- Primary Subject: 007 First Light / IO Interactive / Daredevil
- Key Update: The success of 007 First Light is prompting discussion about what franchise IO Interactive could adapt next, with Daredevil emerging as a surprisingly strong candidate.
- Status: Opinion
- Last Verified: June 12, 2026
- Quick Answer: 007 First Light proves IO Interactive is capable of far more than Hitman, and its strengths in stealth, investigation, observation, and character-driven storytelling make Daredevil feel like a surprisingly natural fit for the studio's next major adaptation.
007 First Light feels like the kind of game that changes the way you look at a studio.
Before its release, IO Interactive was still largely viewed as the team behind Hitman, regardless of how talented the developers were. After its release, that description suddenly feels too limiting.
In fact, the success of First Light also creates an interesting question about IO Interactive's future. If the studio were ever given another major character to adapt, it's becoming easier to imagine who that character should be.
Has 007 First Light Changed How We Should View IO Interactive?
For years, IO Interactive was one of those studios that felt almost inseparable from a single franchise.
The studio was widely respected, its games consistently reviewed well, and the modern Hitman trilogy helped establish one of the strongest comeback stories gaming has seen in recent years.
At the same time, however, IO Interactive became so closely associated with Agent 47 that it was easy to forget the developers were capable of anything else.
Whenever discussions about the studio appeared online, the conversation almost always circled back to disguises, assassinations, and sandbox stealth design.
The easiest thing IO Interactive could have done was build a Bond-flavoured version of Hitman.
Instead, the studio seems far more interested in exploring what makes James Bond different from Agent 47, and the game is considerably stronger because of it.
Bond isn't Agent 47 with a tuxedo and a British accent. He's a very different character with a very different personality, and the game understands that distinction from the very beginning.
In turn, First Light feels more cinematic, more action-oriented, and considerably more character-driven than anything IO Interactive has made before.
Perhaps the most impressive part is that the studio never loses sight of the qualities that made Hitman work in the first place.
The game left me thinking that, in hindsight, we've been looking at IO Interactive too narrowly for years.
Its strength lies in building experiences around intelligent, capable characters who rely on preparation, adaptability, and observation to navigate dangerous situations.
Once you start looking at the studio through that lens, a lot of interesting possibilities begin to emerge.
The conversation becomes even more interesting once you start looking at the uncertainty surrounding James Bond's future.
Although 007 First Light has been a major commercial success, Amazon now controls the broader Bond rights through MGM, and executives have already discussed the possibility of future Bond projects becoming more directly tied to Amazon's own gaming ambitions.
More recent statements have suggested the company still values its relationship with IO Interactive (which would be difficult not to after such a successful launch), but the situation is clearly different from when development originally began.
Instead of wondering how IO Interactive might build on First Light, I keep finding myself wondering which character could benefit most from the lessons it learned making it.
Certain studio-and-franchise pairings make immediate sense the moment you hear them.
Nobody needed much convincing that the creators of Hitman could make a compelling James Bond game. Looking at what First Light accomplishes, I think another pairing falls into that category as well.
Could Daredevil Be The Character IO Interactive Was Meant To Adapt?
Part of what makes Daredevil such an interesting candidate is that he's fundamentally different from most of Marvel's biggest stars.
When people imagine superhero games, they usually picture characters whose powers naturally translate into exciting gameplay systems.
Spider-Man swings across skyscrapers, Iron Man flies through the sky, and Thor can summon lightning with the wave of a hand.
Their abilities translate naturally into gameplay because the mechanics practically design themselves. Daredevil has never worked that way.
Matt Murdock is a superhero, certainly, but many of his best stories barely resemble traditional superhero adventures.
His world is smaller, darker, and considerably more personal. Instead of fighting cosmic threats, he's often dealing with organised crime, corruption, legal battles, and deeply complicated moral dilemmas.
The appeal of Daredevil has never been overwhelming power. It's the fact that he constantly finds himself trying to overcome impossible situations through determination, intelligence, and sheer stubbornness (which is often where Marvel's character-driven storytelling shines brightest).
It's difficult to spend time with First Light without noticing how naturally many of its ideas seem to align with Daredevil.
Bond spends much of the experience gathering information, studying his surroundings, identifying opportunities, and reacting to situations as they evolve.
Daredevil isn't all that different when you break the character down to his essentials. The difference is that Matt Murdock's heightened senses create opportunities for gameplay systems that could push those ideas much further.
I've never been convinced that a Daredevil game needs to make players struggle with blindness in a literal sense.
In fact, I think that approach would miss what makes the character interesting in the first place.
Matt Murdock isn't defined by what he can't see; he's defined by everything he can perceive that other people can't.
A great Daredevil game would lean into that difference, turning sounds, movements, conversations, and tiny environmental details into information that players learn to read and interpret.
The world itself becomes something players are constantly decoding and interpreting (which feels very much in line with the way IO Interactive has approached level design for years).
Combat presents another compelling argument for why this pairing makes sense. One of First Light's greatest strengths is the way it allows stealth and action to coexist naturally.
Players can quietly infiltrate a location, gather information, and avoid confrontation, but they can also adapt when situations inevitably spiral out of control.
It's easy to imagine that approach working for Daredevil given how often his stories move between investigation, stealth, and direct confrontation.
As much as I enjoy imagining how the mechanics might work, the character himself remains the most compelling part of the discussion.
Daredevil has always been at his best when writers embrace the contradiction at the centre of Matt Murdock's life.
He's a lawyer who believes in the legal system while simultaneously spending his nights operating outside of it.
He wants justice, but he's constantly forced to question what justice actually looks like in a city where powerful people often escape consequences.
He has an incredibly strong moral code, yet he's regularly placed in situations that test whether that code is sustainable.
Those conflicts create stories that are far more nuanced than a simple battle between heroes and villains, and that's where IO Interactive's strengths become especially relevant.
For years, the studio has excelled at building tension through uncertainty, observation, and difficult decisions.
Its games understand that conflict doesn't always emerge from a firefight or a boss battle.
Often, the most interesting tension comes from uncertainty, from competing priorities, or from situations where the correct decision is obvious but acting on it comes at a cost.
As far as anyone knows, no major Daredevil game is currently in development, and IO Interactive already has plenty of projects demanding its attention.
Still, some ideas become more convincing the longer you think about them.
If James Bond was the character that allowed IO Interactive to prove how versatile it had become, Daredevil feels like the character that could allow the studio to fully explore just how far those talents can go.
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