Developers working on episodic content said planning a game as discrete episodes has also inspired them to tweak a convention. "When we first started looking at the episodic model we realized we could tell episodes out of order," Mustaine said. "We talked about doing entirely different game play types, like having a third-person episode."

Mustaine said his team even considered making an episode support cooperative play, letting two or more players simultaneously experience a new chapter as different characters. For the first few episodes, however, Mustaine is promising only straight-up single-player, first-person shooting to help the team get its footing. "Being the first is always a double-edged sword," Mustaine said. "The big thing is not being the pioneer with the arrows in the back. We want to be the pioneer who found the new world."