Eurogamer: Isn't Left 4 Dead a hard sell, because as a co-op game it doesn't have the either production values of a Half-Life or the obvious replay value of a Counter-Strike?

Eric Johnson: When we think of Left 4 Dead, we think about it like it's the next Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike still is quite successful and we think it's filling that gap. We don't think it's a hard sell.

Doug Lombardi: Counter-Strike was a harder sell. It had been a free mod for a year, we were not going to stop that happening, and that made retailers and our publisher at the time outrageously nervous and scared of doing it. It had two characters per side, seven maps and about five weapons when it first launched.

Eric Johnson: And it was a brutal game. And it was buggy. Everything about it was fighting against it, but there was this piece of Counter-Strike that people couldn't get away from. Over time it became a full-fledged product that continues to do well today. Left 4 Dead is way ahead of that. We feel pretty good about saying it's going to be the thing that finally beats Counter-Strike.

Can you tell us why you're excited about the Jericho game?

Barker: I'm excited about the game because the story's fresh, and because with it we have a greater chance of scaring the shit out of players around the world. I'd been carrying the idea of Jericho around in my head before I'd even talked to anyone about the project, so I feel very close to it. I'd love people to think of Jericho the way I thought of - let's say Alien - when that movie was about to come out. Teased with glimpses but never given the whole monstrous truth until the story was told on the screen. Jericho should be the same - unique and terrifying.

Do your games tie in with your books? Is there an overall coherent universe to your writing that gamers should be made aware of?

Barker: No, my games don't tie up with my books - at least, so far. Jericho is the first games project I've been connected with which I really feel might be explored in novels and comic-books - I have a huge passion for comic-books! I've liked the Jericho idea since it first came into my head because it marries up two of my passions: history and horror. Our protagonists' journey through slices of other times in the game, their progress bringing them steadily closer to the Great Adversary who sits at the center of this Labyrinth of Time.

There's some pretty horrific stuff in Jericho - is there anything you'd consider too violent to go into the game?

Barker: There is some intense and gory material in Jericho, but I've always believed that one of the tasks a maker of horror stories in any medium has is to take his or her audience into areas of taboo; places where they wouldn't have dared to venture had the game not obliged them to trespass on treacherous ground. And in so trespassing, inviting the wrath of some creature that they've never encountered before.

Steve and Marty both recognized the growing importance of digital distribution, but have no plans of putting the publisher out of the equation any time soon. "The retail channel isn't going away," Marty said, and while a company such as id has the financial means to finance their own projects, they don't have the human resources to manage a retail relationship like a big publisher does. The publisher still adds a ton of value, especially in the marketing of games. "We take a development risk, we fund our own title, and take a financial risk there, and we expect the publisher to come to the table with the marketing risk," Marty said. He believes there is still a tremendous need for publishers and that the biggest misconception with digital distribution is that the publisher can be dropped. "They need someone to at least pay for marketing if they want to have a triple-A title", Marty added. "Most companies still need someone to fund the game's development, and that's a huge role publishers still need to play."

When asked about solutions to combat piracy, they didn't have much to say in terms of new technology. While there isn't a sound technical solution yet to eliminate piracy completely, id will continue to look at the technology available for new solutions. Marty noted that id Software's online CD key authorization system, that has been in use since the inception of QuakeIII, has been a very effective method of stopping piracy. "Despite what people think about it being cracked and there being key generators that work, it hasn't." Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will also contain several other layers of security that will be very beneficial to cut down on piracy. You will have to be online and logged into a system that will track your stats while playing online.

GFW: Who controls the setup and conditions of the matches? Players or Webzen? Are the maps and matches level-based, as in World of WarCraft's Battlegrounds, so that, say, only players of a certain level range can enter? Or is it totally open?

KI JONG KANG: Imagine a master server of sorts, much like what you find in current FPS games. Players can sign up for a match, much like WOW Battleground queues, allowing for specific parameters to be set and met. There aren't many "open" battles that players can just randomly jump into, as they have already started within certain parameters. That's not to say that players can't be notified via an ingame system that their faction is at risk of losing a battle and a ship is at the ready waiting for volunteers to be brought to it via dropship.

GFW: But where will players find these matches? How easy will it be to get into one? Can you walk us through that process?

KJK: We're making it as easy as possible, given how complex it really is. For example: A player walks up to the battle-zone terminal, like the master server I just mentioned, and is given a multitude of options, starting with continent choice, battle-zone location, battle-zone type, and transportation schedules to selected zones--standard or dropship.

