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
