Perfect Dark is the First Game from The Initiative

If you’re a Perfect Dark fan then it’s time for you to rejoice! The series is coming back thanks to Microsoft’s new studio, The Initiative, and we got our first look at the game during The Game Awards.

While the trailer is a cinematic one that doesn’t reveal any gameplay, it does give us an idea of what the tone and premise for the reboot is going to be. It appears as if The Initiative is going with a more serious approach to the story. In this new Perfect Dark, the world went through a number of different environmental disasters which led to corporations stepping in to try and fix them. These corporations aren’t as well-meaning as they seem, so series protagonist Joanna Dark is on a mission to find out what they’re really up to and put a stop to it.

Aside from the trailer, we also got a bit of insight into what the team at The Initiative wants to do with Perfect Dark. In a blog post, Studio Head, Darrell Gallagher, says that the team is aiming to deliver a “secret agent thriller” that’s set in the near future. A developer interview with members of the team was also released, where they talk about the some of the ideas that they had as they developed the game and the heights that they’re striving to reach. One of the key challenges the team faced was finding a way to bring the series up to modern standards and do new things with it, while also honoring the past and not changing things up too much from what made the series so special in the first place.

It had been rumored for some time now that The Initiative was working on a Perfect Dark game, so it’s nice to finally have the official confirmation. Phil Spencer teased us earlier this year by saying that he had played the game and that the team was doing “new things (and old things) in new ways.” Now that we know what he played, the wait begins to see the game, and what new (and old) things The Initiative is doing for ourselves.