Valve remains a staunch defender of the PC, and refutes arguments that the decline of PC retail sales means the death of the platform, arguing that if you take alternative revenue streams into account, it's by far the healthiest market out there. "Sony and Microsoft both have armies of PR people whose job it is to cram that information down the throats of press and analysts every day," says Lombardi. "All those people do is say the PC's dying, the console's winning, and nobody on the PC side is championing that platform. And sales data tracks retail, and there's no doubt about it, PC sales at retail are declining.

"But World of Warcraft is making a whole lot of money outside of the retail channel, we're making a decent bit of cash off Steam, all the casual guys are not tracked - the PopCap games, Bejewelled, all that stuff doesn't show up. If you took WOW, Steam, PopCap and added it to the PC pool, all these huge revenues - just WOW by itself, right? If you took WOW's 2006's revenues and the 360's revenues and compared them, even then you would say I don't think the PC's really dead."

In fairness, Microsoft is showing increased faith in the PC platform these fays, with the Games for Windows and Live Anywhere initiatives tied in with the launch of DirectX 10 and Windows Vista seeming to put the PC on an equal footing with 360 in the company's plans. But Lombardi is doubtful of the Redmond giant's long-term commitment to strengthening the PC market.

"Right now it seems like it's part of the marketing push to help Vista. To really back a platform is a sustained effort over years and years, so we'll see if in two years Microsoft is still spending money to put Games for Windows sections in retail, and having PR people preach that message that we were just talking about, which is that the PC isn't dying, in fact it's actually bigger than all the consoles put together. You know, if it were to sign up for that, that's great. If it's going to use it to promote sales of Vista, that's really not good for the industry, it's good for Microsoft in the short term."

Shack: And the frontline is used in every gametype?

Joe Halper: Yes. One of the maps is a small contained urban area, maybe seven or eight blocks, which makes it an assault infantry map. The frontline works well because it keeps that assault focused instead of scattered about, even over seven blocks. But in Oil Field, it's vehicle centric--as you move the vehicles across the terrain you could have two objectives to secure, four objectives to secure, whatever you want. When you're playing a game, you don't know if you want to defend the objective you just took or go try and get a new one. It's cool to see people hesitate and decide.

Shack: How does it affect single-player?

Joe Halper: It works in the same way. In single-player, you still secure these objectives any which way you want, and [the frontline] keeps it centralized. The enemies don't necessarily take it back from you, it's just something that you push for to get to the final objective of each map.

Shack: But as you do that, what's happening to the enemy? Are they getting demoralized, or...?

Joe Halper: The enemy actually increases and intensifies, but what you find is that as you secure these objectives you get other abilities, and there's a lot of replay value. There'll be one objective you can take out with an assault rifle, but there's another objective with some people who can help you take that first objective in a different way. There's a lot of gameplay variance. A lot of testers want to go back and do it faster or better. It enhances each campaign, with how to use the vehicles, how to use specific weapons. The AI is very reactive. We actually focused on the single-player first when we started the studio. We knew we could do multiplayer, but we wanted a good single-player that wasn't just a bot war. We wanted the exciting, immersive action that happens in single-player, but without the linear, "go here, do that" part.

Q: How many players per game will Shadowrun support?

Mitch Gitelman: Shadowrun will support a maximum of 16 players per game but you'll see a lot more that 16 players flying around the battlefield. You can summon creatures to fight for you, strangle crystals to block entrances and capture enemies, and trees of life to magically heal you. A lot of people ask me why we only support 16 players when other PC shooters can go as high as 40. My first answer is, "What would happen if you let 40 people play football? Would it be any more fun?" Shadowrun is fun for 16 players. More than that would just mean chaos, not fun. Also, take a look at what we're doing in the game. 16 players can teleport through walls, floors and ceilings. They can glide all over the map and see everything from a high vantage point. There are spells going off, creatures being summoned and bullets flying everywhere. And all of that at a smooth framerate and with next-generation graphics. When you realize what you're actually looking at, the number of players and graphic fidelity is impressive.

Though it controls like Halo and even feels like Halo, weapons in Shadowrun react more like something out of a realistic shooter such as Counter-Strike. This can be a difficult concept to grasp as a lot of Shadowrun has folks phasing through walls and using gliders to sail through the air. Having to stop and pop for accuracy gives one the feeling that it never quite commits to one or the other in terms of design. It does, however, help to support a group mentality as you're not going to get much done alone.

