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With the recent resurgence of news stories citing the formal cancellation of “Bond 23” (the next James Bond film, where Daniel Craig would be working with director Sam Mendes), Activision finds itself in a peculiar spot of timing with James Bond 007: Blood Stone.

There’s no movie to tie-in with, so this is basically the only, “new James Bond experience” for 2010 — here’s hoping that we get something closer to EA’s excellent Everything Or Nothing rather than the lackluster Quantum of Solace. Now that Blood Stone has been formally announced this morning, we shot some questions over to producer Nick Davies over at developer Bizarre Creations.

Blood Stone is an original James Bond action-adventure game starring Daniel Craig, with a new original story written by Bond writer Bruce Feirstein [GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough].

Although there are a lot of people on the team who have worked on The Club and the PGR series, this is a completely new experience. So to be clear: it’s a new game, new engine, and a mix of third-person cover combat, a cover-based takedown system, and some spectacular driving. In essence, Blood Stone is everything you would expect to see from a Bond film — only built from the ground up to be a Bond game.

The majority of the game is played in the third person perspective, as it’s a cover combat based game, but unlike many games in that genre, it also features the ability for Bond to perform takedowns using cover; so Bond is able to drag people over and around items in the environment. Additionally, we have five driving levels included in the game — they are pretty intense action-packed sequences, so each of the driving sections of the game stands out as a highlight. We made sure that we had a solid representation and a really cool mixture of classic Bond, in addition to more original vehicles to keep things interesting

The game is certainly part of EON productions. We work closely with the guys at EON and the game story was written by Bruce Feirstein. In both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace we’ve seen Daniel Craig’s Bond become a 007, and then seek revenge for the death of Vespa. In Blood Stone, you’ll play as Bond in a completely stand alone adventure; against a whole new set of enemies and with a new set of allies.

Blood Stone, from inception, has always been a Bond title — it has been built from the ground up in that way and with that specific goal. When Activision initially asked us to work on the project, we knew it was going to be a huge challenge. Quantum of Solace had been criticized for being very much a first-person shooter, so we knew the expectation of the Bond fans would be for us to deliver something that showcased all of the action-variety of a Bond movie, hence us bringing in the hand-to-hand and combat elements, along with the driving sequences. We pitched it as the complete Bond experience, and that’s what [we’re trying to deliver]. The team knew that just skinning The Club wasn’t going to work, as the pace was different, the number and type of moves we had just wasn’t suitable for the Bond franchise.