There’s a new James Bond, and he grew up in Greystones, Co Wicklow, and attended Gonzaga College in Dublin. He is Patrick Gibson, the 31-year-old former Trinity College student who stars in the new video game 007: First Light. It’s Bond but with a twist: Gibson plays a fresh-faced, pre-007 version of the super-spy, newly recruited to MI6 and not quite sure if it’s his calling in life to serve with his majesty’s secret service.Gibson is not the first Irish Bond, and there are parallels between his arrival to the franchise and that of Co Meath-native Pierce Brosnan 30 years ago. When Brosnan was unveiled as the inaugural Irish Bond – and the third Celt, after Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton – cinema’s favourite secret agent was shaken and stirred, in a bad way.The Dalton years had been judged a disaster – the world was not ready for a gritty Bond who was the spiritual opposite of the cheesy Roger Moore. But if Dalton was an unhappy fit, by 1995, the camp overkill of Moore’s 1970s prime was no longer going to cut it either. As Bond, Brosnan had to find a third way – bringing some of the darkness of the Dalton era (and of the original Ian Fleming novels) while also conjuring the fun and escapism that had been part of the character all the way back to Dr No in 1962.[ Pierce Brosnan’s 11 most memorable movie roles – in reverse orderOpens in new window ]Fast forward three decades, and 007: First Light arrives with Bond at a similar impasse. The most doleful 007 of them all, Daniel Craig has slouched off into the sunset, having seemed fed up with Bond from the outset. But who can slip into the tuxedo in his place under the withering gaze of Amazon, the new custodian of 007? All sorts of names have been mentioned – from Jacob Elordi to Callum Turner – without answering the fundamental question of what sort of Bond is fit for purpose in the 21st century.Now Gibson’s take on the character offers one possible answer. In the game – out now on PS5, Xbox and PC – we meet Bond as he is just starting his career in international sleuthing. He has the posh tones of a younger Prince Harry, but is not quite yet a keen womaniser and master of the blackjack table. In fact, the game comes across as conspicuously ambivalent about how much of a moral blank space Bond should be.The game does bow to convention by giving us a classic Bond opening title sequence – spiffed up with a great theme song by Lana Del Rey. Yet the credits also tell us a lot about the fine line Bond has to walk in 2026. It pays homage to the past with the occasional silhouette of a “scantily clad” woman – as they used to say in the 1970s – but in general tries not to overdo it with the Benny Hill stuff. It’s Schrödinger’s 007 – gaudy and vaguely sexist while trying not to be gaudy and vaguely sexist.What sort of Bond does Gibson make as the player accompanies him on adventures that take him from a freezing face-off in Iceland to a training camp in Malta and further afield? He isn’t the second coming of Daniel Craig and hurrah for that – one curmudgeonly Bond is quite enough. He also doesn’t go for Pierce Brosnan’s knowing camp. This is a grounded Bond – in on the joke about the absurdity of his globe-trotting gig, yet willing to do what he must for king and country.007 First Light. Photograph: IO Interactive 007 First Light. Photograph: IO Interactive 007 First Light. Photograph: IO Interactive Gibson says he wants to get to the “human core” of the character. “I think there’s just a real humanity there in the books that later versions of Bond [films] definitely drew from as well,” he told Men’s Journal. “It was important from the start that it felt like a human story. Meeting him at this young age, there’s scope for a vulnerability and a kind of rough-around-the-edges nature.”[ Daniel Craig: ‘Maybe I’ll be remembered as the grumpy Bond’Opens in new window ]As a game, First Light isn’t going to receive any commendations for originality: there is nothing here you won’t have encountered in the Hitman series (from the same developer, IO Interactive) or the later Uncharted titles. But it’s frisky, frolicking fun – and, almost by accident, argues that, this far on from the first Irish Bond, perhaps it’s time for another.