FiringSquad: In terms of gameplay what will Galactic Command bring to the table that the Battlecruiser/Universal Combat games could not do?

Derek Smart: First of, it features a single career. The Elite Force Pilot career. That alone strips about 75% of the niche and complex nature of my games. Doing this allows me to focus on implementing features and technologies which are streamlined and tailored to a single purposeful gameplay experience. Pure, visceral fun. My design for the game harkens back to the good old days of games like Freespace, X-Wing etc when blowing stuff up and only worrying about shields, armaments, getting back to base and completing the mission were what defined 'fun' for the genre. No FMV (!), No bad voice acting. No bad acting - period. No meaningless trading. No pointless exploration etc. Its basically. Go here. Blow stuff up. Return to base. Here, have a cookie for your troubles.

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the fictional back-story for The Continuum?

Tim Harris: We're rolling out the back-story in pieces, allowing players and readers to get hints, then chunks of story and then piece it together themselves. We'll do this through the comics (online and offline), storylines we introduce on the website and inclusions we put straight into the game. Without getting too far into what hasn't yet been revealed, it's the story of a universe unhinged, where the beings responsible for maintaining order in the universe begin to deteriorate, causing multiple worlds to come crashing in on each other. This leads to a huge array of characters finding themselves in the resulting reality known as The Crossworld, where the adventures really begin.

FiringSquad: What gameplay aspects of this title do you consider to be important?

Tim Harris: At its heart, this is a squad-based strategy game with heavy collectible and RPG elements. Thus, you will field armies made up of characters that you have collected, developed and customized. Every army will be different, and you and I could take the exact same set of characters into totally different directions in terms of development. This will create a really interesting play dynamic as players get further and further into the game.

IGN: Are there any disadvantages or aspects more difficult to deal with than DX9? In addition to prettier visuals, does DX10 improve performance (framerate) as well, or have you found your game takes a hit?

Cevat Yerli: We will deliver quite a few options for the user to decide what they will be able to achieve with DX10, but enabling all areas to be improved is somewhat not possible currently. But we are adding future scalability for the sake of longevity - in any case, you will get a top notch DX10 experience.

IGN: Does DX10 actually allow for any kinds of gameplay differences (more destructible objects on screen, something like that)?

Cevat Yerli: We are going to feature DX10 specific gameplay where possible, but nothing that is significantly different from DX9. DX10 basically allows developers to use lots more content (like cool particles, particle shadows, etc) while keeping a smooth frame rate.

IGN: If I wanted to run Crysis at, say, a solid 30 frames per second, what kind of system are people going to need?

Cevat Yerli: We learned a valuable lesson in Far Cry and that is to give people what they want but to also give them the ability to choose how to run it. For Far Cry, we gave the user a host of options that allowed them to cater to the experience they wanted. Some people like to see no popping, but they could care less for shadows, while others may not care about cool clouds but want more detailed textures. To support this we are going to offer even more ways for players to fine tune their experience. Personally, I would say to run Crysis with high settings; you need a machine that has a card that was made in the last six months. Our goal though is to make it really playable and look good on machines two-years-old from our ship date.

GS: Lately you've talked a lot about downloading content, but the partnership with Triton didn't really work out. What happened there? Is there a chance of a network like Steam or Total Gaming developed by 3D Realms? Would you be happy to partner with someone like Valve to get content out there?

SM: It's not in our game plan to develop a service like that. It's a really big distraction.

GS: That's a lot to take on.

SM: Yeah it is. I would rather there emerge a leader in the market that isn't associated with a game company. I'm not a big fan of using Steam, because I'm not a fan of a strong competitor of ours having access to our download stats and revenue totals. I'd rather keep that private. Not only that, but we're lining their pockets as well.

I'd love to see Steam spin off as their own company. That would be a smart move. That removes the conflict of interest issue and it would give Steam focus as a separate company. Since they're buried in Valve, if Valve doesn't do well for a game or two, Steam will get cut before their internal game development. They have to consider Steam secondary. I don't know why they hang on to Steam as an internal thing. They'd probably rule the game industry if they did. A truly independent company is going to come along, and I know of a couple of start-ups. I think one of these companies will emerge as the product leader and they should be able to take Steam's spot.

