It’s one of the most iconic musical themes in pop culture history: a plucky guitar riff that explodes into a symphony of brass. You probably know it well, even if you’ve never seen a James Bond movie or played a 007 game. And now the iconic Bond theme is back in the spotlight thanks in no small part to video game music veterans The Flight. I spoke with the duo, composed of bandmates Alexis Smith and Joe Henson, ahead of the release of IO Interactive's 007 First Light to talk about the challenges of building a new score around such a classic theme and the surprising lack of rules they encountered while scoring the game.

“The main thing from IO Interactive was to hold back those [big orchestral] moments to give it to the player when he's earned it,” Henson says. “Other than that, we weren't being pushed into any boxes. There definitely wasn't a style guide that came in from outside saying, ‘This is how you should use this.’ Sonically, how we used that main theme, there weren't really any rules.”

“The game is split into different locations, and we gave each of these locations a sound,” Smith says. “Bond is brass, Bond is strings. But we, being The Flight, are always trying to push modernity as well because this is a modern take on Bond. So we've got to use electronics, use synths and stuff like that in a tasteful way. I feel that is kind of our specialty.”

The Flight, who have also scored games like Gotham Knights, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and Horizon Zero Dawn, say they worked with 007 First Light theme song creators Lana del Ray and David Arnold to ensure the song’s melody would reach beyond the opening credits.

“We used Lana and David’s [song] at very specific emotional points,” Smith says. The first time you hear [that melody] is very early on. It's kind of Bond's rebirth. It looks like he's dead. [But then] he is reborn.”

“Then there are some points much later on in the game where you hear it also,” Henson says. "When he does his first kill. And then at the end, [but] we don't want to spoil too much.”

The duo says they grew up watching 1980s Bond films starring Timothy Dalton, but it was a later film that cemented their love of the franchise and all of its musical history.

“When I was 10, we were watching Living Daylights at Christmastime,” Smith says. “But [1995’s] GoldenEye [sung by Tina Turner] was always the song that I latched onto. [It] came out just as I was coming into the music industry. It’s a big song that still sounds so good. It still sounds modern. You could play it in a new Bond film and it would be absolutely fine.”

Despite scoring numerous AAA games, both Henson and Smith say composing music for 007 First Light presented some unique challenges.

“A game score is much longer an experience than a lot of films,” Smith says. “So you need more of everything. It's very difficult to string out just the Bond theme throughout all that music. It would get boring and you definitely don't want to overuse that Bond theme that everyone knows. At least half of the score, if not 60%, is interactive music. It’s music that can move between states depending on what the player's doing. From sneaking around to massive spectacle moments. Sometimes with [game] scoring, you've just got to imagine it and then write it.”

“We’ve done a lot of open world games, so [007 First Light] is very different to that,” Henson says. “It was a lot more scripted and a lot more guided for us. It was a hybrid film and game. [IO Interactive] has been talking about how the game works where you have playgrounds, then cinematic moments, and epic moments. And we wrote [the music] in basically the same way.”

“We didn't train at a film school or anything like that,” Smith says. “We started as musicians making dance music, being in a band, making pop music. So we [came] into working on games from that angle and learned the orchestral language along the way. So that's what we wanted to keep. We wanted to keep where we've come from. [But] obviously we have a big responsibility to the Bond score. It’s always got to sound like Bond.”

Michael Peyton is the Senior Editorial Director of Events & Entertainment at IGN, leading entertainment content and coverage of tentpole events including IGN Live, San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He's spent 20 years working in the games and entertainment industry, and his adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on Bluesky @MichaelPeyton

Ever since those initial Overwatch cinematics made their way onto our screens, the prospect of an Overwatch animated series has been an exciting one. For the past decade, rumours of such a thing have come and gone, but there may still be hope.

In a recent interview, I asked Walter Kong, Overwatch general manager and head of live games and mobile development at Blizzard, if a TV show translation of the hero shooter could still find its way to us. “I would not rule it out,” Kong replied.

“Every time we release assets, whether it’s a hero trailer or an event piece, there are all of these comments about, ‘Hey, we would love an Overwatch animated series. Blizzard, what the hell? When's that happening?’ Kong continued. “So we certainly hear that and I think that it is not a huge stretch to believe that there would be a lot of demand for that type of content. So certainly, no, I won't rule out that sometime in the future there could be other storytelling experiences in the Overwatch universe.”

Blizzard actually did try to get animated shows based on its games off the ground, but those efforts failed. In 2024, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment author Jason Schreier revealed that StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo were due the Netflix adaptation treatment, but then Blizzard sued Netflix for poaching the company’s Chief Financial Officer. In early 2019, former Blizzard CFO Spencer Neumann was fired after breaching his contract to become CFO of Netflix. It seems this dispute was at the heart of the end of those Netflix adaptations.

With Overwatch currently celebrating its 10th anniversary, Blizzard revealed that over 4.4 billion matches have been played in that time, but a hunger for story still remains. This year saw a rethink in how the developer is approaching narrative, with year-long arcs now being told through several seasons. Kong admitted that the studio has always wanted story to be a big part of Overwatch, but bit off more than it could chew back in 2016.

