The Far Cry 2 level on display at E3 was the same one we got a look at months ago, and I managed to play through it in an almost identical fashion.

After embarrassing myself with a flamethrower for a few minutes, I had a chance to talk with Far Cry 2 creative director Clint Hocking, who took me through a few detailed examples of what we'll be doing in the open-world shooter.

We also touched on a now-discarded feature, as well as the expansive multiplayer features set to appear on both console and PC platforms.

Shack: So we've seen how the game plays within a mission, but not a lot on how the game will play over several. Is it going to be like Grand Theft Auto?

Clint Hocking: It is kind of like Grand Theft Auto. I mean, the mission structure is.. there's sort of.. I'm not going to talk about side missions, and exploration and stuff like that. But it's an open world, so when you're not on a mission you're free to go where you want, and do whatever you want. There are markers on your map telling you where you can go get a mission. Of course you can explore, you can unlock stuff, you can do whatever you want.

When you get a mission from one of the factions, which are sort of the main missions of the game, you go and talk to them, they offer you the mission. You can accept it or not; if you accept the mission it becomes active, and you get paid in advance. You walk out the door, and there's always one objective for the mission, and the objective can't be failed. It's always something like blow up a bridge, or kill someone. It's not like, "Do something at 10 o'clock," and if you failed to do it at 10 o'clock you fucked it up. The mission is active until you complete that objective.

The objective is going to take you typically about a kilometer to a kilometer and a half out of town, into the territory of the other faction. So you're going to have to fight your whole way there however you want, taking whatever path you want, using whatever vehicles, until you get to the objective.

The objective for the main missions is always in what we call a key location. There's usually 20, 30 guys there, they're well dug in, they know how to defend themselves, and so you have a big battle there. That's the base mission, and then from that point you can pick up side missions along the way, you can unlock safe houses, you can do whatever you want. You can go back to town and get another mission, whatever. But as soon as you complete that objective, the mission is over.

However, if you have a buddy, when you accept a mission from a warlord from one of the factions, within two or three minutes your phone will ring. And your favorite buddy will say, "Come and meet me at this location if you want more information about the mission." It's totally optional. If you do that, you go to a safe house--an icon appears on your map telling you where to go--you go there, you meet the buddy, and the buddy says.. so here's a fake example:

"I heard the warlord's hired you to blow up this bridge. Cool, that's awesome. I happen to be working for the other side, and if you really want to fuck these guys hard, work with me. Because I happen to know that one of their lieutenants is going to be crossing this bridge with this convoy at 10 o'clock tonight. If you blow up the bridge while the lieutenant is crossing it with his convoy, you'll take him out. He's my enemy, that will give me an opportunity to raid his little camp, steal the stuff that he stole from me, and then I'll get out ahead, you'll get out ahead, the guy you're working for will be even more happy because you killed this guy he doesn't like, and it will be great for everyone. You should do that."

And then that adds the objective to destroy the bridge at 10 o'clock. That objective can be failed. If you destroy the bridge at 2 in the afternoon, or if you wait three days and destroy the bridge then, you've failed that objective. However, if you do it at 10 o'clock, then you've sort of initiated the alternate version of the mission. So you go to the bridge, you destroy it, and if you happen to destroy it at the right time, then you've enabled your buddy to do his part of the mission, so he'll phone you and update you and say, "Awesome, good work, now I'm gonna go do this, and you're gonna need to be there and back me up." That's it. And then once you've either done or not done that, the mission is complete.

Shack: So how do the factions play into this?

Clint Hocking: The thing is, you are not really officially working for either side. So warlords have their men, and they're on this side of the world, and the other guys are on that side of the world, and if the two factions encounter eachother they fight. If you're being chased, you can lead one of the factions into the other faction's territory, and they'll open up on them and kill them for you. But even if I'm working for the APR, if I go into APR territory, the APR guys will attack me on sight.

Shack: So you're always the enemy.

Clint Hocking: I'm always the enemy, yeah. Except for the underground, who are civilians, and priests and stuff like that. But they're not a faction of armed combatants, they're civilians and priests and doctors hiding in safe areas, where you can't go in with weapons.

Shack: And you just play both sides against eachother.

Clint Hocking: Yeah. And the warlords need a guy like you, because you're a dirty motherfucker who's willing to do crazy stuff. Like when you do blow up the bridge, you're the guy who's willing to find out, "Hey, I happen to know if I blow it up at 10 o'clock you're going to like it even better." And then they start to go, "Fuck, this guy's a motherfucker. Not only does he go blow up the bridge like we asked, but he goes and blows up the bridge when that guy I hated was on it. I need guys like you, but I don't need you so much that I want anyone to know that you're working for me." [laughs] So yeah, that's kind of the relationship we have there.

So does that make sense? We've never really shown it, because the problem is, the whole process of going to get a mission, fighting your way to get a buddy--there's 15, 20 minutes of gameplay. Maybe you want to go back to a weapon place, change your weapons and equipment, fight your way to the place where the buddy told you to go, steal some documents, fight your way to the main location, blow up the bridge--it can take an hour and a half to play a mission, even though there's only two objectives.

Shack: Given that kind of length per mission, how long is this game going to be?

Clint Hocking: We have testers who can get a walkthrough in eight hours, but that's eight hours connecting the dots.