My overall impression is that digital distribution is definitely going to be a huge force in the future. I've said for quite a while that the next generation consoles will have this built in from the start. Day one releases will be available online. I think brick and mortar places will lose a lot of business this way. Microsoft and Sony have to be saying "if we cut out the retailers, we get a bigger piece of the pie." There's no issue with it, you just need to get people bigger hard drives. Digital delivery is going to be a key part of console revenue.

Two years on, when the game showed up unexpectedly at Leipzig's Game Convention, the game didn't appear to be quite up to scratch with the leaders in the FPS field. The obvious question is whether or not the game can cut it in a world full of on-rails technical marvels, such as F.E.A.R. and Half-Life 2. Bolshakov simply points out that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a different game. "We have RPG elements, communication and trade," he says. "There are seven different endings and depending on how you play you'll reach a different one. It's a pretty much open-ended game. A bunch of these features put together I think will determine a unique positioning for S.T.A.L.K.E.R."

With the game heading for a first-quarter release next year, we won't have to wait long to see if he's correct. GSC's PR manager, Valentine Yeltyshev, agrees with Bolshakov on the separation between S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and the rest of the 3D action pack. He tells us that THQ's close management of the game hasn't detracted from the original vision. "We are making the game that we understand it to be, a game that we want to play ourselves," he says. "So we're making a good game for us, for our taste."

That doesn't mean they're not nervous, though. Given they've been working on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for five years, it'd be difficult to blame them. "It's a little bit scary for us because we're making the game that many players dream of," says Yeltyshev. "We're scared of not giving them the game they expect. We're interested in adding sounds and making a great atmosphere, so the atmosphere will be completely OK. It's outstanding.  "But there will people that will not like, for example, the gameplay, and there will be people that like it completely."

The latest changes, says Yeltyshev, will open up the game's target audience, and he admits that the idea of having a controlled storyline is now a key hook for the game. "We've made the gameplay more active, more unpredictable, interesting, not just boring surfing through the Zone," he says. "We've implemented a great storyline that will always surprise the player with interesting turns and events."

Q: Describe a basic day of filming on the set of C&C 3. What is it like to be Richard Taylor, the director, on the set of C&C 3?

A: Shooting this material for C&C 3 has been a terrific experience for me and a real honor. I love working with really talented actors who are playing roles they enjoy. A production like this is the collaboration of a lot of very talented people who are all experts in their fields.

The first and certainly one of the most important aspects of shooting live action is to have well thought out pre-production designs and planning. It all begins with the script and builds from there. Casting, sets, wardrobe and props, camera design and lighting all take a lot of drawings and meetings to establish the over all style of a production. Then it's necessary to plan every day on stage down to the minute. On this project I've been fortunate to have a really talented group of artisans working along with me to create the shots. In many aspects the scale of this production has been the equivalent of shooting a feature film. Our script was over 120 pages and that's about the size of most features. There will be well over an hour of live action and cg scenes.

Once we have all the elements ready we roll into the actual shooting. If you've never seen a live action shoot you'd be surprised at how much work it really is. I think there's a common misconception that it's relatively easy to be an actor, a director or a technician when shooting live action. That's really not the case. We begin at 6 in the morning and all day it's a non-stop process packed with pressure that has to come off on screen as if it's effortless. If it's a successful day we shoot roughly about 10-15 pages of a script. That means setting the actors’ blocking, the camera choreography, the lighting and rigging any special effects for 8 to 10 scenes. Some shots are very complex and take hours to create. We try to shoot the scene with as few takes as possible but that's not always that easy. It's a fascinating and often a fun process but it is very stressful. As the director it's my job to get the best out of everyone and to be the guiding hand on the creative rudder.

GS: What's the single biggest challenge when bringing a PC RTS to a console?

