Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising

This flexibility is key to the new Flashpoint experience. The game is sandbox in nature, and gives players the freedom to tackle each of the campaign missions in whatever way the see fit, using whichever of the 60+ weapons and numerous vehicles they can get their hands on. "Every time you play a mission, it's different," claims Lenton, and what we see backs him up. Although we're viewing the same small skirmish over and over - assaulting a small Chinese squad bunkered down in a village - each attempt unfolds in completely different ways. "The AI uses different ways of attacking you, you use different ways of attacking them, they'll take a different route, use different cover," says Lenton, as the enemies on-screen do exactly that. He laughs. "One of the best things about demoing this game is that you've got no idea how it's going to turn out."

While realism is paramount, Lenton is keen that people will be able to enjoy their time in his "really fun toybox". The design and details may be stringently true to life, but vehicles are simple to control - even the helicopters, the controls for which have been based on painstaking "research" playing with RC 'copters in the fields around the Codemasters offices. "You want to be able to get in and drive anything, and for it to be fun," Lenton says. "The handling is pick-up-and-play, we're not going for flight sim level of difficulty."

There's no doubt that it's an impressive undertaking. After he's spent some time scampering around this corner of the island, Lenton calls up the map and zooms out so we can see the scale of the place. The area he'd been playing in covers maybe one square centimetre in the lower-right-hand corner. It's vast, and full of procedurally generated elements to boot. Smoke and dust lingers rather than fading away. Missions have had to be carefully designed so they don't rely on any one character or location which could accidentally be destroyed by the NPC forces on either side before the player even reaches them. Every building can be entered or destroyed, although the ruined shells collapse into predetermined patterns rather than blowing to smithereens. The reason for this, understandably, is that it allows the AI to find cover in the debris rather than having to work out where a million splinters are lying.

Another area which has been considerably developed since the original game is multiplayer. "The big, big focus of Flashpoint is online, multiplayer co-op," Lenton reckons. "Your fire team is you and three other guys, and it seems obvious to me that they should be your mates. I'm really building this as a co-op experience, that's the core thing we're doing. Every campaign mission is playable as co-op. If you play it single-player, it's co-op with three AI players. It's that balanced, and every mission is built around that concept."

As our time with the game comes to an end, Lindop is keen that fan fondness for the first game is kept in perspective, explaining that the more sophisticated design tools available in 2009 mean that the experience will be even more immersive. "When you were out in the open, there were really only two states - you were either in cover or not," he says of the first Flashpoint. "The actual polygon density of the terrain was pretty low, so you couldn't just lie down and be in cover. The fidelity of our terrain mesh is much, much higher. There are smooth folds in the ground, dry riverbeds, places where, when you're caught out in the open, there's no such thing as genuinely flat ground. You can get down low and use very small variations in the ground to try and give you that extra of cover. We want something that's more about the experience of being in combat. What's it like when a .50-calibre round passes by your head?"

You'll be able to find out when Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising launches later this year.