It's Call of Duty, so of course it looks beautiful, no matter who is developing it. But is it a bit late for this now – with things like the new Medal of Honour and Six Days in Fallujah coming out? Is this really going to offer something different or is it just Call of Duty with a different skin?

Mark Lamia: This Call of Duty will be different than all the other experiences out there and all the other Call of Duty games. What's important to us when we are developing a CoD game is to ensure that we have retained that ‘essence' of Call of Duty, why people love to play Call of Duty. And it is that cinematic intensity that only Call of Duty delivers and that people expect. With this game we are also introducing new gameplay mechanics, new weapons, new things to do.

In the Russian mission which we just shared with you, we open it up so you start off the mission by approaching and flying the SR71 – taking off in it, taking control of it, taking control of the groups on the ground and providing them with the intel that they need. Then transitioning within the same level back to the on-the-ground operations with the Black Ops forces. Introducing rappel gameplay, doing a rappel breach, approaching a situation in either an action fashion or a stealth fashion. In the case of the level that you just saw, we started out ‘stealth' and then we went ‘hot' for you. And you also saw the high altitude jumping mechanic [abseiling down a cliff face] – so all those new gameplay mechanics you saw were introduced in that small section of that one level. Which is a good example of what we wanted to do, in terms of variety of gameplay and keeping it fresh.

I haven't seen those other games that are coming out later this year, but I do know that we are doing our own thing and it is certainly new and fresh for Call of Duty. We believe we are going to provide a lot of new gameplay for people and a lot of new places to go in the game.

Josh Olin: We are making a strong focus on deep narrative, and with that comes strong, complicated characters and character arcs, so they are going to progress through the game as you play through it. You know, for the first time in CoD you have a character voice, you are a player, you will have your own identifiable voice. You have your own identify in the game. You are the one who is taking control of the battlefield, and as such you can really effect change and take the direction of the battle one way or the other.
It's more than just a compelling single-player game of course. We want to tell this great story, this great narrative, but we also have the option of the dedicated [offline] four-player co-op split screen mode. But it was a creative choice in this game to really focus on the character and story and drive that as deep as we can for the single-player game.

Mark Lamia: Yeah, and we also wanted to do co-op, and we feel like what we wanted to do was to create our own co-op mode that is just a lot of fun to play. But we're not saying too much more right now about what that is.
Josh Olin: And of course, it's Call of Duty, so there is a deep and replayable aspect to it. And we are having a strong focus this time around on personalisation and customisation for the player, as well as socialisation, extending the game beyond just the match that you are playing in multiplayer at any given time. It's the first time Treyarch has had this dedicated multiplayer team since day one on a project.

The player controls the camera and directs the soldiers via a mini-RTS interface, having the men take up positions and hide from Russian patrols. When the danger has passed, the game shifts to the perspective of one of the foot soldiers on the fly.

The mission continues in classic Call of Duty fashion--up in the snowy mountains and very reminiscent of Modern Warfare 2. What begins as a stealth infiltration quickly turns into a frantic firefight leading to a quick escape from Russian reinforcements. The set pieces are great and the environments look fantastic, if not better than what you've seen in MW2. Treyarch has really stepped up its game.