MG: Up to this year, there was no question that the controls were the biggest challenge. We believe we've met that challenge with the console control system for The Battle for Middle-earth II. Our big challenge moving forward with C&C3 is to refine those controls based on our own observations and on user feedback, to really evolve them into the best RTS controls. We've been successful thus far by finding ways to not only improve the controls, like our shortcut systems, but by also improving the responsiveness of the controls. These improvements are already in the game today and will only get better was we approach launch next year.

GS: Why do you think Microsoft won't support 360 gameplay with a keyboard peripheral? Wouldn't that make things easier for both developers and players?

MG: I can't answer for Microsoft, but from my perspective, it is the right decision to stay with the controller for console games. Our game is designed to be played in your living room, and I don't think the keyboard is part of that experience. Our team strongly believes that the console controls are easier to pick up and learn for new players and that an experienced player could play as well as or better than a player using the keyboard. You also get some control advantages with the Xbox 360 version. Rotating the camera, for example, is so easy to do on the console version that you find people doing it all the time to get the best view of their army, and this key advantage becomes very noticeable in C&C3's city environments. I strongly believe that some day we will be able to play a console RTS vs. a PC RTS and that the world will be surprised when a console gamer is beating all of the best PC players.

FiringSquad: Why did you decide to use the Source engine as the basis for Natural Selection 2?

Charlie Cleveland: We know Half-life inside and out. Source was made to be largely backwards-compatible to encourage HL1 mods to move to Source. So we can be productive with it very quickly. Valve has always been supportive has a great road map laid out to continuously enhance the engine so technically it's a really strong platform. Source has a great first person feel and the popularity of the Source-powered shooters is a testament to that.

Also, Valve has offered a very appealing deal for us to use Source to power a game to sell on Steam. If we went with another big engine, we might have to come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars upfront to license the engine, which really isn't an option for an new studio like ours.

FiringSquad: How much of the gameplay from the original Half-Life mod will be retained for the full Natural Selection 2 game?

Charlie Cleveland: After four years of feedback and balancing NS, we are quite aware of the strengths and weaknesses of NS and don't want to just make. a graphical overhaul. At the same time, it still has to feel like NS and appeal to our audience, so we're preserving its essence. I think the established idea for making a successful sequel is this: 1/3 the same, 1/3 improved and 1/3 new. That sounds like a great rule of thumb to me. So we'll still be focused on strategy gameplay with Commander mode, tech trees and resources, and the sides are going to play very differently.

FiringSquad: The newly revealed Team Fortress 2 is a lot different than the game that was first shown at E3 in 1999. What caused the change in art style to a cartoony 1960's spy look?

Doug Lombardi: Starting with the characters in TF2 we had a set of goals that we wanted to accomplish, ranging from making sure that you could identify a class and its abilities from just it silhouette, to allowing gamers to form an emotional attachment to the class they most liked to play. Once we felt like we had a set of characters that were meeting those goals, along with all of the goals in between, we started building a world for them to play in that was complimentary.

FiringSquad: Will there be classic maps from the original Team Fortress in Team Fortress 2?

Doug Lombardi: Yes. Dustbowl and 2Fort are among the favorites returning, and there will be a few additionals. While they will all be familiar, the art style has obviously changed to match the look of TF2 and some of the geometry has been enhanced/modified to enable new styles of play.

FiringSquad: What other new features will the expansion add to the game?

Amir Rahimi: Another great feature in this game is a really exciting new cost system for the Create-a-Hero feature. With this system, the player can fine tune the abilities and cost of the hero to fit with their strategy. In BFME2 all created heroes cost the same amount of resources to build in game, but in The Rise of the Witch-king, there is an associated a cost with each power in the feature. The sum of the costs of the powers chosen by the player for their hero determine the hero's price in game. On top of that, as the player chooses powers, unselected lower level powers become cheaper. So a level 1 power like Train Allies would add 100 to the cost of the hero if chosen as the hero's level 1 power, but if the player waits and selects this power as his level 7 power, it would only add 40 to the hero's cost. Finally the player now has the option to choose not to add a power for any given level. For example, if the player wants to specialize his wizard in lightning spells, they could choose the level 1 lightning power, skip level 2 and choose the 2nd level of the lightning power at level 3, skip levels 4, 5, and 6 and choose the 3rd level of the lightning power at level 7.

