Setting and Combat Revealed in Perfect Dark Reboot Gameplay Trailer

Perfect Dark, Rare's outstanding N64 stealth FPS, is getting a confirmed reboot with loads of fresh details revealed in a first-look gameplay trailer.

The Goldeneye studio's spiritual successor will itself be getting an inspired new take, with developers Crystal Dynamics and The Initiative making a reboot for Xbox Series and PC (with no current release date).

Perfect Dark (same title, no subtitle) will be a single-player game with a story of missions and player choice in how to complete them. The N64 original broke some ground by allowing players to carry out their objectives in a level in any order, and by using stealth or all-out combat. The same spirit appears to continue here.

What is improved (aside from a real-time lighting engine that doesn't require a 4MB Expansion Pak RAM upgrade) are Joanna's moves, with a slinky parkour system letting her vault and slide through firefights, with plenty of close-quarters melee takedowns too – in and out of stealth.

The Summer Game Fest 2024 gameplay trailer shows off a short segment in Cairo's Garden City, a real place, but this near-future version is a bit more sci-fi themed. It also introduces elements of the new game's story, in which Joanna appears to be a full-fledged agent of dataDyne, the original game's rival clandestine faction.

She's on the hunt for Daniel Carrington, who exposes her to information that reveals more about the larger conspiracy she's involved in. Assumedly, she'll defect from dataDyne once she discovers they're doing something ethically dubious and scary concerning possible alien technology.

You can read more about the Perfect Dark reboot below, and there's even more on the Xbox Wire post for the game's gameplay trailer.

Perfect Dark reboot story and setting

Perfect Dark‘s near-future world has been impacted by what’s known as “The Cascade,” in which the planet has suffered from a series of environmental disasters, rendering entire regions inhospitable to human life. In the wake of the disaster, a hypercorporation known as Core Mantis steps in to create a solution known as The GEN Network, and deploys it in Cairo—restoring ecological balance and creating a freshly walled city, insulated from the hostile environment outside to become a center for technological innovation.

In its wake, other hypercorporations step in to continue that regeneration—but, as you might expect, not all is as it seems, and their motives may be less altruistic than they appear. It is key that the setting communicates a hopeful future, seeing a world with both destruction and restoration, the bleakness of the past countered with a sense of promise.

It’s into Cairo that Joanna enters. The setting was chosen to offer a counterpoint to other secret agent stories, and media at large—ancient Egypt and modern Egypt have been seen by many, but a near-future take on the country is truly something new. Cairo itself allows for a balance of deeply old and startlingly new that suits the speculative fiction at the heart of Perfect Dark.

Perfect Dark reboot's combat

With this first look at combat, it’s clear this is another aspect of player choice. In the trailer we see lethal and non-lethal weaponry, close-quarters combat, abilities that allow you to take down multiple enemies at once, and more. We can also go loud or go quiet, offering a risk-reward for both methods. Team Perfect Dark wants to create a “symphony” of mechanics, merging traversal, close-quarters-combat, gunplay, unlockable abilities, environmental elements, and gadgets into a unified experience for players.

Perfect Dark reboot stealth gameplay

Gadgets are a pillar of the secret agent genre. In the trailer, we get a tease of Joanna using a gadget to analyze NPC voices and create vocal “deepfakes” to trick security systems or impersonate other characters, as well as create distractions.

Gadgets can be used for misdirection and manipulation, but we also see that Joanna can use a tool to scan an NPC and learn details about them—it wouldn’t be a secret agent story without some fieldwork, and the developers tell me that parsing the world, around you will be a key part of understanding how to tackle your objectives.

Perfect Dark reboot's Joanna

In this reboot, Joanna (voiced by Alix Regan with Elissa Bibaud lending visual likeness) is an agent for dataDyne, with a deep personal connection to what’s happening to her world. In this case, the title Perfect Dark is more aspirational—this Joanna won’t be perfect, but she’s striving to be. She’ll make mistakes in this journey, and learn from those experiences. Learning who this Joanna is proves to be just as compelling as the story itself.

Perfect Dark

Release Date: Unknown

• Windows
• Xbox Game PassBuy
• Xbox Series