“I think we got the sense that there was this desire to know more about the story of Overwatch, because we had quite a few of the cinematic pieces released before launch,” he explained. “I think they helped establish that kind of emotional resonance prior to the games launch, but what we weren't prepared for was being able to support so many ambitions. I think very early on we knew that we wanted the game to have an ongoing release cadence to it and you don't know how hard that's going to be until you actually do it.”

“And then we also had the ambition to deliver some narrative, some story missions in the game as we showed in 2019 at BlizzCon,” Kong continued. “I think we really underestimated the level of resources necessary to hit with all of that ambition. And I would say that by the time that I stepped into the GM role in the latter part of 2021, it was clear to me that there was too much to work on and I had to make some prioritization decisions. Back then we had been in a bit of a content drought and I made a pretty clear call to prioritize getting back to the delivery of live game content in the PVP game, and then I think that is really the story of why we shifted to that Overwatch 2 model.”

“We did give it a try in terms of resuming development of the story missions and releasing the first chapter in Season 6 of 2023. We did get the signal back from players that it really wasn't resonant and I think that's when we made the decision to focus our resources on the core PvP experience and really have stronger definition of what the game would be that we would serve the players that we had and they were enjoying that specific experience.”

Beyond story, though, Kong has ambitions for Overwatch to spread its wings further than the PvP experience that the world is rooted in. Clear signs of this can be seen in the recent collaboration between Blizzard and Epic to bring its heroes into Fortnite, a deal initiated by Kong himself.

“I went to Epic, and part of my history is that I was at Epic from 2018 to 2020, and I worked on the Fortnite team at the time, and I just saw firsthand the positive excitement and energy that could come from surprising collaborations,” Kong revealed. “It was something that was positive for Fortnite as well as the partners, the collab partners and I felt that the time was right to just bring a bit of excitement to the overall franchise and perhaps expose our heroes to some new audiences. Quickly we felt that our heroes would be presented in a very positive way and as the work developed, that feeling got reinforced and overall we were very, very happy with how the collaboration delivered.”

It was a long time coming, said Kong, who harboured long-held desires for Overwatch’s most beloved characters to exist outside of their hero shooter bubble. “That has been the ambition pretty much from the beginning, but I felt that it could not be done until the core game experience of Overwatch was at a certain level of health and ability to serve our players was at the right place,” Kong added.

“I didn't think that pushing on these type of opportunities prematurely would be the right thing to do. I'm very happy with the leaders on our team and the energy and passion they bring to leading the game, which meant that I could spend more time looking to the future and working on initiatives that take a long time to fully realize. I would say that we are seeing some of that early work come to fruition, but there's a lot more of it that I still want to complete and nothing that I should really talk about right now.”

Could one of those things be the aforementioned animated series? We’ll just have to wait and see. For now, Kong is “happy with where the game is today,” after Overwatch ditched the 2 and refocused its efforts on what made it the smash hit it once was. Blizzard will be hoping that momentum keeps up over the next months and years.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.

No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games has announced The Swarm update, which adds a “mysterious Death Star like construct” to the sci-fi adventure.

The Swarm update adds “something new, huge and foreboding" to the sky above planets. Hello Games said it's "unlike anything we've seen before.” Patch notes, courtesy of the No Man's Sky website, are below.

“Players are going to need a combined community effort to figure out what is going on,” Hello Games chief Sean Murray teased. “Travellers will boot up to be greeted with a personality test, dividing players into three factions, each will need to co-operate, strategise and compete to counter the Hive of Glass, an existential threat to the universe.”

“A war effort is being launched from the Nexus, with defenses rapidly being constructed, and a new bulletin page tracking progress,” Murray continued. “Your contribution to the face-off with the Hive is being logged for all to see in both the Anomaly and the Galactic Atlas. Travellers will want to keep a constant eye on which squad is contributing the most to the war effort. The most effective faction will be memorialised in the Space Anomaly for all time!”

The Swarm adds No Man’s Sky’s “biggest and most epic space battles to date,” Murray said. “The Hive of Glass protects itself by releasing swarms of robotic drones, creating an awesome spectacle of battles with hundreds of ships. The Hive itself is a weapon too, with the iris opening to release the largest weapon we’ve ever seen in No Man’s Sky. A laser capable of destroying freighter fleets and perhaps even something as large as a space station…

“While in space there are huge battles, on planet there is investigating and pillaging the remains of crashed drones (using the newly-acquired Gravity Gun we introduced earlier this year). Shot down drones need to be salvaged and researched. There are miniature planetary swarms to defeat, and research efforts to sabotage the swarm’s network. The secrets of the Hive’s origins and weaknesses can be uncovered and shared with your fellow rebels.”

Murray added: “The prospect of all existing Travellers converging on a single area of the universe to take the largest space battles to date, against the back-drop of an ominous, mysterious Death Star like construct, with the ability to destroy space station sized objects… is going to make for some exciting weeks ahead for us and for players. We can’t wait to see how this plays out.”

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.