GS: What can you tell us about the gameplay?

DR: The core gameplay of SC4 is still stealth action, but the undercover aspect means we can create entirely new situations with the same core gameplay elements. You can expect missions in which Sam is working deep undercover with other agents, trying to balance the needs of his mission in Third Echelon with the pressure to maintain his cover. One interesting consequence of this is that now, Sam is "off the leash," so to speak, and can make decisions that will affect the overall progression of the story. Also, since he is cut off from the NSA, Sam will rely much more on his immediate surroundings to hide, rather than depend on Third Echelon's extensive list of gadgets.

GS: How are you taking advantage of the Xbox 360 hardware?

DR: The Chaos Theory engine is arguably the best engine available for the Xbox, and it has allowed us to really focus on unleashing the power of the X360. Our main technical challenges have been to multithread the engine, which gives us an insane amount of resources to spend on things like environments, artificial intelligence, and the like. For instance, in SC4 X360 we were able to stage full-fledged jail riots, and even a civil war, with conventional AI.

Ultimately, we are pushing the X360 as hard as we can, so that we can create environments of a size and complexity never seen before and populate them with complex, clever AI in large quantities. To say we could never accomplish this on current-gen hardware is an understatement: We couldn't dream of this on the Xbox.