bridge already. Or he's on the firetruck. He's either on the firetruck getting chased through San Francisco or he's on the bridge already. Because I genuinely can't remember if it was like Easter or it was a couple of months ago it was on TV and I went to visit my parents and I genuinely, that happened. came in and I'm like, oh, are you watching? And I saw Roger Moore on top of the Golden Gate Bridge and I was like, oh, right, okay. Yep, I know that, Philip. All I'll say is I'm just glad that First Light is genuinely going to be one of those quite evergreen games and evergreen stories that will probably hold up a lot better than some of the other games and films, of course. So
Engaging Gameplay Experience
01:43:42
Speaker
we'll see. We'll definitely see where IOI take the franchise, where they take the game specifically, because as of recording this episode, it literally came out last week. I mean, I binged it completely in a couple of days. I was like, yep, 18 hours done. I love this game. I binged it too, but maybe that speaks to the quality of the game is that I binged it, but I didn't rush my way through it. I kind of took my time with it and did break it down into chunks while playing through. But also I didn't want it to end. I didn't want it to be over so soon. And I was watching the progress tracker on the PS5's home screen when you put of the game and says, oh, you're 50% of the way through the story. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to be that far through. So yeah, it's still early days for it. So we'll see what happens going forward. You're completely right. is one of those games that you play through it and you're like, oh, I'm rushing through this game. But at the same time, it doesn't feel as if you're rushing through. So honestly, I played it for 18 hours and I didn't feel as if I was brute forcing it. Bar one or two moments, like for Nightfall, there was a bit where it was like,
01:44:47
Speaker
the Benny Hill show where it's like he's getting chased by everyone because there was scene where it's like I had to rush to the elevator and I just turned round and there was 20 guys chasing after me you know I could hear it in my head like that just running to the elevator being like get in there get in there get in there Push the button, push the button. They literally just got to the door as it was closed.
01:45:07
Speaker
was like, oh, thank God. But again, that's what makes it so cinematic and everything. And yeah, just to reiterate what you said, if you haven't played this game and you have the opportunity to play it, definitely go play it. IOI have knocked out of the park. if you're a bond fan especially you will love all the references from as we said from the gadgets to even there's a goldfinger i wouldn't say reference but you know where he's tied up in the quarry and it's like the laser coming up and yeah again you know there's that moment it's just such a love letter to bond and honestly i think bond fans couldn't have asked for a better rendition of both the character and as a game that's genuinely fun to play so yeah if you haven't played this game go play it go order it without any further ado martin thank you so so much for joining me at such short notice No, it's been my absolute pleasure.
Upcoming Podcast Themes
01:46:02
Speaker
Honestly, this game is fantastic. And as oh, if you want to talk about this game, let me know. And i was like, Yeah, sure, I'll probably do that. And initially the plan was that because this month we are going to be diving into the world of Sonic the Hedgehog again but because it's the 35th anniversary, so a couple of friends of mine and i we are going to be talking about those topics.
01:46:25
Speaker
than Sonic. Oh, that's depressing. So, yeah, unfortunately, we're going to be making people feel a lot older than they are to get talk about the world of Sonic. But then I thought, you know, we've got that month and then in July, we're going to be talking about the world of Marvel with a Marvel month. So i was like, us yeah, I'm not going to be able to talk about this game until August and see by that point, people are going to have moved on by then.
01:46:52
Speaker
yeah i Yeah, no. We're going to listen to the episode, but I don't know. So this has been the perfect time. As I said, thank you so, so much, Martin, for yeah joining me and sharing your love of Bond and apologies for making you feel old with that Sonic reference.
01:47:08
Speaker
It's all good. It's all good. now It's been my absolute pleasure. I hopefully can pop back again in the future to discuss something else that I'm passionate about. Oh, absolutely. I'll get you back for Ghostbusters a month, of course. One day. One day. Well, we've got enough content to fill the whole entire month, then yeah.
01:47:25
Speaker
Absolutely, definitely. But before we wrap up, where can the amazing Pandalurians listening at home find
Guest's Social Media Promotion
01:47:32
Speaker
your content? Well, I can be found on Instagram at Loch Ness Ghostbuster, also on Facebook at Loch Ness Ghostbuster, where you'll find loads of cool pictures of my Quinta events and my collection and some other little random bits of my geeky life to share to the masses. And yeah, if you would like to listen to more content from ourselves, including literally last week, where Martin and I spoke together to talk about his work in the Ghostbusters community and the like, then you can check out that episode, as well as my spoiler-free review of First Light on Chatsunami.com, as well as all good podcast apps.
Patreon Benefits
01:48:10
Speaker
I also want to thank our amazing Pandalorian patrons, Robotic Battle Toaster, Ghost Day, and Cryptic 1991. Thank you so, so much for supporting the show. And if you would like to listen to my own spoiler-filled first impressions of First Light, as well as early access to episodes, commentary tracks, bonus content, then you can definitely check us out at our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash chat tsunami. This podcast is, of course, a proud member of the Popat Collective.
Thank You and Sign-off
01:48:37
Speaker
For more information, check us out at our Twitter slash X page at Popat Collect. But until next time, thank you all so, so much for listening.
01:48:45
Speaker
As always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated with a shaken, not stirred drink.