GamersInfo.net: Can you give me the basics of what Mercenaries is?
Chris Susen: Mercenaries is a departure for LucasArts. It's not a Star Wars. It's the only game we're releasing in the next year that doesn't have Star Wars attached. It's being developed by Pandemic Studios - the same guys who did Full Spectrum Warrior and Star Wars: Battlefront. The game takes place in near-future North Korea. It could be one year in the future or ten years in the future but, sometime in our world. And, on the eve of a re-unification ceremony of North and South Korea there's been a violent military coup. The militants have captured the president of North Korea as well as an arsenal of nuclear weapons, which they're threatening to deploy against the world. So, the AN (Allied Nations) moves in, of course. But, all of their negotiations fail. They're left with no recourse but to go to a private military company and say, "You guys need to sort this out and we'll pay you any price."

That's where you come in. You're a mercenary being paid $100million dollars to put the coup down. Now when you get into the demilitarized zone you realize it's not just the North Koreans - the South Koreans are there trying to help out, the Chinese are there pitching in, and the always opportunistic Russian mafia is there and they're selling anything that isn't nailed down. So, you go and you can take contracts from these factions, you can play them off of each other and as you play you gain intel as to where the "ace of spades" - General Song.

GamersInfo.net: You're going in as a single individual, there's a role-playing aspect, and you get to deal with these different factions…
Chris Susen: Exactly. You go in with one objective: take down General Song. But when you get in there you realize that everything is a mess. You have to play those factions off of each other and their relationships to each other is tenuous at best. Play the Chinese off of the Russian Mafia; play the North Koreans off of the South Koreans, etc.

GamersInfo.net: How is the interaction performed? Do you just walk up to an NPC and hope that he doesn't shoot you?
Chris Susen: You can look at any point in your PDA and we give you faction ratings. For example, the North Koreans are always going to be hostile towards you; the allied nations are always going to be helpful towards you. That being said, you take a shot at an allied troop he's going to take a shot back. We've spent a lot of time developing the AI on this title. But, essentially what happens is, you'd walk up to the Chinese headquarters and state that you want to take on a contract. This is the contract and you choose whether to take it - if you complete the contract you could gain money, a vehicle or an air strike. As you take bigger and bigger missions you'll get progressively bigger rewards.

GamersInfo.net: Since you'll be dealing with factions, will you have a reputation value with each faction? And will other factions know what those are?
Chris Susen: Absolutely. If you get too friendly with the Russian Mafia, the South Koreans are going to start to suspect you. You have to be very careful in how you establish a relationship. You can get everybody on your side, but it will take a lot of careful planning. If you simply go to one faction headquarter and complete all the missions, then move on to the next mission headquarter and do the same, then of course you won't get the same kind of alignment if you pick and choose carefully.

GamersInfo.net: The game from that standpoint will have a significant replay value because each time you play it the results will be different.
Chris Susen: We have so much stuff hidden in the game, and the game is so huge that it's ultimately re-playable.

GamersInfo.net: Is this a game where you'll be dropped into the DMZ and move from there or will you be told "this is your current scenario" and you're dropped there or will you move from point to point, gaining missions along the way?
Chris Susen: You'll have to travel from point to point. We'll drop you in the demilitarized zone and at the very beginning you'll have to go to Allied Headquarters and check in. But after that, you can go wherever you want and do whatever you want. It's very non-linear, very open gameplay. We want you to be able to experience the game any way you want to.

We have over 70 vehicles - you can jump into any vehicle including helicopters. In fact, if the helicopter is flying low enough you can jump onto the helicopter skid, throw the pilot out of action and hijack the helicopter. We've had a lot of fun making the game.

GamersInfo.net: In terms of realistic aspect to the game - vehicles, weapons, aircraft, artillery, and air strikes - what kind of resources did you use to create a good relationship with reality? Will a .22 pistol react differently 30-caliber machine gun, are they going to act differently?
Chris Susen: Absolutely. We've spent a lot of time researching not only vehicles, weapons... We came down to Los Angeles and into the desert with a ridiculous amount of weapons to record the sound. We recorded them based upon the ammunition they use, how many bullets in a clip. We spent a lot of time trying to nail down all of the little details.