Once you've settled into your role, the depth of Shadowrun -- once an overly complex beast -- begins to unfurl into something more manageable with still more room to grow. With every magic and technique there is a counter and while it seems like a game of rock-paper-scissors, practically everything can be utilized in a variety of ways as to avoid that trap. Working alongside a partner that compliments your magics can turn a rock smashes scissors situation into a string of combinations and easy kills. Dealing with just weapons alone feels so under-powered that if you're not dishing out consistent head shots, you probably shouldn't even be wasting your ammo.

FiringSquad: How will the combat be different from previous games in the series?

Florin Sanda: In offline the combat in general lines will be the same but of course this time you are fighting onboard US fleet boats, which are quite different than uboats. Bigger boats, bigger guns, more torpedoes, but lower maximum safe depths. So you got to play more aggressive this time.

FiringSquad: How will multiplayer work in Silent Hunter 4?

Florin Sanda: The players will be able to choose from two different multiplayer modes: Cooperative and Adversarial. In Cooperative mode up to 8 players will form a wolf pack and take side against an enemy convoy in the Pacific. They will have to work together as the convoy could be very large and good synchronization could be the key to victory. In Adversarial mode the server takes the lead of the Japanese convoy. He will have to face a wolfpack of up to 3 American submarines. The convoy leader will have to keep his convoy alive for a period of time or to destroy all the American submarines, while the submarines have to destroy the convoy before that period of time expires. The convoy leader has the possibility to give hints and orders to the escorts from the convoy, making harder for the submarines to destroy the convoy.

WarCry: With the arena PvP added in addition to the battlegrounds, how is the feel of PvP going to change? Will we see more of a division between strictly PvP players and strictly PvE players? Will it be possible for a player to be in a top PvE guild and maintain a high PvP status?

Tom Chilton: The addition of the arenas and the ladder system is something that the most competitive PvPers have been wanting for a long while. It gives them an outlet to really compete on a recognizable level. There's no better way for someone to not only get some great new gear, but to prove that they and their team are the best around. Being the top of the ladder though also puts a lot of pressure on that team to remain at the top and gives everyone else a target to shoot for.

We don't see this as being a divisive factor between those who prefer PvE and those who prefer PvP. It's just another way for players to be able to engage in PvP in a new way. The arenas aren't meant to be extremely time intensive. Each match is set up as last person standing and matches are limited by how many teams are participating. No one is going to be able to spend every waking moment in the arena unless they are playing the non-ranked arenas just for the fun of it. Even then, you still have to have someone to fight against.

FiringSquad: What new vehicles will be made available in the booster pack?

Kristoffer Bergqvist: Northern Strike introduces one brand new vehicle type on for each faction. The European forces get the Goliath, a monstrous self-repairing infantry support vehicle carrying five guns and a grenade launcher. To take it out will take a coordinated effort from the Pan Asian army.
The PAC vehicle is the opposite of the Goliath. It's a small, very fast and very agile, hovering infantry hunter, named the Hachimoto. It has a gunner position with full-auto grenade launchers and TV-guided missiles for vehicle-to-vehicle combat. When in the hands of a well-coordinated driver-gunner pair this one is deadlier than anything else on the battlefield.

FiringSquad: What new weapons and items will be available via unlockable items in Northern Strike?

Kristoffer Bergqvist: Ten new unlocks will be available in Northern Strike. It’s a mix of weapons, like the shotgun firing small sticky projectiles that will blow up on enemies close to them - a great way to scare people of their hiding spots, and items like the Motion Mine Bait which you can throw and then have enemy Motion Mines chasing it like a bunch of puppies after a rubber ball.

Mark Rein: 'Til there's something else. (chuckles) People ask me, 'Are you going to do it on PC?' Yeah, eventually...I don't think that's any great secret that we would like to do it on PC, but for now it's a 360 game. Eventually we'll get around to a PC version. I just don't know when.

That's worked successfully for Halo. Halo was a big seller on PC long after it kind of peaked on the original Xbox, and they're doing the same thing now with Halo 2. We work at the pleasure of a publisher who thinks both of those are their platforms, so I think it's ultimately inevitable, and obviously we're a PC company.