GS: There are about 1,000 skills, as well as about 1,000 god powers in the game. Are you afraid of overwhelming the player with so many options? How do you present this to the player so it seems very logical?

SH: Well, if you logged in and were immediately confronted with a thousand skills and powers to sort through, then yes, we'd be concerned about overwhelming the player. As it stands, the large number of skills and god powers are spread out over six classes, and in addition, they're not just dumped in the player's lap without just cause. Presentation is actually our ally in this case thanks to the fact that the player is a scion of a particular god; thus, a player will find that his god is the guiding light over time, helping with the discovery of his newfound powers.

Overall, we're pretty comfortable at this point at how the player progresses through the game and the acquisition of new powers and new skills. As we continue through the beta stages, if we find that players are telling us that they're feeling overwhelmed, then we will adjust the progression accordingly.

GS: The game has a maximum level cap of 50, so how much playing time do you estimate it would take to reach the cap, assuming you play about one or two hours each night?

SH: It's hard to tell at this point. I mean, everyone hopes that they've created a game with the right amount of content to keep the insane powergamer at bay for at least a couple of months the first time around, weeks if you're really unlucky. Yet, at the same time we're careful to remember that there's no fun in the quagmire that tedious content can create for the casual gamer. I'd say right now the casual player can expect that the road to 50 should be on par with most massively multiplayer role-playing games, if not a little bit more challenging.

FiringSquad: What can you tell us at this time about the combat system that you are developing for the game?

Nigel Cook: Harker is a survival horror game with a heavy melee action content. This is not about a one-shot kill like other games, this is about causing suffering and pain to all vampires in a very up-close personal way.

Harker's combat focuses on the up-close punishment and execution of vampires in the most brutal way possible. Cameras will be much closer than other games, bringing the detail and vibrancy of the characters to life. Highlighting the 'Struggle' mechanic, as Harker slowly drives a stake through the vampire's heart, only to have the Vampire fight back with its last remaining strength. Pull an arm off a vampire and watch as it attempts to skitter up a wall, only to loose its grip and fall back down. In Harker the AI changes depending on the type of punishment you unleash on your prey.

Overall Melee is approximately 80% of the combat system, with the smallest portion being Ranged Weapons. Ranged Weapons are used to slow-down fast moving Vampires and knock them down from ceilings and walls. For example, use a heavy duty crossbow to pin creatures onto the surface they are climbing on. Once you have a vampire pinned, move up-close to punish them with Melee combat moves, but be quick about it! Our vampires have dynamic healing and a pinned vampire will begin slowly pulling itself off the stake and heal itself.

Unlike all other vampire games, which often make it easy to kill a vampire, Harker, will take the time to breakdown an enemy, causing them as much pain and suffering as possible, before executing them. But be careful when you do this, the stronger vampires can enter into a 'rage' state where they dynamically transform yet again. Firstly from Human to Vampire Form when you unmask them, and then later during combat, when causing them enough pain and suffering they can suddenly transform into their feral form. While in this animalistic form, they become less intelligent, but much more direct and lethal, like a wild animal. It will give you much more satisfaction killing say 1-2 vampires in our game, vs. a large group of weaker enemies that die with one hit like so many other games.

FiringSquad: In terms of level design, how hard is it to create levels that really take advantage of the player's abilities in Shadowrun?

Mitch Gitelman: It required a new way of thinking about level design. Because players can combo the glider tech with the teleport magic they can move through the environment in ways unseen in other FPS games. You can jump off a building, glide across a street and then teleport through a wall into the atrium of another. Your glider gives you some lift so you can glide up, then teleport up and then glide forward and teleport behind an enemy to get the drop on him. To give players a cool playing field to exploit these abilities, our levels need verticality and interesting "teleport lines". They’re kind of like trick lines in Tony Hawk. A good player can move from point to point to point to point to point and do this cool thing. Some we planned for and some we found during testing. The coolest part was when we found them by following our bots through the environment. They chose ways of moving the team didn’t know about.

