And it looks like this Survival Mode takes that even further…
"And that's great because it allows for a player that maybe plays multiplayer but isn't a super competitive guy to experience stuff he's never experienced before, like some of the kill streaks, or the way certain things work. It also introduces the single player guy mentality, who has never jumped into multiplayer, a chance to get some of those experiences he's never had, and become more competitive in the process if he wants to move into multiplayer."
"It's not the experience that we were looking for. With Spec Ops, it was completely designed around being that two-man team because of the difficulty that presented, and the challenge and the experience that it was. We want everybody on the team to have an essential impact on the success of the mission."
"Pretty much, yeah. But when you're looking at the philosophy of designing placements in a Spec Ops map it's very similar to how you'd design a placement for Search & Destroy and Domination, about where you'll put the objective points. So it's the same sort of mentality of making sure that a map can be universally enjoyed across all game types."
"Definitely. There's a lot of work that goes into the AI, not only the infantry, but the different types of enemies that we'll be introducing now, like the different types of Juggernauts, such as the riot shield one, the one who's explosive, and they all have their own different personalities. There's the kamikaze guys, and tweaking even the dog AI to be much more aggressive and advanced with the new environments.
"A ton of work went into making that happen. More importantly, it's making sure there's more variety, in having the guys push you and make you want to go into a defensive position, and then you have the kamikaze guys who are forcing you out of that position, and mixing it up in later waves is what really makes that fun."
What's the hardest thing you'll come up against in Survival?
"Haha, it's hard! I would say it's when you get to a wave that has air support, so helicopters trying to pin you down, along with the kamikaze dogs in addition to a riot shield Juggernaut and a normal Juggernaut, both who have very different tactics. One will be charging at you, making you run away, and while the other has a Michael Myers-style stalking you and forces you into the other one, and that's when it gets really s***y."
"You have the star rankings in Mission mode, but have your progressive Spec Ops rank that is continual. What that does is, while you pretty much had everything unlocked in that demo, in reality you'll be unlocking stuff as you rank up, and that rank always stays with you. But the money is independent per session. So money always goes back down to zero when you start back to wave one."
Spec Ops also has the Mission mode – have they been tweaked as well or are they similar to Modern Warfare 2
"We're always looking at doing different variety and different stuff. The cool thing about Spec Ops is that this is your place to really experiment and look at doing different types of scenarios that aren't just based on rounds down the range. You can do really cool creative objective stuff, or something that doesn't make sense in the story."
Modern Warfare 2 didn't have downloadable content for Spec Ops; does having this survival-based mode and the mission mode widen the possibility for downloadable content?
"It definitely does. It widens the possibilities and the opportunities because they utilise multiplayer maps in survival mode, so it allows you to get a lot more mileage out of all that content than you could do before."
"I couldn't confirm that right now, because we haven't even started thinking about DLC, so I can't comment on anything DLC until we've finished the full game."