The big challenge is to make a game that was designed solely for the console...to take advantage of every last little corner of that console, to fill every little crack and run as many threads as we could and do as much to exploit the power of that machine, and make it run well on enough PCs to be worth releasing. That's a challenge. UT will help us there, because Unreal Tournament 3 will be kind of our vanguard PC product, and it's helping us get optimization on the PC. So it's just a matter of, now, can we make Gears run on enough PCs that it's worth selling...or do we have to wait in five years until everyone has a PC that can run it?  It's inevitable, but it's just not there today.

Shack: You guys have your own trademark series so you're used to dealing with fan expectation, but is it different or intimidating working on a franchise like Fallout that already has such a built in reputation?

Pete Hines: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. For a couple of reasons. Number one is that we're treating it as if we made the first two, with the same care and attention we give to The Elder Scrolls, but the truth of the matter is that we haven't. As a result there's probably a lot more divergent opinion about what it should be, what we should do, are we the right guys to do it, and so on.

Shack: Is there any of that internally?

Pete Hines: Internally, not really. Internally, we're a bunch of Fallout geeks. There is nobody [here] who hasn't played that game and enjoyed it. I have that game on my laptop, I take it with me and play it. But it's definitely different, because it's not really considered ours, the franchise. We didn't start it. There is a little bit of that sentiment out there that we have to prove that we're worthy to be the guys to make Fallout 3. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, because we have very high expectations for ourselves. The standard that we hold ourselves to, the kind of games we expect to make in terms of quality, we have a very high level of expectation. There's really nothing like the people from the outside expecting more than we expect ourselves.

It's a lot like when we were doing Morrowind. Everybody said, "Well, the last game you did was Daggerfall, and it was really buggy, and everything you're telling me about Morrowind sounds good but you need to prove it." It kind of has that same feel, that people are saying, "Yeah, I liked Oblivion, and you guys are good at roleplaying, but you have to prove that you aren't going to screw up this beloved franchise." We think we can do it. We are the right guys to be doing this franchise, we do take it seriously, and we do want to make it a powerful force in roleplaying in terms of what these games can do and be. We hope that when we show people what we're up to, they'll agree. Some folks will, and some folks will say it's not what they wanted. At the end of the day, we respect that, but we have to do what we think is right. Again, you can't make the game that everybody wants because you'll get ten different answers about what that game is.

GI: Are you guys going to support Vista and Live for PC?

Morris: We'll be supporting it on some level. It's still being negotiated and discussed right now. There's no real official announcement about it. We're really excited about Vista, but there's no way we're going to leave all the XP players behind. We want to be as inclusive and sell our game to as many people as possible. Vista's cool, and the game browser really solves a lot of problems with saves and things like that, and consumers should have a very real reason to be excited about it. There's also elements like we don't want people to have to subscribe to play our game on the PC. There's a real trade-off, and we need to figure out what the best way to approach that. Right now, it's TBD.

GI: So you say you're pretty close to alpha or a couple of months away?

Morris: We're a couple of months away, we think. We're definitely in the home stretch. UT has been a great project to work on, it's been a dream project for a lot of us who like science fiction, fast-paced multiplayer action games with vehicles. That genre is what UT is really about. Getting to the end where we can make sure we have enough time to polish everything up, implement last-minute "wouldn't it be cool if..." ideas. That's the thing. We need to set ourselves up for success, and to do that we need to start locking down now, so we can start the finaling process, get into QA and spend the time getting all the great visual effects in, making the water look cool-just getting all those nice little details polished out. That's really where we're at right now.

GI: Possibly, a demo this summer? You always release a demo first.

Morris: Absolutely. For the PC, certainly we'll release a demo, because that's where the most compatibility testing you can do is, and it also allows us to solicit feedback. So, you want to know when UT is going to ship? It's about a month after the demo. That's about the time it's going to take to integrate the feedback and what we learned. When we think we're basically done, that's when we're going to do the demo. Then we're going to incorporate that feedback and start all the finaling process and ship very soon after. Once you see a demo, we're in the home stretch.

PC.IGN: Your work on Star Wars: Empire at War had to have taught you some valuable lessons about persistent RTS features and styles. What were some of the lessons you learned and how have you fused that knowledge into the gameplay? Will it still all work in real-time?

Adam Isgreen: We've learned a lot from SW: EaW/FoC about what we loved and what we did not when working on a second-gen persistent game. First off, we learned that the persistent universe actually interfered with player's desires to play the story campaign. We kept hearing that players "just wanted to get to the story," rather than fight filler battles between them, no matter how compelling they were on their own. We took this to heart in our story campaign for UaW, which is more linear and features a lighter version of the global mode than we have for the full-blown Conquest campaigns. This keeps the story moving along at a better pace, allowing you to stay focused on the battles and the story rather than being side-tracked.

