GS: How has multiplayer been shaping up? What are your thoughts on focusing multiplayer squarely on head-to-head competition rather than recent, popular team-based games, which offer things like drivable vehicles and objective-based levels? How will F.E.A.R.'s multiplayer be strong enough to keep players coming back for more, despite the many different kinds of multiplayer shooter that are out there today?

CH: Well, you have to build the house before you hang the curtains. When we started working on multiplayer, we were still figuring out what the game was going to be and how it was going to play, so it didn't make sense to plan out some elaborate objective-based mode that might not fit with the end product. Instead, we decided to start with deathmatch, team deathmatch, and elimination modes as a foundation and go from there. As soon as slow-mo got into the single-player game, we started brainstorming about how to bring it over to multiplayer, which led to slow-mo variants of the existing modes. Later, during the beta testing phases, capture the flag was by far the most requested addition, so that's what we focused on next.

We don't have any illusions of F.E.A.R. competing head-to-head with established multiplayer-oriented franchises, like Counter-Strike or Battlefield. But that was never the goal. It's always been about doing what makes sense for the game and what we felt we could do well with the resources we had. The bottom line is that nobody is going to play a half-assed CounterStrike knockoff, but some people might get into a polished team deathmatch with its own distinct flavor in a new game universe. And, as I mentioned, we now have a solid foundation to build from, so who knows what the future may hold.