An interview with Sion Lenton, Executive Producer of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon rising.

- Operation Flashpoint: Dragon rising is a fictional conflict on the islands of Skira. Can you give us in short the storyline behind it?
Essentially the game is set on a small island called Skira and this island is a real island, it really exists at the coast of Japan. We didn’t want to do Afghanistan, Iraq or a World War II experience. Basically, the economic crisis has hit a crucial point and China decides to claim the oil back that’s on the Island. It is always about oil, follow the oil you know! The conflict is growing between China and Russia, and the Russians ask the Americans to help them defend the island.

- It’s been a while since the original Operation Flashpoint on the PC. Can you tell us how long the game was in development and with how many were you working on the game?
The original game was released in 2001, which is, of course, a while back now! Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is about three years in development and there are approximately 100 guys working on it. It is a really big team.

- Was it hard to bring the game to the console? Where or what features has been cut of because of the limitations of playing it on a console?
From day one we decided it had to work on consoles. It wasn’t just a port of the pc version, because it really had to work on consoles. We are using our in-house engine called Ego. You would’ve seen this engine most recently in DiRT and GRID. It’s a very powerful next-gen engine that has been in development for a number of years now. All three versions of the game were built at the same time basically. For an accessibility point of view it was just a case of making it a fun experience working with the controllers you have. We wanted to achieve pc-depth with console accessibility

- How is the learning curve going to be?
It's a complex game, and we didn't want to simplify it. It isn't going to be as the first one, but it will be still a very challenging game. I am not worried making a game that is challenging. The most gamers are happy when a game asks the full concentration of them! If you make the learning curve visual, so that when you start the game you start as a private with no war-experience and by progressing in the story we screw the difficulty up. By watching and observating other AI-controlled soldiers you naturally learn how to fight.

- Can you tell us something more about the multiplayer? And about the Co-op mode?
There will be no offline multiplayer, nor an offline co-op mode. Online you can play the co-op mode with up to four friends.

- What kind of DLC plans do you have?
I can't give you too much detail but effectively we've got a lot of DLC-plans. The possibilities are almost endless. We can add new weapons, new vehicles and missions. We're looking at doing specific military force packs and proper full-on content expansions as well. So there's a lot of cool stuff coming your way.

Thank you very much for your time and good luck with the game!