Against the Odds

The game opens in chaos. Bond is inside a Royal Navy Merlin helicopter that takes heavy fire over the Icelandic coast. Flashing warning lights, tracer rounds tearing through the fuselage, and the pilot fighting for control give way to blackness as the bird goes down into the freezing North Atlantic.

You regain consciousness underwater, disoriented, the world muffled and dark. Follow the on-screen prompts to kick free of the wreckage and swim toward the surface. Bond hauls himself onto a black sand beach through crashing surf, battered and bleeding.

He looks back to see the helicopter wreckage burning in the water, orange flames reflected across the waves. His earpiece crackles to life and MI6 Handler checks in, but the signal is bad. There's no rescue coming. The mission is a retrieval gone wrong, and Bond is the only asset left on the ground.

The only way forward is up. Start making your way along the rocky shoreline and you'll quickly realize you're not alone. Enemy patrols are sweeping the crash site with flashlights, and they're shooting survivors in the water.

Crouch behind the large boulders and stay low. The rain and wind work in your favour, muffling sound and reducing visibility. You'll need to move from cover to cover, timing your advances between flashlight sweeps.

Once you reach the cliff face, the climbing sections begin. The handholds are marked by lighter-coloured lichen on the rock, and the path is fairly linear — up and to the left. About halfway up you'll encounter a narrow ledge where a guard patrols directly above you.

Freeze and stay pressed against the rock until he moves on. After reaching the top of the cliff system, you crest a ridge and the enemy camp reveals itself below you: a sprawling industrial site carved into the volcanic landscape, dominated by a massive inflatable dome tent lit from within by floodlights. The words AGAINST THE ODDS appear on screen — the mission title, and a fair warning of what's ahead.

Slide down the scree slope from the overlook and work your way through the camp perimeter. Stick to the shadows behind containers and equipment. The first building you can enter is A2, a prefab shelter near the outer fence.

Inside you'll find signs of a struggle — overturned furniture, scattered papers. An injured man, one of the scientists, is propped up against some crates. He's barely conscious.

Examine the MI6 briefcase on a metal trunk in the corner. It's been forced open and the contents are burned to ash. Handler explains over comms that these briefcases self-destruct if opened incorrectly — meaning someone from the operation was caught and forced to open it under duress.

There's a pistol on a table nearby, but when Bond picks it up the biometric lock rejects him; it's coded to its owner. You'll remain unarmed for a long stretch here, which is intentional. The game is teaching you that stealth is the default approach, not shooting your way through. After searching the room, exit through the far door and follow the path deeper into the camp.

The camp is larger and more heavily guarded than it looked from the cliff. Shipping containers, prefab buildings, and guard patrols with dogs fill the area. Watch patrol patterns carefully and use the gaps between their routes.

In one of the larger buildings you'll find a winter parka hanging by a door. This is a disguise opportunity — put it on and you can walk more freely through certain areas, though guards will still get suspicious if you linger too close or act erratically. The key obstacle in this section is the BT-65, an automated cargo loader that's blocking a critical path.

Two guards are arguing about it — one of them accidentally triggered it and it won't stop moving. Approach the control panel (it's near the vehicle, on a stack of crates with a laptop) and interact with it. You can redirect the BT-65 to clear a path forward.

Once it moves, the guards in the immediate area lose interest and wander off, opening up the route to the inner camp. This is a pattern the game returns to repeatedly: observe the environment, find something you can manipulate, and use it to create an opening without ever touching a weapon.

After passing through the inner camp's tent structures and a round tunnel with automatic doors, you'll enter what appears to be a medical or research area. The first sign something is very wrong is the decontamination shower corridor — yellow-lit, mist blowing from ceiling nozzles. Walk through it; it's a mandatory checkpoint, not a trap.

On the other side you'll find a room full of supply shelves. Bond is getting visibly worse by this point; his hands shake, his vision blurs at the edges, and the toxin exposure from the crash is catching up. The antidote is in a green first-aid crate on the shelves to the right through an archway.

Interact with it for a brief tense sequence — Bond stabs the auto-injector into his own thigh, and the effect is immediate. Colour returns, hands steady, and the blurring stops. It's a moment of relief that lasts about ten seconds.

When you step outside, you find a dead scientist slumped against the rocks. Through the nearby doorway you can see guards talking about the other hostages being held in containers B4 and G9. Handler gives the order to extract immediately — the mission is blown.

Bond looks at the dead scientist, ignores the order, and turns toward the container yard. The rescue is on.

From the cliff where you found the dead scientist, you can see the full container yard spread out below, with dawn starting to break pink over the mountains. The objectives update: Save the captives, search containers B4 and G9. The route down takes you through tall grass and a ditch system that keeps you out of sight.

Container F8 is your entry point — slip inside, climb the ladder to the roof, and you'll have a clear view of the yard. From the F8 rooftop you can see G9, a container with a guard posted at the door. The zipline from F8's upper roof is the fastest way across — Bond slides down a cable to the cliff overlooking G9.

Drop onto G9's roof and enter through the access hatch to take down the guard inside silently. This is the first takedown the game allows you, and it's necessary — the hostages inside are locked in a cage that needs his key. Free them, and you'll learn there's a second group in B4.

Before heading to B4, find the laptop on crates near G9 that controls the BT-65. Activating it will send the loader trundling around the yard, creating noise and distraction. Near the ditch approach to B4 there's an ATV you can sabotage — cut the brake line and it'll roll into some crates, drawing guards away from your path. These diversions are optional but they make the rest of the section significantly easier.

After freeing the second group of hostages from B4, one of them gives Bond a detonator connected to explosive charges placed around the camp. The alarm gets raised almost immediately — there's no stealthing out from here. Climb to the rooftop of B4, where you can sabotage a mast support cable to bring down a communications tower.

This triggers the camp's full alert: sirens, searchlights, and armed guards converging from everywhere. Drop down and fight your way to the rendezvous point with the hostages. A heavy armoured personnel carrier appears, blocking the direct route — you can't destroy it with small arms, so veer right into a narrow crevice in the rocks to bypass it.

An ATV chase sequence follows with quicktime events as you and the hostages scramble up the final cliff path. At the top, the hostages scramble to safety on an extraction ridge. When the pursuing guards reach the explosives, trigger the detonator.

The camp erupts in a chain of fireballs that tears through the container yard, the dome tent collapsing in flames. The screen fades to black as the 007 logo appears. The prologue ends here, and the game moves to London for the debriefing and recruitment that leads into the first training chapter.