How "100 NDAs" were the start of getting the Aston Martin Valhalla in 007 First Light
Putting machine guns and missiles in an Aston turns out to take a while
Depending on how big a fan you are, you might or might not know that today (5 October) is James Bond Day – and in the absence of a new movie, or even a confirmed new live-action Bond actor, it's looking like a big one for 007 First Light.
IO Interactive's game arrived back in May to a rave reception, rightly. I had a downright brilliant time with the game, loving the way it blended stealth and action, and I was also impressed with how it integrated arcadey driving sequences into the mix. Anyone who's finished the game will know that the Aston Martin Valhalla plays a pretty big role in its culmination, with a little more than just driving up its sleeve.
Now, a few months on, IO is making good on its promise to support the game with post-launch releases, in the form of a major new update that adds not just New Game Plus and new TacSim content for Bond to tackle on foot, but also the Valhalla Protocol, a new TacSim mission that's all about that hypercar.
It gives the player free rein to drive the Valhalla with all of its gadgets and weaponry enabled, through four missions that span day and night in the Slovakian mountains – beautiful stuff. That release prompted a chat with IO's Dominic Vega and Rasmus Poulsen (game director for missions and art director, respectively) last week, and I got to pepper them with questions about how exactly they got the car in their game.
After all, while Aston Martin's long had a deep partnership with the Bond franchise, it's also a brand that's pretty careful of its image (and that of its cars). How relaxed is it about outside partners like IO knowing about the Valhalla before it was made public (which the team did), let alone turning it into a techno-hybrid version of itself?
Well, according to Poulsen, the prerequisite to finding out about the Valhalla was indeed "certainly 100 NDAs" or so, but once that inevitable hurdle was jumped, it was impressively smooth sailing throughout the process. IO's team decided very early on that it wanted two Astons in particular – a vintage DBS, and the newest, most powerful car Aston would make available.
Bond also trains in a 2006 DBS, but it's the 1970 DBS that really steals the show when Bond drives it in Slovakia during a gorgeous car chase. Then, the Valhalla really takes the cake when it becomes explosively useful in a shootout in Q Branch late in the game.
Poulsen says that the team never presented anything too wacky in terms of that weaponry, though, always wanting to lean on credibility within the Bond universe. "How do we want this car to be represented? Of course, [we had] conversations about credibility and bridging that gap between over-the-top excitement and cool restraint."
This means that the way the weaponry comes out of the Valhalla, from underneath exterior panels, actually fell into place very early on. "When we had a design that we felt straddled being both credible enough but exciting as well, we took that design to Aston, and they were very game; because it felt, I feel, like maybe we had straddled correctly, so that they didn't feel that their vehicle was being compromised."
Anyone who's worked on projects involving more than one brand will know that the needle Poulsen describes there is not as easy to thread as he makes it seem. Vega adds some emphasis to the point, too: "We want to do this right. We want this to be something that, on this hypercar [...] we're actually doing the brand justice, and then the kind of moment was built around what those guys came up with."
After all, if you're not keen to work out how machine guns and missiles could come out of an Aston Martin, as Vega points out, you might have to ask, "Why are we making a James Bond game in the first place?"
In point of fact, the machine guns came first – it was only once IO started to playtest the Q Branch shootout that it decided more was needed to really empower the player. Vega described a moment when the team agreed: "You know what'd be really fun right now is if the AI voice, you know, Q's assistant, comes on the intercom and says 'missiles unlocked'. Right? And then you have to go back and redraw the concepts and re-look at stuff because now you have a new problem to solve."
That process of iteration, with the added layer of Aston Martin approvals, makes it sound like a complex journey, but the enthusiasm from both Vega and Poulsen for the car they ended up with is obvious. They rightly wouldn't be drawn into any question of a sequel (something that was much talked about when the game landed to huge sales and great reviews), but the addition of new driving missions is fun enough in its own right.
If you enjoyed First Light, it means there's more of it for you to sample now, and if you've not yet grabbed it, the value proposition just got even better.
