Fresh off of a hands-on demonstration of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars on the Xbox 360, I had the opportunity to sit down with id Software's Kevin Cloud, executive producer of the upcoming shooter.

During our time together, the developer spoke about the simultaneous development of Quake Wars on consoles and PCs, creating an all-in-one objective-oriented experience, and more.

Shack: Recent years have seen the release of several team-oriented first-person shooters on consoles. What sets Quake Wars apart from the competition?

Kevin Cloud: Keep in mind that in terms of this type of gameplay, the origins of it is Return to Castle Wolfenstein's multiplayer, which Nerve and I worked together on, and that introduced the character class system and the objective-based system. That has evolved through Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, which was played by millions of people and still has a good following, and has been refined for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

The classes have a real meaningful role to play in the game--they're not just equipment load-outs. When you're playing a medic, you're definitely doing the job of a medic. There are things for players to explore and learn about a class in terms of feeling the class out, but once they know them it really makes a difference in how they approach the game. That doesn't really exist in a lot of the other games where, really, the only difference is in what weapon you're carrying.

The objective-based gameplay is very unique. The idea of sort of focusing the team on a common objective and having everybody sort of work together to accomplish that creates this sort of intense combat--we're not spreading people across the battlefield--and the way the gameplay progresses as you accomplish that objective and move forward to the next. This is not like a point system type of game, it really creates this intensity in which the accomplishment creates this sort of hero moment that you don't have in other games.

For this type of gameplay, going all the way back to Wolfenstein multiplayer, the idea of getting people to work together as a team has been important for us. We've created a lot of systems to sort of direct people to do that. One of them is the proficiency system in the campaign. Players that are basically going around and doing the class the way their team needs it, like a medic reviving people or a soldier blowing up stuff, they're gaining XP. And as they gain XP, they're able to gain rewards for themselves.

It gets people to work together, because as an engineer--you want him to repair, and he wants to repair because he'll get XP for it. When the players are playing it, there's a lot more sort of teamplay involved--you really get a sense of that that you may not get in other games where you just have different character classes.

Turn the page for more on Quake Wars' design philosophy, downloadable content plans, and an update on the id Tech 5 graphic engine.