Two days after teasing a free DLC for 007 First Light, IO Interactive has released Extended Operations with Update 1.3.0, and it’s out now on PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC. IO says the free DLC delivers some of the features players have asked for most, starting with New Game+, which unlocks after you finish the campaign. In New Game+, you can swap Bond’s outfit from the journal at any point and restart from a checkpoint to see the new look. Gadgets can also be changed during a mission instead of waiting for the next chapter, though only the ones unlocked at that point in the story are available.
Finishing the campaign unlocks the new 00 difficulty as well, where enemies spot Bond faster and hit harder, and resources only restore a fraction of a gadget’s usage. In my review, I said the enemy AI ranged from forgiving to outright broken even on normal difficulty, with guards sometimes failing to react when I walked right in front of them. The patch notes also list several AI fixes, including enemy types that could fail to call reinforcements over the radio and NPCs that could lose track of their assigned areas.
Extended Operations brings Photo Mode too, with camera settings, overlays, filters, visual effects, and poses to play with. In TacSim, the new Valhalla Protocol activity puts Bond behind the wheel of the Aston Martin Valhalla, armed with machine guns and missile launchers, for a scored run through Slovakia. When IO teased the DLC earlier this week, I guessed it was the Valhalla driving challenge from the Year One roadmap, and that turned out to be right. The other new TacSim Operation, Jungle Heist, sends Bond back to The Pearl Hotel in Vietnam to retrieve documents from a villa safe, with each attempt playing out differently.
According to IO’s patch notes, the update includes over 700 fixes and improvements covering crashes, progression blockers, clipping, audio, localization, and UI. IO also refined weapon handling animations across the arsenal so reloads, aiming transitions, and weapon swaps look smoother, and Bond can now be thrown off ledges just like his enemies. Notable fixes include a crash after several minutes of gameplay, a launch crash tied to pipeline cache generation, and a PlayStation 5 bug that could block the Platinum Trophy.
TacSim gets two new weapons, the Storm 12 Gauge and the Squire Marksman Rifle, along with three outfits that are unlocked by default. MI6 HQ has a new resident too, Jack the Bulldog, who sits right next to Dr. Selina Tan’s TacSim area, and yes, you can pet him. Players who link the game to an IOI Account before November 1 will also unlock the Grey Standard outfit.
