In His Majesty's Secret Service

After the chaos of Iceland, you might expect a dressing-down. Instead, Bond finds himself on the Albert Embankment in central London, standing outside a building that the casual passerby would mistake for any other government office. It's Vauxhall Cross — MI6 headquarters, though no sign says so. Your handler, Eve Moneypenny, is waiting just inside the entrance. She's sharp, professional, and already sizing you up. There's no combat here, no stealth section, no collectibles to hunt. This is a narrative chapter, pure and simple, and it does a lot of heavy lifting introducing the cast that will follow Bond through the rest of the campaign.

Take a moment to look around before you follow Moneypenny inside. The attention to detail in the building's exterior is worth appreciating — the river views, the architecture, the sense that this is a building that has seen decades of secrets. It grounds the game in a version of London that feels lived-in and real, not a movie set.

Once you enter the building, Moneypenny tells you to follow her. This is your first proper look inside MI6, and the game takes its time letting you absorb it. The lobby is all marble and brass — the cover identity of Universal Exports is on full display, with a directory board listing fictional companies and a reception desk that looks like it belongs in a luxury hotel. The armed security guard by the door is the only hint of what the building actually is.

Stick close to Moneypenny as she leads you through. She doesn't wait, and if you fall too far behind she'll pause and glance back — a nice touch that makes her feel like an actual person rather than an NPC escort quest marker. The route takes you past the lifts, through a security checkpoint (you walk straight through; Moneypenny has already cleared you), and into a wood-panelled elevator. The elevator ride is brief but loaded with unspoken tension. Moneypenny stands with her arms folded, not making small talk. She's been doing this long enough to know what happens to people who get called up to M's office.

When the elevator doors open, you're in a corridor that feels very different from the polished lobby — functional, dimly lit, with the kind of institutional carpet that suggests nobody important comes this way except people who already know why they're here.

Moneypenny leaves you in an anteroom outside M's office, where you're greeted by Ms. Ponsonby — M's personal secretary and the gatekeeper to everything that happens on this floor. She's older, impeccably dressed, and regards Bond with the kind of polite warmth that doesn't quite hide a keen assessment of whether you're worth her boss's time.

This is where the chapter's dialogue system gets its first proper workout. While you wait for M to finish his previous meeting, you can engage Ponsonby in conversation. You have several dialogue options, and while none of them change the story outcome (this isn't a Telltale game where every choice branches the narrative), the information she reveals is genuinely worthwhile. Ask her about M and she'll give you a measured, carefully worded description that hints at the weight he carries and the losses he's survived. Ask her about the 00 programme and she'll tell you what it actually means to have a licence to kill — not the glamorous movie version, but the bureaucratic reality: deniability, accountability that goes in one direction, and the understanding that if you're caught, the service will disavow you.

Ponsonby will eventually cut the conversation short — M is ready to see you — but if you ask all the available questions before she does, you get a more complete picture of the world you're about to enter. It's easy to rush past this to get to the meeting with M, but Ponsonby's perspective is the closest thing you get to an honest orientation.

When M enters, the tone shifts. Where Ponsonby was warm but guarded, M is direct, almost brusque. He doesn't stand on ceremony. He's reviewed Bond's file — every bit of it, including the parts that should have been redacted — and he gets straight to the point: Bond's actions in Iceland were insubordinate, reckless, and exactly the kind of thing that gets agents killed. But they also worked. He made a call when the rulebook said to wait, and hostages came home alive because of it.

M offers Bond a place in the 00 programme. It's not a reward — M is at pains to make that clear. It's a recognition that Bond has a quality that can't be trained: the willingness to act when hesitation means people die. But M also makes it clear that the 00 designation isn't a promotion, it's a burden. Agents in the 00 programme get the missions that don't exist, the ones that Parliament doesn't know about and that the Foreign Office will deny any knowledge of if they go wrong.

