The long-rumored James Bond video game a half-decent Bond game since Goldeneye) have raved about it already.

That's in no small part due to the small details, including one barely noticeable feature of Bond himself. You may not have even noticed it, and you may have shrugged it off as a meaningless choice by the character designers. But actually, it may signal an unexpected choice of source material, potentially suggesting that the game is based more closely on the books than on the movies. That tells us a lot about what 007 First Light might look like, and it's an intriguing take on a very familiar character.

James Bond In 007 First Light Has A Books-Accurate Scar

How Bond Is Described In Fleming's Novels

Curiously, 007 First Light's portrayal of James Bond includes a curious detail: a scar running down the right side of his face. While Bond is never portrayed with a scar in the movies, this is an entirely book-accurate detail; in From Russia with Love, author Ian Fleming describes Bond thusly: "It was a dark, clean-cut face, with a three-inch scar showing whitely down the sun-burned skin of the right cheek."

James Bond Films Never Featured This Books-Accurate Bond

Why Bond Never Has The Scar On Screen

Curiously, no Bond film to date has featured this facial scar, although it's portrayed faithfully in various other adaptations, including the Dynamite Entertainment series of comics. There are various reasons for this discrepancy, but generally, in film, facial differences are used as a kind of visual shorthand for villains. We need look no further than the Bond series itself for several examples of this. One of the most iconic Bond villains of all time, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, is immediately recognizable by the scar across his face. More recently, Rami Maleks' Lyutsifer Safin in No Time to Die bears significant facial scarring.

In a similar vein, scars just aren't sexy enough for Bond - at least, not to a general audience. Scars can be interpreted as a sign of fallibility, of weakness, even of trauma - all things that would thoroughly disrupt Bond's image of cool, at least in the earlier films. It's a sign of the times that 007 First Light's Bond breaks that trend.

This May Be A Sign The 007 Game Will Follow The Books More

What First Light Might Look Like With A Book-Accurate Bond

Frankly, I'm fascinated by the concept of a book-accurate Bond in 007 First Light. Bond is portrayed very differently in Fleming's original novels, and I find he's a much better character for it. Sure, he's an international man of mystery, but when he's not jet-setting around the world and foiling evil plots, he works a desk job. He has a bad smoking (and drinking) habit. He's a picky eater. He has real, very present flaws, and that makes it all the more interesting when he's forced into difficult situations.

Bond is a much more interesting character in the books, in part because their nature as novels allows us to see a little bit more into his mind, and in part because movie Bond is sometimes relegated to a blank slate for the audience to project onto. That kind of portrayal goes right along with the whole Bond origin story thing this Bond game is trying to do, and I'm interested to see how 007 First Light pulls it off.