Bodycount

It's set, as is the trend these days, over a 13-episode seasonal arc, and each episode is structured to last about the same length as a TV show - around 45 minutes - with Codies gunning for the 10-hour mark in total for the single-player campaign. Choice will once again play a key part in the proceedings, with the player able to make decisions based on which of the three operatives they feel most inclined to align themselves with.

Although ostensibly a linear game in terms of plot progression, the sexy ladies whispering tactical advice in your earpiece can be overruled, allowing you to go rogue and open up a bunch of possibilities that Black isn't willing to divulge at this stage. "You're not so much a hammer as the nail," he says.

With much of the single-player detail obscured from view for now, thoughts turn to multiplayer. Arguably the most glaring omission from Black was its lack of multiplayer - something Criterion ditched because, says Black, "it couldn't sync up the physics."

Five years on, bothersome technological hurdles have already been overcome, and "all the destruction, all the environmental shredding is now perfectly synced up online." The current plan to ship with 12-player Team Deathmatch, as well as a two-player co-op mode that's "transparent drop-in/drop-out and online," though Black admits, "it might go up to four." Make it happen.

Black reveals that he initially wanted to build Bodycount from the ground up as a co-operative game, and "draw the single-player out of that," but had to scrap those plans once the narrative plan was laid out.

"As we started developing the story - not in terms of plot, but of character arc - I realised that it was really important at key moments that the player is on their own. People use the argument that it didn't matter in Halo, but we found that there's no way we can achieve that emotional state when their player's talking to their buddy. It was a bit of a problem to start off with."

As a compromise, Black and his team figured that the co-op element would work best as "effectively prequels and sequels to events that the player sees," which will "fill out the back-story of either the Target or the Network and what they're doing."

"Everything in the single-player campaign is all from the player's point of view," notes Black. "You only know the information that the player-character knows, which is all the information on the ground and coming through his ear piece. If I cut away to the Target guys and the Network guys, there are scenes where they're talking about their big plan or whatever else, so we use the co-op and Team Deathmatch to explore that kind of stuff.

"We actually get to tell a broader story of the world that we're creating here, and look at it from different angles," he adds. "A problem turned into a positive, and overall it's a richer experience."

As for Team Deathmatch, the implications of progressive 'shredding' of the levels are obvious. "We keep our shredding consistent between rounds. So when you start playing, the world's all nice and pristine. There are not many angles between things, the combat's quite close-up.

"You're using submachine guns, shotguns, assault rifles and you're boring through walls. You're making your own routes through stuff, and it's generally pretty close. As the world gets ripped down, you'll be looking right through maybe four or five rooms, and have the chance to snipe someone on the other side of the map. Shredding make a big difference to how you play the game."

Built using Codies' increasingly flexible EGO engine, the early signs are extremely promising that Bodycount has all the ingredients to make it stand apart from its contemporaries - a point an unblinking Black makes with great conviction.