You have dialogue choices during this conversation. You can be cocky, you can be deferential, you can ask sharp questions. None of these change whether you accept the offer — the story requires Bond to become 007, so there's no way to decline — but they colour M's perception of you going forward, and certain responses trigger different lines of dialogue that reveal more about his character. If you ask him why he's doing this personally rather than sending a subordinate, he'll say something that sticks with you: he likes to look people in the eye before he sends them to die.

By the end of the meeting, Bond is in. M tells him that training starts immediately — he'll be flown to a facility in Malta where he'll be assessed across multiple disciplines. Pass the assessments, and the Double-0 designation is his. Fail, and he goes back to being a regular field officer with a black mark on his record.

After the meeting, you exit M's office to find Moneypenny waiting in the corridor. Her demeanour has shifted — she's no longer the cool professional assessing a stranger; there's a flicker of something that might be respect, or might be sympathy. She knows what Bond just signed up for.

As she walks you back toward the lifts, Moneypenny gives you the practical details that Ponsonby and M didn't cover. You'll be given accommodation in London between missions, but you'll spend most of your time in training or abroad. She mentions a contact in Malta who'll meet you when you land — a man named Greenway, who handles logistics and field support for 00 candidates. She describes him as 'gruff but useful' which turns out to be an understatement.

This conversation is also where you get your first real sense of Moneypenny as a person rather than just M's assistant. She's been at MI6 long enough to see agents come and go, and she doesn't sugarcoat what happens to the ones who aren't ready. But she also makes it clear she's rooting for Bond, in her own understated way. It's the beginning of one of the most important working relationships in the game.

Before you leave MI6, you're handed a tablet — chunky, military-grade, definitely not consumer hardware. It contains your briefing for the Malta assessment. Swipe through the screens (it's a simple interaction, no puzzle here) and you'll see the layout of the training facility, the four modules you'll be tested on — Stealth, Firearms, Close-Quarters Battle, and Driving — and the scoring criteria: Bronze, Silver, and Gold ratings for each module.

This is your first taste of how the game presents mission intel. Later chapters will have far more complex briefings with maps, target profiles, and equipment loadouts, but this one is deliberately straightforward. The message is clear: this is training. Treat it seriously, but don't overthink it.

Once you've reviewed the briefing, the game cuts to a sequence of Bond leaving MI6. There's no gameplay here — just a cinematic of him walking out of the building and into the London evening. The transition to Malta is handled with a cut that's worth noting: one shot of the Thames at dusk, the next a bright Mediterranean coastline. The contrast between grey London and sun-baked Malta is striking, and it's the game's way of telling you that the bureaucratic part is over — now the real work begins.

Touching down in Malta, the atmosphere could not be more different from London. The air is warm, the light is harsh and golden, and instead of a marble lobby you're met by a dusty jeep idling on the tarmac of a small airfield. Leaning against it is a man who introduces himself as Greenway — your field support for the duration of training and, as it turns out, for much of what comes after.

Greenway is a former military man, late forties, with the tired eyes of someone who has seen too many candidates wash out. He doesn't waste time on pleasantries. You're not his first 00 trainee and you probably won't be his last. The jeep ride from the airfield to the training facility gives you time to take in the Maltese landscape — dry stone walls, terraced hills, the glittering Mediterranean — while Greenway gives you an unvarnished version of what to expect. The training is hard, the instructors don't care about your MI6 credentials, and a lot of people who think they're ready for 00 status wash out within the first day.

This jeep ride is also where you get your first proper look at the facility itself. It's built into the coastal cliffs — concrete and steel carved into the rock, part military base, part research station. It doesn't look welcoming, which is exactly the point. Greenway drops you at the main entrance with a piece of advice that echoes through the next several hours of gameplay: 'Don't try to be clever. Do what they tell you, do it well, and you'll be fine.' It's good advice. Don't ignore it.

As you walk up the steps toward the facility entrance, the chapter title card for 'The Needle's Eye' appears — Chapter 2 ends, and the real training begins.