However, for our Conquest campaigns, our global mode is fully open and truly comes into play. We loved the power that we had in SW: EaW/FoC, but hated the management of it all. Having sub-screens to list what was where wasn't an elegant solution to the abundance of data (i.e. ship locations, which planet had what factories and tech, starbase upgrade levels, etc.) a player had to keep track of, and we disliked how technical the galaxy became when you turned all the data displays on. Combined with the sheer number of "buckets" you had for fleets and planets and factories, we felt that we could do a lot better in streamlining the strategic experience.

So, we did. In creating our new global layer for Universe at War, we had to make some tough decisions - lots of dials, or a few? Deep meaningful choices, or lots of minor impact? After a lot of revisions and reworking (much to the chagrin of our UI programmers), we've arrived at what we feel is a very deep, yet easy to understand global mode. We've changed the player's main focus to Strike Forces, consisting of heroes and their persistent forces. The changes to how you build and fortify zones is also more streamlined but at the same time still decisive and impactful to your overall strategies. They are also integrated better into both the tactical battles as well. In the coming weeks and months as we finalize details, we'll be able to talk more about Strike Forces, the way command centers work on the strategic level, and the other changes and gameplay in the global mode.

The player has a lot of decisions to make, but the focus on strike forces and large command centers allows us to make those choices deeper and have more impact on the game rather than worrying about dozens of fleets, who was building what (and where), and a lot of lesser choices that didn't have major impact on the territory.

And yes, it's still all in real-time.

Set in the near future, Universe at War: Earth Assault sees multiple enemy factions from across the galaxy come to Earth to wage war on an intergalactic scale. Universe at War: Earth Assault will create an exceptional strategy experience within both single-player and multiplayer battles through offering a host of new features and unprecedented customisation options never before seen in the RTS genre.

FiringSquad: We saw the DirectX10 version at CES. How does the DirectX10 version compare to the DirectX9 version in terms of features and improvements?

Cevat Yerli: DX10 simply allows us to increase the visual quality of the shaders and particle effects, to the degree that some features are DX10 only. The hardware performance is a generation above DX9 so that there is a major gain in frames per second. Both versions of the game play are exactly the same though, while in Multiplayer we are evaluating technologies that may benefit gameplay in DX10 to finally enrich that PvP experience to a new level. Given the host of improvements Windows Vista offers for gamers though, we would recommend upgrading as soon as possible.

FiringSquad: The motion blur was used to great effect in the CES demo. How hard was it to get that effect to work and not be a distraction to the player?

Cevat Yerli: The motion blur comes in several flavors depending on the system specs and player preference. We have a global blur effect that is applied when the player moves his camera very quickly, for example sprinting or getting hit by a large explosion. Also we have object-based motion blur that applies only to objects that are moving. The combination of these create an extremely cinematic feel to the visuals. Depth of Field (DOF) is another feature that makes the in game camera feel like human eyes, objects further away get blurrier. It's a simple concept but hasn't been seen in many games. A new feature we have added for a true cinema feel is a slight DOF applied to the player weapon so when your eyes are focused on the action in front of you, anything close goes out of focus. If you’re reading this using a monitor take note of how the keyboard looks when you are reading off the screen, it lacks all the detail you would see when focused on it. It is not a feature everyone would want to use since our weapon models are so beautiful but it's there for those players who want to believe they are taking part in a movie!

How is multiplayer progressing? What problems have you ironed out?

Yerli: Multiplayer is progressing great. We have some surprises here and there for our beloved fans. We will soon also announce our Beta Program plans to experience [it for] yourself.

Is it a concern that there are PC gamers out there who won't be able to experience Crysis in its full glory because they can't afford to upgrade their machines to the top spec?

Yerli: We are finalizing our min-spec requirements. The current guideline is to have 2.5-3y old configurations to be our min requirement. That means these PCs will run Crysis on a visually competitive level when compared to older games, but will feature the core-gameplay aspects (e.g. nanosuit, AI-combat...).

Shack: Given the two big names behind this project, there are high expectations for the game's action sequences to live up to Hard Boiled's insane fights. Will Tequila be a master of his environment in the game, just as he was in the film?

