Hi. Well first up, I'm an Aussie! Born in Adelaide, raised in Perth, got into the games industry at Melbourne House, and spent some time in Brisbane before heading over to L.A. to join the illustrious Pandemic Studios. In case your readers don't know this, Pandemic has a studio in Brisbane. So, yeah, I've been in the games industry for about 12 years, and for the last two years or so I've been the director on the Mercenaries team.

Mercs came about because we had a great team and some great technology, and we thought it would be cool to take the open-ended gameplay of something like GTA and put it into a really intense war-zone environment. So rather than civilian vehicles the focus is on military vehicles. You get bigger explosions that way!

First of all, we wanted it to be a great shooter. So I think people will be impressed by the tightness of the controls, especially for on-foot targeting. That was a focus. Then we really wanted to give explosions a physical presence in the world - we'd noticed that in a lot of games explosions are mainly a visual effect. We wanted explosions to knock things around and really have an impact. To that end, we integrated the Havok physics engine, and as a result the destruction in Mercs is really crazy stuff. Things fly all over the place, and it's very satisfying.

Finally, we wanted to stay true to the open-ended design style, giving the player a lot of freedom to tackle the objectives in a creative way. So the game is totally open - you can go anywhere at any time, and the objectives tend to be simple things that can be achieved in a huge variety of different ways. It's kind of a cheesy catchphrase, but I call it "creative destruction"!

In support of that goal we added some unique features to Mercs, like the ability to call in support (air strikes, vehicles, supply crates) wherever you may be, whenever you like You just throw a smoke grenade to mark the spot, and one of the factions will chopper in the supplies for you. It's really cool. Well, actually for air strikes you have laser satellite targeting too, but you get the idea.

Mercs is loosely inspired by real-world events, but we fast forward into the future. There's been a violent military coup in North Korea, and it's discovered (by the Royal Australian Navy!) that North Korea is supplying nukes to terrorists. The Allied Nations (AN) form a coalition and invade. So North Korea turns into a big mess, and the coup leader - General Song, the President's son - disappears. Getting desperate, the AN turn to private military contractors to hunt down the "Deck of 52". General Song is the Ace of Spades, of course.

You play one of three mercenaries who work for a private military company (PMC) called Executive Operations ("ExOps"). ExOps flies you in and provide some logistical support, but basically you're on your own. You've got to work with the various factions that have entered the conflict - something the AN could never do - to track down the Deck of 52.

There are night missions, different weather conditions, and an "atmosphere" system that the artists used to give different parts of the map a different feel and personality. Some of the effects (especially radiation) have gameplay effects, but mostly they just look cool.

It's totally free-roaming. We don't use the term "missions" in the game - mercenaries take contracts, not missions. But in general what happens is you go see a faction, they explain their problem to you, and you can accept or decline the contract as you see fit. The contracts range from rescue missions, smuggling, stealing things, assassination, and general destruction. But always it's just "destroy A" or "steal B", and we leave it up to you how to do it.

It's an action game, not a simulation. But I wouldn't call it "arcadey" - the physics feel very real, all the weapons and vehicles are inspired by real-world weapons and vehicles. There aren't really any "futuristic" weapons (like lasers or anything), but there are some unusual air strikes, like the fuel-air bomb.

There are about 70 vehicles in Mercs (that's what happens when you give the designers a "hard limit" of 35…), I think there are about 10 helicopters, and the rest is a mix of everything from absurd civilian cars (sports cars, baggage carts) to heavy armored tanks and APCs. My favourite is probably the Russian Mafia Scout helicopter, a small, fast helicopter with really cool missiles. It suits my play style. The tanks are great fun too - they crush stuff really well, and have awesome firepower.

In keeping with the "total freedom" style of the game, you have full control over where you take off and land and your altitude. Early on, we limited you to specific landing zones, but ultimately we decided to take the plunge and let you land anywhere. So now you can land your helicopter on top of a skyscraper, jump out, and snipe from up there.

The AI is a lot of fun to fight against. First, we decided early on that AI units should be able to use the same thing you can. So they can "scramble" to any vehicle - including your vehicle, if you leave it behind. So you'll often see the AI running to man a turret or jump into a tank. All the transitions are fully animated, so you see the guys jumping in and out, and it looks cool. Also, they're smart enough to know the right weapon to use against you, and they'll abandon one vehicle and use another one if they determine it will be more effective. Second, late in the development cycle our A.I. programming ninja worked out an efficient way to have the AI use dynamic cover.

What that means is that you can blow up a tank or something, and you'll see tank ruin fly around under physics control. Wherever it ends up, the AI can find it and use it as cover - so they're very smart about using the environment.

Well there are five main factions: the North Koreans (remnants of General Song's army), the AN (who invaded to get Song), the Chinese (making a land grab from the North), the South Koreans (making a land grab from the South) and the Russian Mafia (running the black market and generally profiting from the chaos). All the factions have an "attitude" towards you (except the North Koreans, who treat everyone like an invader and shoot on sight). If they're friendly toward you, they'll help you out by manning turrets in your vehicle and helping you fight. If they're neutral, they'll pretty much just ignore you. If they're hostile - they'll attack on sight.

So your experience of a certain part of the map depends on whether the faction that controls it likes it or not. Many contracts require you to mess with another faction, so you have to juggle the necessity of performing the contract with the hassle of annoying another faction.

Civilians also play a role and are just caught in the crossfire. You need to be careful around them, because if you kill them, ExOps has to cover it up and it costs you money. Finally there's GSRN reporters, who report on the action (for example, when you capture someone from the Deck of 52, you hear the news report about it when you're near a GSRN press-truck).

The big thing about Mercs is that you can destroy everything. Any building, any vehicle, any structure.

We decided to focus on the single player experience, so we're not doing Live stuff. But the Xbox version certainly gets some unique features, the major one being normal mapping on the vehicles. The vehicles look truly incredible on the Xbox. We also did a bunch of extra environmental effects, as well as volumetric shadows, etc. We definitely ramped up the visuals to take advantage of the Xbox.

Sure, the biggest challenge was the sheer open-ness of the game. Since the player can do anything, any time, and we can't predict what weapons you'll have, or what vehicles you'll have, or what air strike you'll use, the contracts and the world just have to handle it. So it took a lot of work to make the technology and the design robust enough for this.

Mercenaries is close to completion on both platforms and will release in February in the PAL territories, including Australia. Thanks for letting me talk about Mercs!