After years of anticipation, developer IO Interactive has officially shed more, well, light on its upcoming James Bond adventure, 007 First Light, marking their bold entry into the James Bond universe. The game is not only IOI’s first major release since 2021’s Hitman 3 – later rebranded as Hitman: World of Assassination – but also their first title built exclusively for current-gen consoles. Powering the experience is IO’s in-house Glacier engine, a proprietary tech platform that has evolved significantly since its debut with Hitman: Codename 47 back in 2000.
In a conversation with IOI’s Chief Technology Officer, Ulas Karademir, the studio’s ambitions for 007 First Light became clear. “Our engine is quite modular… It’s not like Unity or Unreal,” Karademir explained. “It’s very easy for us to add new stuff… so we have a huge separation between the networked engine, the engine editor, and the resource server. That makes it easier to innovate without tearing the whole thing apart.”
Modular design, maximum flexibility
That modularity isn’t just an internal talking point – it’s the reason IOI can maintain one engine across vastly different game types and platforms. With Glacier, IOI doesn’t need to rework the engine for each new release. Instead, they enhance it through a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) system. “Every single day, the engine gets updated many, many times with new features,” said Karademir.
A standout example is Glacier’s seamless compatibility across platforms. “We’re able to support PlayStation, Xbox, Switch 2, and iOS without needing separate builds,” Karademir noted. When working on Nintendo Switch 2, which launched with Hitman: World of Assassination and will see 007 First Light hit the console as well, he recalled that “it took us a couple of months” to get everything running, largely because of the engine’s built-in flexibility. “You can make changes in one place, and you can see all the platforms at the same time,” he added. “No need to rebuild or import – everything updates live.”
This hot-reload functionality accelerates iteration speeds, giving designers and engineers unprecedented creative freedom. Tools like Max, Maya, and Photoshop feed directly into the platform-specific builds without friction. That means gameplay elements like a rotating door or a driving sequence can be added and tested in real time.
Optimizing for every platform
For 007: First Light, Glacier’s graphical muscle is more important than ever. Karademir said the team is “working with NVIDIA right now” to implement the full suite of ray tracing features and upscaling techniques like DLSS. Building on what they established in Hitman 3, which introduced ray-tracing to the Glacier Engine, IOI has integrated real-time lighting enhancements and a new animation motion-matching system to bring Bond’s world to life. These updates push the visual fidelity even further, particularly on higher-end platforms like the PlayStation 5 Pro alongside virtual reality.
Karademir also emphasized how the team avoids performance compromises through their granular control of data and a robust set of profiling tools. “We can add different LOD [Level of Detail] levels… we have full profiling,” he explained. “You can sit down and have PlayStation running from your PC. You can see everything and hot reload it.”
This approach allows IOI to tune for performance at a granular level between lower-end platforms like the Switch 2 or even modern iOS devices natively (World of Assassinations was playable on iPhone during the event). Whether it’s for a high-end console or a mobile device, the same toolset provides real-time feedback, minimizing the need for post-build optimization.
007 First Light to shine through the power of Glacier
One of Glacier’s more unique features lies in its logic-based core system. Everything in the engine is treated as an “entity,” from a simple door to a complex driving sequence. “You have a door as an entity, a rotator as an entity, you connect them, and then you have a rotating door,” Karademir described. This visual scripting model is underpinned by C++ code, providing both high-level accessibility and low-level control.
Designers are empowered to build gameplay systems without relying heavily on engineers. “The gameplay programmers create logical entities, and then the designers use that,” Karademir said. “They can reuse the same things again and again – even code from other games. It’s just visual representation.” For IOI, this means rapid prototyping and iteration, enabling everything from espionage tactics to cinematic car chases with fluid design-to-test cycles. This could potentially give 007 First Light to create various content updates fairly quickly.
This also proves essential for 007 First Light’s broader gameplay goals. While Hitman focused on various ways to execute stealth assassinations, the James Bond title involves new elements, including vehicle sequences. “Everything is made of entities,” Karademir explained. “So if I have a character and a camera, I can just attach it to the car… and boom, I have the car.”
Even racing and driving sequences weren’t a big challenge
The technical strengths of the Glacier engine directly feed into the narrative and gameplay ambitions of 007 First Light. As a Bond origin story, the game will likely stretch across diverse scenarios – from stealth operations to adrenaline-fueled vehicle chases – and Glacier is primed to handle them all.
“Even racing and driving sequences weren’t a big challenge,” said Karademir. “We’ve had the foundation for that since Glacier 1… We started from scratch with Glacier 2 while still making big games, so the choices we made then still benefit us now.”
With comparisons made to cutting-edge internal engines like Remedy’s Northlight or Guerrilla’s Decima, it’s clear IOI sees Glacier not just as a means to an end, but as a differentiator in a crowded industry compared to more popular multiplatform engines like Unity and Unreal
As IOI moves closer to the release of 007 First Light next year, it’s evident that the studio isn’t just taking a swing at a James Bond story. They’re redefining how game development can work at scale for a variety of gaming experiences.
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