Brian Eddy: Interactions with objects to do cool acrobatic stunts while traversing the environment is one of the core game-play elements of Stranglehold, and we make it clear to the player when they can interact with those objects by subtly highlighting them. If the highlight is on, and you press the interact button an interaction will always happen. If it is not on, no interaction occurs and Tequila will dive instead. It is straight forward and easy to do, but the results look like complex stunts and stunt combos.

In a typical example of game play, Tequila can be running along a second floor railing taking out enemies below when a chandelier comes into view hanging in front of him. It will highlight to show that you can interact with it and then the player just hits the interact button to cause Tequila to jump out, grab on to it and beginning swinging while being able to still aim and fire at enemies below. Then, the player can have Tequila drop to the ground (even on the head of an enemy, taking him out) or have him using the momentum of his swinging to jump to the second floor on the other side of the room.

It may sound a little complex, but it actually feels very intuitive! We want you to concentrate on the smooth flowing gunplay action and not fumbling with controller buttons.

Let's talk SiN Episodes. Was the first episode, Emergence, successful financially? Why haven't we seen any Episode 2 news?

Levelord: The first episode did well, but not good enough to completely self-fund the second episode. It sold over 150,000 units, which is better than many shooters. It more than paid for itself, but not enough to entirely fund the next one.

This was caused by two reasons. The first episode was the most expensive because we needed to build the asset and code bases from the ground up. There were also tools and such that needed to be developed. Successive episodes would have benefited from that foundation, and therefore level this initial imbalance. We knew that when we started Episode 1, but the demand of the first episode was more than we anticipated. The first episode also ran longer than we expected (what game doesn't, even when you think you've planned for this) and it went over-budget.

We did continue with Episode 2, but we had to stop a few months ago due to a funding problem. Making games is fun, but it isn't easy, …especially for an independent developer!

What community input did you rely on to implement into Immortal Throne?

Michael: We spent a lot of time, even before the release of the original Titan Quest, gathering up input from community forums, including the ones here on TQ Vault. We took what the community said they wanted to heart, and you can see that in a number of the new features. We now have an auto-sort button for your character's inventory, for example, which was a frequently requested feature. People wanted easier ways to transfer items between characters, so we put that into the caravans. They asked for better server browsing, so we added a raft of new features, including being able to sort by the host server's language, getting details on the characters in a session before you join, and being able to auto-party everyone who joins your session. The mod community wanted to be able to mod the original campaign files, so we opened those up.

Really, the list of things we added based on community input is too long to go into full detail on. We weren't able to get everything in - we still have a long, long list of desired features for future iterations - but we've done our best to act on the feedback we got from our community.

GI: What are your thoughts on Vista? Do you like it? Do you like its performance?

Rein: It's love/hate. So, I love the feel of Vista, and I love all the cool power tools that are built right in this time. I love the way it organizes all your content for you. I love all the gaming features. I hate the fact that there's a 32-bit version of it, and I hate the fact that there are versions that can run without Aero Glass. I think these were compromises they made for Intel, and I think those are mistakes that'll hold the industry back. There's no reason why every machine out there shouldn't be 64-bit now. There's great 64-bit processors-AMD has been shipping them for years. Intel was shipping them for years- and then, through the core processor, the original core processor into the mix and the Core Duos were 32-bit, and they shouldn't have. And Microsoft shouldn't have capitulated to them and said, "Oh, well Vista will support those." They should have waited until they had the Core 2-another great processor-but full 64 bit. So, I'm a little worried that we'll get limited support of 64 bit from the driver writers, from the application-software guys. Game guys won't be a problem, because one of the conditions of being given the Games for Windows logo is 64-bit support. So games won't have that problem. The question is how many game developers will exploit 64-bit and the advantages of 64-bit. It'll be small, because the majority of systems will be 32-bit. So it's kind of a love/hate thing. I love the OS, it's definitely an improvement. The latest Office is a big improvement. I want 64 bit. I need more than 2 gigs of RAM. I absolutely need more RAM, and RAM is cheap now. I'm really going to hope that 64-bit is not the forgotten stepchild or relegated to workstations or what have you or just certain applications run on them. I think the way to accomplish that would have been not to do 32-bit. I'm disappointed in that.

GI: If you were going to build a rig right now, would you go with a Core 2, Core 2 Extreme and get DX10 right away or would you think someone should just wait and see how Vista pans out?

