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TeamXbox: Let’s cut right to the chase. November 10…it’ll be pretty exciting from what we’ve seen tonight. What will the players get when they buy the game that day?

Joel Emslie: I envision everyone going home, opening up the package and popping it in—and I hope they don’t stop playing until…they’re done. And we’re talking a big game, too. Having multiplayer co-op now, the Spec-Ops mode and single player…for us, we were really working hard at it. I’ve never worked as hard on a project, because it’s like we’re making three games.

The single player has some tremendous jaw-dropping moments, and it’s one right after the other. It’s all paced. And you’ve got Hans Zimmer scoring it, we have some kick-ass voice talent and the story is fantastic. I hope everybody gets a kick out of it that night.

For the multiplayer people, who won’t even start up the single player, I think they’re going to be level-grinding all night—and missing a lot of school or marriage or… [laughs]

TeamXbox: While we’re talking about it, why don’t you run down some of the key things that have been added to multiplayer.

Joel Emslie: Todd Alderman [lead multiplayer designer at Infinity Ward, who jointly gave the press presentation that night] talked about customizable Kill Streaks, which I think is kick-ass. One of my favorite things is the Care Package—you get it early on in the game; it’s just one of those things that’s already set there. You do have to level it up; so you would unlock these Kill Streaks and…you’re getting the tip of the iceberg right now with this beta [the event was taking place on a closed beta version of the game]. There’s quite a lot to work with there. It comes down to what type of player you are and what type of Kill Streak you’re going to use.

The Care Package especially is one of those things I love using. You can actually kill people with it—it gets airdropped by a “little bird,” a big Pelican case that slams down from the sky. It’s almost like a jackpot: It’ll roll through randomized Kill Streaks—an AC-130 might come up. The cool thing about it is, the bad guys can steal it. If you get fragged or hit before you get to that crate, and they know it’s there, it becomes this mad dash. You can see what it is, they can’t…but they know it’s something that might be good; it might be an AC-130. I like to throw it out in the middle of the map to lure people out to grab it. Hopefully then it’s something low; if it’s an AC-130, I’m truckin’ out there to get it to save my ass. You can use it as cover.

It adds a whole different element to multiplayer. It can really turn things around quite quickly if you get a favorite Kill Streak.

Leveling up your perks? Bad ass. When they set that in, it took a lot of tweaking to get it right, but it works extremely well—and it just another layer to leveling up your character and getting things to work properly. You’ll work on like a Commando perk that enables you to lock on a little better—it gives you a couple more inches in your lock-on. You can go to Commando Pro…once you go into the Pro version of the perk, they have these attributes that just make the perk that much more powerful and cool.

There are so many attachments…we’ve been playing this for two years and I haven’t been able to look at everything combined together and working. It’s wild. They’ve tested it like crazy, but the equipment…the tactical insertions [being able to mark a custom spawn point] that you saw, it’s bad ass and really works well. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but now that I’ve played with it—I don’t use it all the time, some people use it all the time, some people only use it for certain things. It’s bad ass. It all takes up your grenade slot, so you can pick “grenade” as your equipment. That was a key design point that they really worked hard on to get everything to balance.

And then there’s Death Streaks…it can really, if you’re having a bad day, it can make your day a little better—you get something on the back end if you die four times. They’re not leveled up, but you unlock them as you level up.

TeamXbox: Is it safe to say that’s like a handicap in golf—that maybe the weaker players still get something to take home?

Joel Emslie: It’s not going to swing the game one way or the other, but it’s going to make your day a little more manageable if you’re having a bad round. If you’re really getting pounded on, you can use Copycat [a Death Streak perk that enables the one who died to take the killer’s load-out]…if there’s some crazy dude that has some weird configuration that I’ve never seen and I want to try it out, I can steal that from him. It’s really cool.

TeamXbox: You said it’s been two years that it’s been testing. How long has the game been worked on…when did you start working on it?

Joel Emslie: In reality, right after we finished Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, we stepped right into this…we didn’t miss a beat. We were already on it. When you start out early in the project, it’s really…the design philosophy, like Todd was saying, was to not make the same game, to make something different.

You can imagine there are some really passionate arguments and heated debates in the office about what we’re changing and how we’re changing it, but the goal is to make a game that you can step right into, for the entire two-year development that we were working on it, and a Modern Warfare player can step right into Modern Warfare and feel very comfortable with it and be familiar.

About all the new bells and whistles, it just feels smoother, slicker, better…it’s like stepping into a Ferrari.

TeamXbox: So, the key is, like, that you work on game, but…a lot of games get done a month before their release date. This you have to, I’m sure, do ahead of time, so that you can balance it—because balance is very critical.

Joel Emslie: Yes, balancing has been critical. We go into lockdown mode months before we go to print, and we try to let it “marinate.” You know…get everything worked out. There are elements that come online later, like music and voices. It’s funny when we get used to a certain temporary voice in the game, and then there’s the real actors voice that comes in, and you say, “Wow, okay…I didn’t know they could sound like that.” Those are the elements…the polish elements that don’t really change the gameplay and the mechanics that come online a lot later and we save room for that.

TeamXbox: There were big complaints about Juggernaut in the first game. What’s the counter? What did you do in this game?

Joel Emslie: I would say that the Riot Shield is this game’s answer to fixing that. I think when you do the “man dance” with a guy who has a Riot Shield, you’re dodging and weaving and maybe it’s like little Velociraptors where you’re trying to come at him from the side. It can be really fun. I like to mess with people who have Riot Shields. I’d say that the Riot Shield is a bigger, badder, cooler, more effective Juggernaut.

TeamXbox: One more question that—it’ll put you on the spot, but I’m doing it anyway: What’s one thing that didn’t make it into the game?

Joel Emslie: One thing that didn’t make it into the game. [pauses to think] I would say flying a helicopter. We keep trying it, but it just doesn’t…actually doing the mechanics, maybe some day we can play with that. We have a tendency to play with things in development and then just kind of shelve it…just put it away. We tried helicopter stuff on Modern Warfare…just trying to play with it. We have levels where we’re driving things, but we tend to focus on what works at the time and fits well into the story. It would be nice…maybe someday we’ll do something similar or we’ll do that. We’ll see.