Interviews// Haze: Rob Yescombe, Screen Writer, Derek Littlewood, Project Leader

SPOnG: How do you think your co-op mode will shape up against Halo 3?

DL: At the end of the day, we just tried to build a co-op mode that had the most flexible feature set we could, to allow people to play it as they wanted to.

SPOnG: Going back to the rebel tactics, does the fact that they can customise ammo to any gun right through the game - but Mantel soldiers can't - say something about what Nectar does to them? That they're not smart or creative enough?

RY: [Gives piercing look] You're a thinking man, and I like that, but I don't have a definite answer for you.

DL: The troopers are all about their Nectar, but the thing we wanted to do with playing with a rebel was about improvisation, and about choice. The thing we tried to build in to all the rebels' abilities was, "OK let's give them as much choice as we can."

RY: Oh! I forgot to mention: traps! You can rig grenades as mines and hide them under the soil, so they work like proximity mines. So, combining that with playing dead, and basically becoming invisible... And like Derek's saying, these aren't skills that have to be used in one particular situation, they're things that you can create your own kind of set up with.

SPOnG: On the playing dead issue: why would you have a drug that made dead people disappear?

RY: Think about post-traumatic stress disorder, think about all the real brains could be saved if real war was like a video game. There's no soldier that actually shoots people and thinks, 'wicked!' Look at those guts'. All they're thinking is 'f**k', and then they're ruined, they're no longer effective soldiers. So, that's the purpose of Nectar.

In a way, it's quite an apt comparison with people who are playing games. That's the weird thing, you have a lot of blood in a game, and people are like, "Wicked, how much blood's gonna come out of this guy?" But you transpose that onto real life, and it's a completely different situation.

SPOnG: We've obviously talked a lot about combat today. How do you feel about how Haze has been promoted? Do you feel that the combat should have come first, and the story afterwards?

RY: The thing about it is, is that when you've got so many features you've just got to throw them all out there. For instance, there's the fact that you've got two games in one box, and you've got a twist in the middle of the game, where you end up defecting and going to the other side and you get a whole new visual experience, and gameplay experience. That's the kind of thing any other game would pin their entire campaign on.

But because we've got that, and we've got four player co-op, and the story, plus all the metaphors, plus that combat system, plus all the multi-player stuff... you've gotta get it out there, or it's just going to get lost.

On the one hand, it's kind of sad that you have to give away stuff before you play it, but on the other people need to know what the game's about.