Rein: I'd go for the absolute top of the line, because that's the kind of guy I am. (laughs)

GI: You have the money to do that, too.

Rein: No, but nonetheless, I would definitely build a Vista system. Windows XP will still be around for a long time, and obviously we're going to be supporting XP in any products we come out with for the next couple of years. I would absolutely go for Vista, no question about that. And I'd definitely go for a graphics card with DX10 support. It would be silly not to. You want to be as future-proof as you can. That doesn't mean you have to buy the most expensive one, you just want to find one that has support for it.

GI: Unreal has always scaled really well, from low-end hardware all the way to the high end. Where do you think the sweet spot is? What do you think it takes for a rig to be able to put Unreal through all of its paces?

Rein: We always aim Unreal for systems that people don't have yet. (laughs) Whether its UT or any Unreal game, so I think the sweet spot has yet to show up. Again, it's 64-bit and a ton of RAM, like an NVIDIA dual 8800s and Core 2 Extreme Quad processor-you could certainly build a super rig, but UT3 with everything turned up all the way is still going to struggle on that kind of thing. A year from now, it'll still be a game that is a showcase game for whatever hardware you happen to be getting then. That's normal. That's exactly the way we've done it every time from the original. The format hasn't changed there. But you're right, we try very hard to make sure it runs well on what the average gamer has. It'll definitely be hard to reach the bottom this time, because with UT2004, we had a software renderer, so it could run on virtually anything. We're hoping to have that capability at some point with this series, but I don't know for sure or when.

FiringSquad: What other unique features does War Rock have?

Matt Norton: War Rock is unique in several areas. The biggest single set of differences are that War Rock is Free-to-download and Free2Play. As a developer it's great to not have to convince players that your game is really fun ahead of time. Instead we can say "Play it and see." When we say that War Rock is free the biggest question is "What's the catch?" The truth is that there really isn't one. We feel that if you come and play War Rock, and enjoy it as much as we think you will, so that you end up playing 10, 20, 30 hours a week, that we can offer things that will make sense for you to buy. However, players can continue to play for free if they wish, and rise to the very highest ranks that way too.

We do have several other important and unique features as well. For example, we'll have live in-game GM support for questions, running tournaments, and taking care of disruptive or hacking players. GMs will provide coverage round-the-clock. War Rock will also have fresh, new, content added to the game every single month (at least 1 new map, 1 new vehicle, and 1-2 new weapons). On a bi-yearly basis we'll be releasing new 'Chapters' to the War Rock story. These will reveal more of the back-story and have larger releases of gear and equipment as well as new game modes.

War Rock will have a new and exciting web-based clan and tournament system up at release. The tournament system will make it very easy for players to check their clan or team's progress in any tournaments, whether they're K2 or player originated tournaments. We'll take care of things like reporting scores, filling in the highest ranked losing team to any slots that become vacant due to clans dropping out. All of this will be visible and reported in near real-time. Shortly after launch we'll use this same system to set up auto-matching. So you and your clan could sign up for, say, a tournament bout every Thursday evening at 8pm and we'll auto-match you with a similarly ranked clan that also wants to play a bout at 7pm on Thursdays.

In Leipzig you presented a unique feature - branching storyline. Can you elaborate how will this feature affect the actual gameplay, and what it gives to the player overall?

ML: Well, we decided not to divide player's choices between good and evil, and leave the moral aspect to the player. You saw the presentation, so you know the general idea and it's examples. Player's choice is not only important for further quest results, but also is an effect of player's actual feelings about the things that happen. That's very engaging, when every decision is subjective and brings a different solution with following consequences. Also, the most important choices have their effect much further in the gameplay, just to avoid loading the game to check the alternative way out. You'll also notice a butterfly effect sometimes, when banal situations can cause quite important consequences in the story. We're on the opinion that thanks to those features we got very close to the atmosphere of the book, which we hope players also will feel.

Any clue, how many hours will the player take to finish the main quest?

ML: It will take approximately 40 hours to complete the main plotline

Will there be a special edition of BioShock released?
A: We are not planning a Special Edition box set for BioShock, however, members who follow the news and participate in contests and are active in the forums will have a chance to win exclusive BioShock prizes.

Will the game different at all for PC and 360?
A: The content for both the PC and the 360 will be exactly the same.

