Super-spy James Bond has had an impressive history of video games going back to the groundbreaking GoldenEye released in 1997. Since then, the two actors to play Bond in the post-GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, have been well-represented in games. Even Sean Connery's Bond got a video game treatment during a time which would be considered a heyday for Bond-related video games.
Considering all that, it's pretty odd that when the game James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire was released in 2001, a year before Brosnan's final 007 adventure Die Another Day released theatrically. Despite having used Brosnan's likeness previously, the Bond in Agent Under Fire did not resemble him nor any of his predecessors. In fact, this Bond looks more like Sterling Archer about a decade before the beloved animated spy comedy Archer premiered.
Although Brosnan had one more Bond film to go and even lent his voice to 2004's video game Everything or Nothing, he wasn't under contract with EON Productions at the time that Agent Under Fire game was being made. With Brosnan's status up in the air, Electronic Arts initially planned on having Roger Moore himself make his Bond video game debut. Unfortunately, those plans fell through, which led to English actor Andrew Bicknell providing both the voice and likeness for Bond. Bicknell had acted in small roles for television in the previous decades and had even provided a couple of voices in the Tomorrow Never Dies video game.
Although Bicknell's Bond in Agent Under Fire looks distinctly different from Brosnan's, his face is noticeably covered in shadows on the video game cover. By only displaying the silhouette of Bond on the cover the marketers may have done this to trick fans into thinking they were going to play as Brosnan's Bond. Or they just wanted to emphasize that the draw of Bond over the past few decades hasn't just been the actor who plays him, but the character himself.
Agent Under Fire was the first James Bond video game to be released on the PlayStation 2 and did well critically and commercially. A direct sequel, James Bond 007: NightFire, went into development, releasing just a year later. This time, however, Brosnan was back under contract and lent his likeness to the game, with Maxwell Caulfield voicing 007. It would be another two years before Brosnan would finally lend both his likeness and voice to Bond in Everything or Nothing, a completely original story that would serve as Brosnan's true final Bond appearance.
As for Andrew Bicknell, he would never return to the Bond role, but he's kept busy with appearances in Game of Thrones and The Royals. Despite not coming back for the Agent Under Fire sequels, Bicknell can at least say that he got to p lay James Bond, even if it was just for a single game in the early '00s that most players have since forgotten about.