{"id":631619,"date":"2026-06-10T18:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/631619\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T18:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:24:09","slug":"the-enormity-of-the-idea-helped-me-how-patrick-gibson-became-gamings-new-james-bond-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/631619\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The enormity of the idea helped me\u2019: how Patrick Gibson became gaming\u2019s new James Bond | Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is any acting gig more contested than James Bond? Each week seems to bring a din of audition speculation so loud that it must be exhausting for the Elordis, Cavills and Dickinsons who are at the centre of it all. But when one of them does finally bag the role, perhaps they should seek the counsel of the actor who has quietly played the part for the last five years: Patrick Gibson. He\u2019s the star of 007 First Light, the video game that has sold 2.7m copies<\/a> since it was released two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

As a computerised Bond, Gibson is the first video game actor to lend both his voice and likeness to the role. With endorsement from both Amazon MGM and previous brand guardians Eon there\u2019s a case to be made that he is the seventh official Bond (and the second Irish one). Not that he knew this when submitting a self-tape to Danish developers IO Interactive. \u201cThere was talk of martinis in the audition sides that gave me an inkling,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cAlthough at that point I didn\u2019t believe there was any way it could be that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when the penny dropped? \u201cIt definitely tested my anxiety threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n

The key to pushing through that \u2013 listen up all you would-be 007s \u2013 was to lean into the pressure. \u201cI think the enormity of the idea helped me. It felt so impossible as a dream that I was like, sure, may as well throw my hat in here,\u201d he explains. Once he saw how IOI\u2019s team had shaped the character, it only solidified his resolve. \u201cIt felt so quintessentially Bond, that it was almost carrying me along. I went from wanting to portray a character I\u2019d known, to suddenly feeling like I was actually becoming it a little more.\u201d<\/p>\n

First Light adds the extra wrinkle of being an origin story. This isn\u2019t new territory for Gibson, who\u2019s best known for playing young Dexter Morgan in serial killer prequel Dexter: Original Sin. But there he had the north star of Michael C Hall\u2019s older killer: glazed stare, sly intonation and terrible haircut. Although Daniel Craig was \u201chis\u201d Bond growing up, Gibson resisted aping any one turn, instead looking for common ground between portrayals. \u201cThe most exciting part was stripping away the experiences of the Bonds we\u2019ve met in books and films and being left with the DNA of \u2018who is this person?\u2019 What ingredients existed before, that were perhaps nature rather than nurture?\u201d<\/p>\n

The game\u2019s narrative director Martin Emborg definitely seems more invested in pinning down character qualities over a tick-box exercise in nudge-nudge fan-service. \u201cThe trappings \u2013 the martinis, the one-liners, the tuxedo \u2013 very easily get a jokey, tropey quality to them,\u201d he says. \u201cYou need to double down on who the character is, and why he\u2019s in situations where those things exist. Taking it seriously is what gives it the gravity that it absolutely needs to land.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Taking this reimagined character into this next stage\u2019 \u2026 Gibson<\/p>\n

Still, it must have been pretty cool to say \u201cBond, James Bond\u201d, right? Gibson\u2019s cagey about which signature moments appear in the game \u2013 it doesn\u2019t open with the gun barrel stroll, for starters \u2013 but agrees with our assessment that outside \u201cTo be or not to be\u201d there are few line deliveries more scrutinised. What\u2019s it like waking up, knowing you have to say it that day? \u201cYou have to imagine you\u2019ve never heard it before. You remove yourself from the pop culture element and find truth in those moments. These things are organic happenings, rather than winking \u2018a-ha\u2019 moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the legacy wasn\u2019t already challenging enough, there\u2019s the extra layer of technical abstraction that comes with any video game performance. No jet-setting location shoots here. Filming First Light\u2019s several hours of cutscenes required head-mounted cameras, tracking dots all over the face, blinding lights and an unflattering morph suit. \u201cYou\u2019re almost literally naked,\u201d says Gibson. \u201cWhich acting can feel like, but this takes it to a new degree. And then Martin says\u201d: \u2018Look cool and elegant. Action!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When we speak Gibson hasn\u2019t yet played the game, nervously trusting that it has come along since early glimpses where \u201cJames Bond would walk in made up of boxes and spheres\u201d and he had to keep it to himself that \u201cI wasn\u2019t totally impressed by the graphics\u201d. There\u2019s also the oddness of seeing strangers steer his digital likeness around. \u201cIt didn\u2019t really dawn on me until my mate said: \u2018I can\u2019t wait to play as you in this game\u2019, and that is the weirdest thing I\u2019ve ever thought about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Above all this hangs the question of where Gibson\u2019s performance will eventually sit in the grand scheme of 007. It\u2019s been easy up until this point to treat Bond\u2019s video game adaptations as a geeky offshoot; the buzzier conversation is always around who\u2019ll play the role on film (although Gibson\u2019s First Light co-star Lennie James said film-makers \u201cwould be mad\u201d to not consider him for the part). Emborg sees the game as its own, meaningful alternative. \u201cWe\u2019ve had the literary Bond. We\u2019ve had the cinematic Bond for 62 years. What we have here is an interactive Bond that exists in its own right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibson certainly seems to be enjoying the full Bond experience. Seeing his character model for the first time (dapper, no tux). Learning what car he\u2019ll tear around in (an Aston Martin Valhalla). Hearing his theme song (a stonking Lana Del Rey\/David Arnold collaboration). For Gibson, these firsts are impossible to rank. \u201cI had to constantly remind myself that I was doing it. It feels both ingrained, but also a world I couldn\u2019t possibly be a part of,\u201d he says. \u201cI think the only way for me to approach it was with ownership, ignoring the canon and taking this reimagined character into this next stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

007 First Light is out now on PC, PS5 and Xbox on 27 May; and releases on Nintendo Switch 2 later in summer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is any acting gig more contested than James Bond? Each week seems to bring a din of audition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-631619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}