Will there be multiplayer or online gaming in BioShock?
A: There will be no multiplayer (hold on before you complain!!!!) but for a very specific reason. BioShock features a compelling storyline that revolves around the experiences of one man as he enters the decaying world of Rapture. Having a multiplayer component would have compromised the story we were trying to tell so we made the decision to keep this game as a single player experience. There will be an online component, however, where new content can be downloaded.

Are there any lessons from Deus Ex 2 that the team has learned and is using when making BioShock?
A: Many development teams have learned important lessons from previous attempts to bring PC games to the console, though Deus Ex 2 is an infamous example. One of the main things we are doing differently is that we are leading our development efforts with the 360. Therefore all decisions on HUD and gameplay situations are made on the 360 and brought over to the PC to avoid the situations you are thinking about.

GS: Since the game has been known for a while, how much did fan reaction affect development?

BE: Well, since we have a lot of big John Woo fans on the team, I would say a lot! But how fan reaction off the team affected development, I would say the outflow of interest and excitement has helped to spur the team on to make the best, most authentic John Woo game possible. And all the teams' hard work is paying off, as we believe that Stranglehold is going to be the best action game on PC and next-gen hardware.

GS: Can you walk us through the new smart-bomb moves we're seeing and explain how they fit into gameplay? How vital was it to include Mexican standoff?

BE: We are going to be showing off three of our key Tequila-bomb moves:

Precision Aim - This allows players to go into first person where they can directly target critical hit points on an enemy to take them out with one-shot kills, or even focus on an element in the environment with precise aim, such as a propane tank causing a massive explosion in one area. It's also great for those guys hiding behind cover that may be hard to hit otherwise. We consider this to be a good long-range attack.

Barrage - This move unleashes a flurry of bullets at high speed that takes out any enemies (and their cover) that are in your path. This is a great focused frontal attack. If a bunch of enemies are running directly toward you, barrage is the perfect attack to take them out quickly. It's also a lot of fun to blow up the environment around the enemies to take them out with falling debris.

Spin Attack - This is a medium range 360 degree attack in the vein of the "smart bombs" in old arcade games that clear all the enemies in the immediate area surrounding you.

Each of these Tequila bombs has a specific tactical function. Precision aim for long-range enemies, barrage for straight-on frontal attacks, and spin for when enemies surround you.

Mexican standoff is a key stylistic feature of John Woo, so we knew we had to include it in some form. We've made it into a quick minigame of fast-action choices just like you would see in John Woo's movies.

Q: The only worry is that Nintendo may have done a good enough box at a low price with the different controller. Maybe they might lead?

A: Sony has always been our most direct competitor. Nintendo of course is a competitor. But look at the resolution you get with a controlled experience like that. Say to yourself, how in terms of using a game for a long period of time, what kind of accuracy and capability do you want? Look at the classic Nintendo positioning. Look at the graphics. Look at Nintendo's execution in terms of online capability. We have this thing that nobody has ever seen before. When you say to your friend, hey let's play online, you say then you have to buy an Xbox. That's what 10 million people say. If you want to play online, get an Xbox. We're not standing still. Look at what you saw today connecting up the world to the Windows PC. Do you expect Nintendo to rev up a team to create cross-device gaming and tool kits to develop those things? Not very likely. We clearly think that Nintendo did some things right. This group Rare that we bought a few years ago really the gestalt of doing titles of a certain type that we didn't have on our box. Viva Pinata has been a huge success. In my household, everybody plays Viva Pinata.

Q: Do you think that with this generation of games, Sony is going to have anything that looks better than the Xbox 360's Halo 3 for the PlayStation 3?
A: No. They were going to have the Cell be the video processor. But they didn't know what they were doing. They said the Cell is the video processor. But they turned to Nvidia at the last minute, but Nvidia can't do embedded DRAM. Go look at the bandwidth problems. Go ask the guys running ... now. They took their year and burned it by not having a decent CPU strategy and then turning to Nvidia at the last minute. It's a very unusual thing. Those processors are isolated from each other. You are seeing great game developers. Things will get better on us and on them. We think they're get better on us. That is so close. We claim we're better. It doesn't matter. It's just like pointing at the Xbox 1. We were 20 percent better. But it didn't matter. We were a year late, didn't have the best games. We had this bigger box. We did have online. We didn't switch positions on that.

Q: Sony says they have an advantage in creating games at 1080p.
A: Go ask the game developers. 720p is great. We can do 1080p. But in systems with 512 megabytes of memory, there are trade-offs. 720p is great. These are 512 megabyte machines. They are not 4 gigabyte machines. 720p is fast.