There's this nice idea that episodic content could work in the same way as a TV show like Lost, with cliffhangers that keep a viewers interest. But unlike TV you're not getting regular episodes every week, sometimes you're waiting months to see what happens next. How is this affecting the creative issues surrounding episodic games?

I do think that it'll be interesting to move to shorter and shorter cycle times, that there are products and stories and game mechanics that are best tried out shorter. We think that we're taking our first step, which is to move, you know, away from, a Half Life 2 style development cycle to an Episode 1 style development cycle.

I wish we had the bandwidth to try and do something where we're shipping every week. You know maybe somebody else can try that and we can all learn as an industry from that. But I would totally agree that as a consumer I would totally love it if my favorite games were giving me new content even faster.

Are you incrementally growing the Half Life franchise to the point of a Half Life 3 type level or is the idea of a traditional Half Life 3 on the drawing board?

I think we're just going to wait and see what our customers have to say. We actually want to get these three things. After Episode 1 I got about nine thousand emails from people who'd played through the game and there's a lot of thoughtful feedback on what they liked and what they didn't like and I think we'll be in a much better position to make decisions after we've gone through the three episodes as to what's next.

What is changing for the third title in terms of gameplay?

Vince: We are working hard on a design that will continue the open sandbox style of game play, and at the same time we are adding new elements which will help the player have a more entertaining experience. We learned from Postal 2 that so much of the content was never even seen, let alone played. Clearly the open sandbox approach can be a double edged blade when it comes to designing game play.

Bottom line is we're designing Postal III to be a big game, an open game, a multiplayer game, a funny game, and most of all a fun game to play over and over. This requires not just a lot of content, but elements and features worth using and doing, not just eye candy; AI is critical.

FiringSquad: The new Hero system is a big addition to Nightfall. How hard was it to make the Heroes more than just more powerful AI henchman?

Gaile Gray: Heroes open up the game in ways that just haven't been possible with Henchmen. Don't get me wrong, I love the Henchmen System, and I've done a lot of playing using Henchies. But Heroes are so much more than simply upgraded Henchmen. With Heroes, you're able to form a party of substance, and if you want to solo or play with just a friend or two, your chance of success is greatly increased by the abilities granted through the system. You can bring up to three of your own Heroes in a party at any time; you can eventually acquire a "stable" of about a dozen Heroes, all of them different. Major elements within the Hero System allow a high level of customization, including: The ability to give Heroes different items, to select the skills they use (and to acquire new ones for them), to set and reset their attributes, to help them level up, and to change their secondary profession on the fly. Just that-the ability to turn your Hero from a Dervish/Ranger to a Dervish/Necromancer or a Dervish/Warrior-is huge! Add in the fact that you can give commands to each Hero individually-you can order one to be defensive, another to be offensive, you can position them to take point or to head in another direction altogether-and it is clear that your ability to build and command a battle party of substance and power has never been better, in either PvE or PvP!

Dave Perry: We're working hard to see if there's a way to support most of the Dance mats that people already own. If that can be done, it will be. We are buying up a bunch of mats to see if we can get compatible with them all.

So you can choose to dance in keyboard or dance mat mode. You can create you own room to dance in, you can invite others, you can become a couple and dance in what the Asians call "Lover Mode". Or you can create a group (like a guild) and have full on group dance battles, taking turns, which is extremely high pressure as all your friends are not just watching, they're relying on you!

FiringSquad: It sounds like DANCE! will have a social and even a dating aspect to it. Can you go into more detail on that?

