IO Interactive's James Bond will feature a young 007 - 'that gamers can call their own.'

We were excited when IO Interactive, the developer of Hitman, announced that it would be working on a James Bond video game in 2020. "Take out the bald assassin and stick in a British spy agent, and Hitman, and its sequel, are basically already Bond," wrote we at the time. In an interview with IGN's Hakan Abrak, the CEO of IO Interactive said that the company's take on Bond might be a bit different than the guy we're used seeing on screen.

"James Bond has a different IP. It's a big IP. It's not ours. Abrak said, "It's the first time that we haven't created our own IP from scratch. "But the exciting thing about that project was that we got to actually do an original story. It's not just a gamification. It's [a] completely [new] start and becoming a tale, hopefully for a large trilogy in the future."

He continued that it's "a new Bond" built from the ground up for gamers. It's a great experience to work with the family on creating a new Bond for gamers. A Bond that gamers can grow with and call their own. (It is likely that the "family" Abrak refers to is the Broccolis who produce the Bond movies and control the character rights.

I'm glad to hear IO will be doing its own thing for the Bond game. However, the promise of a unique story doesn't make me too excited. With all due respect, Bond stories tend to follow a fairly well-structured formula, and are differentiated more by the actor in the role--the suave Bond, the old Bond, the hard-ass Bond, the shoulda-had-a-better-agent Bond--than by the momentary narratives in which they exist. There is freedom, however, whether the formula is rigid or not: You can put Jimmy in a ridiculous outer space laser battle, or have him brutally kill a man in a soiled public toilet, and both are valid Bond stories.

Abrak stated that James Bond was "one of three top IPs" in terms movies, but it has been a while since we have seen a Bond game. He believes that this will be a positive for IO. "I don’t want to be too grandiose about it, but if we do something that will define James Bond gaming for years to follow," he said. This is a statement I find quite impressive. "And that's not just one game. We want to create a universe that gamers can own for years to come, so we can grow alongside the Bond in the films."

Abrak did not give a specific date for when we can expect to see the new game. He only said that "we'll soon be talking about it."