That being said, we're never going to sacrifice gameplay for realism. The game is all about blowing stuff up and having fun. We never want someone to say, "The AK-47 is a great weapon but it jams all the time," and then have the gun jam on you in the game because that's not fun.

The vehicles sound like their real-world counterparts. They pilot somewhat similar to how they would in real life as far as physics go and we want to keep the game fun and interesting so we've made some modifications, of course. But we have like the H-3 in the game, the new Hummer vehicle. It looks really fantastic, it drives very fast, it's lightly armored; then you have the Hum-V, which is the military Hummer - man it's bad-ass - it's totally rugged; then we have tanks, we have helicopters, we have baggage transports from the airport, things like that.

GamersInfo.net: You took into account armor values on various vehicles and penetration….
Chris Susen: Armor value for vehicles but armor piercing values for ammunition. For example, if you're in a helicopter and you've got a Gatling gun, you're not going to be able to damage a tank - I don't care if you put a thousand rounds into it. But, if you have the same chain gun and you start shooting at a Hummer, it's going to take a bit but you're going to destroy it.

GamersInfo.net: Do you also take into account various types of ammunition like armor piercing, high explosive and heat rounds?
Chris Susen: We do a little bit, but not much. Most of that is weapon dependent.

GamersInfo.net: You have a tank you do a lot of damage; you have a rifle you do a lot of damage to people but not to tanks…
Chris Susen: Exactly. It's interesting you say that because someone was playing the game a moment ago and he was shooting at a tank with a machine gun and I said, "You know, that's kind of like shooting a bee bee gun at a freight train." So, he pulled out his rocket launcher and starting shooting. It's really all about the gameplay. We want to stay true to the weapons and vehicles but we're not going to sacrifice anything to stop it from being fun.

We also spent a lot of time doing interviews with private military companies; we've interviewed a couple of mercenaries to see how they get their contracts, what happens and how it all works. That's been a fascinating process. What's interesting is, even the word mercenary itself - everyone has their own definition of what a mercenary is. The president of our company pictured a tequila-drinking bounty hunter from Mexico; I pictured someone like BA Baracus from the A-team; my counterpart pictured someone like Jack Bower from 24. So everyone has a different image. The first thing we did was commission a study on mercenaries. We have a mercenary style guide. Everything we do in the game, in the advertising, everything goes back to that. They're not evil, they're not going to kill for pleasure, but at the same they'll take down an entire building if their mark is the top floor. They're not bad people, they just work outside the bounds of morality - they're amoral.

GamersInfo.net: What is it that brought LucasArts to develop a game like this in the first place?
Chris Susen: It's a good question because this is definitely a stretch for us. The game is being developed by Pandemic Studios and they'd been developing it for a different publisher and for whatever reason decided to pull it from that publisher. We have a great relationship with them due to a series of games including Star Wars: Battlefront and The Clone Wars. So, we played the game and found it to be a really really phenomenal game. We realize it's a bit of a stretch for LucasArts and it was a tough sell to the Ranch but the game is of such quality that everyone is on board.

GamersInfo.net: What exactly is it that YOU do for Lucas Arts?
Chris Susen: I'm a product manager. I do all the positioning in the marketplace, all of the advertising, the focus testing and provide consumer insight which helps out with design decisions. I was a producer before I was a product manager so I understand the game lifecycle.

GamersInfo.net: How did you become involved with LucasArts?
Chris Susen: It's a funny story. I was living in Minnesota at the time and went through a really long cold winter. I decided that I was never going to go through a long cold winter again. I just decided, "I'm going to join the video game industry! I'm going to move to California and join the video game industry!" I quit a really great job in Minnesota, moved out to California and started as a QA tester. But I was impacting gameplay. Then after about 8 months as a tester they moved me into production for a few years and now I'm in marketing.