Dave Perry: Once you're looking good and dancing well, you can expect to find your perfect mate, fall in love, become a couple; enter couples competitions together, and even GET MARRIED!! These are all activities that will help build communities and a change the player's personal experiences. We really hope to bring a ton of women to Dance. I recently read that Peter Molyneux feels we need to make games that "make you feel". What more feeling comes from getting married in a game? Of course we'll have to work on a way for people to get divorced too, without having to lose half your virtual items!

He went on to mention that the game will not be a first-person shooter; they decided to do this to keep the game accessible to a variety of players not just those who enjoy FPS type games (or people like me who don't have the skill for an FPS as opposed to Fafnir who does). Now while he didn't say how they were going to specifically work combat he did mention that they want a different feel for combat then any other game, with a smarter AI that will react more like a human would. What will this mean? It means that enemies won't just open fire on the players; instead, they may break for cover. It could also mean that they may make use of tactics against the players. While one enemy is laying covering fire, two other enemies could flank the players and pop up on the side or even behind the player's location! This will mean players will have to remain on their toes and that tactics and party composition will mean more then just the usual brute force.

Three of the four playable races that have been announced as of September are: Human, Jaffa and Goa'uld. Yeah, you can be the bad guy! And hey, I wanna be a Samantha Carter! I want to kick-ass, be hot and smarter than well, everyone! Zeb said this just may well be possible and necessary. Items will be important in combat - the more items you can use, the more accurate you will be. So, if you have special weapons training or you're pumped like Teal'c, you'll have an advantage. He also mentioned that non-combat skills/classes will exist, though the scope these skills hasn't been decided. They do know that they will be able to improve items and probably create some small consumable items. Zeb gave an example of an Armorer Class who would be able to improve the weaponry of the players and even create ammunition for their use. A scientist or archaeologist may find a linguistic mini-puzzle that will make it possible to get through a mission with greater ease.

So in the future, is there a chance we'd see Crysis on next-gen consoles?

Michael: There might be. The decision is not mine to make. I don't know of any official plans to do so, I know there are rumours and talk, but I could not say anything concrete about it. That would have to be something you'd have to ask Electronic Arts.

How are you finding working with EA on Crysis compared to working on Far Cry with Ubisoft?

Michael: I think the difference mainly comes not from who we work with, but who we are as a company right now. When we started on Far Cry we didn't even have a name for ourselves, we had to prove ourselves. It was a big risk and people were asking if we could do it, and Ubisoft may have felt some pressure as to whether we could turn out a great game – you know, whether they should help us out here or there. But with EA they seem to be saying, 'okay these guys made Far Cry so they probably know what they are doing'. So the level of interference or feedback is different. From my perspective I don't see much of a difference between the companies, because we haven't had any big artistic problems on Far Cry or on Crysis.

Portal looks sick-inducing at times. How does your thought process work coming up with puzzles. Ever have to rethink? To watch it's very confusing...

Kim Swift: The way we design our puzzles is that we all sit down together as a team - the artists, programmers, level designers. We all sit down and pretty much decide goals for each level; we want the player to use these particular gameplay objects say a box to open a door, or to use a 'fling' - which is when you put one portal on the wall and one on the floor and you use your momentum from standing high up on a ledge to gain acceleration to toss yourself out of the other portal. So we say 'Okay we want to use one of those' and we figure out the layout of a level - we draw it out on the whiteboard and then one of us goes and designs it. Then we playtest it and see if it works or not.

Everyone's been very impressed. Were other teams in the company eager to nick your ideas? For Episode Two?

Kim Swift: I don't really know if that's the case! We definitely got a lot of help from people trying to fit our technology into the Source engine!

FiringSquad: What will the single player campaigns and missions be like?

Goran Milisavljevic: The single player campaign will feature approximately 30 linked levels. We have a variety of missions. We want to keep the players on their feet, without constantly repeating the same tasks over and over again. Each mission will have a specific task.

FiringSquad: What is the combat like in the game?

Goran Milisavljevic: The combat is a mix between classic strategy combat and RPG-style clashes. The players will do a lot of micro management during battles, making the most of their units. Also you completely change the unit's abilities in an ongoing battle.