“We get knocked unfairly for being too linear - we spent a lot of time in CoD2 trying to open it up. With our save system, it goes back 10-15 seconds before you die rather than at the start of the level - if we did the latter, you’d see how much choice you get during levels, but we don’t want to punish the player. We want to keep it moving forwards so you feel like you’re playing a movie.

“We do spend a lot of time crafting the cinematic moments because they can be seen from multiple directions - we never know where the player is going to be looking. So we have to really pack in the eye candy and you should feel the intensity…”

On to another Middle Eastern level, and this time you and the Force Recon squad have to rescue an M1A1 Abrams tank and work alongside it through the tight streets. The action gets more chaotic when the tank rolls over a car, crushing it in real-time, and you enter an area teeming with Al-Asad’s soldiers, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, grenades and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades, not copies of Diablo).

Explosions now have a physical shock wave - walls collapse sending rubble and dust particles into the air and vehicles can be shot to pieces and will blow up if damaged enough. You can now pick up grenades that have been thrown at you and chuck them back as well, with access to tear gas and flashbangs as well as smoke and frag grenades. The ballistics and impact of every weapon have been accurately modeled too, allowing you to use, say, a heavy machine gun to shoot through walls and ceilings to kill bad guys.