GamersInfo.net: Do you enjoy working for LucasArts?
Chris Susen: I love it. LucasArts has had its up and downs over the years. We put out some games of questionable quality a couple years ago and harmed our relationship with the consumers, with our fans. Everybody wants the best game - always. We admit we made some sacrifices due to budget/time constraints and things like that. But, now take a look around the booth - Knights of the Old Republic won over 40 Game of the Year awards, KoTOR2 is going to be just as good; Battlefront - our hottest selling game, ever; Star Wars Republic Commandos is shaping up to be a great game and that was developed internally; Star Wars Galaxies is just an amazing game. If you look around, it's just awe-inspiring.

GamersInfo.net: What's your favorite LucasArts game?
Chris Susen: Mercernaries without a doubt.

GamersInfo.net: Your favorite game of all time?
Chris Susen: My favorite game of all time would be one of two…maybe three: Grim Fandango, which is one of the reasons I targeted this company - it's one of the best games ever; Heroes of Might and Magic III from 3DO before they went bankrupt. Or, maybe Diablo 2, also…

GamersInfo.net: Back to Mercenaries for a moment, in terms of the avatar you'll be playing - do you have options or is just "joe-grunt" with a hairy back and a big gun?
Chris Susen: It's a good question. We have three mercenaries to choose from: we have Matthias Nilson who is just sleek - he is by far the most fit character and is able to run very quickly; we have Jennifer Mui, she is a British operative so she has the ability to sneak up on people and take them down before they even know she's an enemy; and then we have Chris Jacobs, the American, he's very heavily armored but he's not very fast. When you start the game you get to choose one of those three characters.

GamersInfo.net: So then your opponents in the game won't necessarily open fire on you simply by you walking up to them…
Chris Susen: Not only that, but you can hijack a North Korean truck and drive it into North Korean airbase but they're not going to let you out of the truck.

GamersInfo.net: Do you have the ability to disguise yourself through using other uniforms, etc?
Chris Susen: You don't. But you do have the ability when you get into vehicles and that would be a disguise. If I get into a South Korean truck they're going to see me as South Korean; if I'm in a Chinese truck they're going to see me as Chinese. You can also give away your disguise as well. Say you want to sell your North Korean truck to the Russian Mafia. Well, you're going to appear to be North Korean and they're going to start shooting at you. So, you'll need to have a signal such as honking the horn so they'll know it's you.

GamersInfo.net: Are the various factions active in the world while you're playing? Could you come upon a North and South Korean contingent in battle and accidentally step into it?
Chris Susen: Absolutely. Not only are they active in the world but they play a huge role. If you shoot a South Korean member your faction is going to go down but to add to that, we have missions that you can only complete if your faction standing is very high.

GamersInfo.net: In terms of gameplay, how does health, damage, your survivability work? If you take damage do you do something to bring it back or do you have different types of wounds that you sustain?
Chris Susen: No, it's very basic. You have 100 hit points and as you take damage your hit points go down. But we have med-packs that can come to you. We want it to be challenging, but we also want it to be fun.

GamersInfo.net: Are there different levels of difficulty for the play?
Chris Susen: No, it will actually dynamically adjust to your play. As you're playing through and you're not doing very well, the difficulty will adjust and maybe it will feed you more help or throw fewer curves. But you'll probably never notice the adjustments at all.

GamersInfo.net: Is this being developed only for the Xbox?
Chris Susen: It's Xbox and PS2. It's interesting that you ask. So, what we've done with Mercenaries is we've developed in layers. We have the platform layer and then we have the gameplay layer. So, we can push things on the Xbox that won't work on the PS2 and vice versa. You're going to see graphics on the Xbox graphically you won't on the PS2 - you'll see normal mapping, specular mapping (you'll look at a car and it's going to shine when the sun hits it), bump-mapping. You won't see any of that on the PS2.

GamersInfo.net: Is this to be only a single player game?
Chris Susen: It's a single player game only because we really wanted to knock the single player game out of the park. If it's successful in the marketplace and we do a sequel, we'll certainly add multi-player capability at that time. We want to keep our eye on the ball as far as making the most gratifying gameplay possible.