SCEA director of development Seth Luisi (right) and his son Tazu

Coming off of the comic book-inspired stealth gaming bliss that was Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, we were initially unmoved by the relative austerity of the original SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals. But after dabbling with the multiplayer ahead of the PlayStation 2 game's August 2002 release, we gave the single-player story mode another shot, and found ourselves drawn in by the terse voice command system the game employs to to let players give orders to their squadmates; the tense, die-and-restart-from-the-beginning mission structure that forced us to carefully pick our way through each level; the terrific feel of the varied weapons that composed SOCOM's modern day arsenal. Even after the third and fourth games' emphasis on vehicles over close-quarters combat dimmed our interest, our ears nevertheless perk up when news from the SOCOM universe. At an event last month in San Diego, we got to chatting with Seth Luisi, director of development for Sony Computer Entertainment America and a 13-year veteran of the company who's been in charge of the Zipper Interactive-developed SOCOM franchise since its inception. In our extensive Q&A, we discussed why SOCOM fans prefer the second installment of the four console games that were released to date; the series' forthcoming Playstation 3 debut, SOCOM: Confrontation; and how new developer Slant 6 came to be involved with the series.

For the most part, fans of the SOCOM franchise are pretty vocal about their preference for SOCOM II. What do you think it is about that game specifically that they love so much?

Well, SOCOM II had these really nice, intimate experiences where there's a little more density in the environment, a little more interaction, more strategies you can use and a more closed or confined environment. SOCOM 3, in adding vehicles, the environments obviously had to grow, so we lost a little of that. We tried to come back to that a little bit with SOCOM: Combined Assault but we had a tight development schedule on that one; we could only take it so far. So in many ways with the new title we're trying to go back to that, and actually going above and beyond that and really focusing on the environments to make sure that they're even more dense and intricate than previously.

That's one of the things we really want to play up--we want you to always be careful when you're going around a corner, because you may run into five guys coming at you the other way. We want you to really look at the environment and have to learn it to know all the different paths and different intricate ways that you can navigate the environment, so that you can find your own special routes and routes at different ways through it; so that you can really use the environment a lot more than we had in previously games. Because we kind of want the environment to be more of a part of the game in this one.

So no vehicles then in SOCOM: Confrontation?

Not initially, yeah.

Not initially?

Not initially. We're going to focus on really getting that on-foot game play to where we want it to be.

SOCOM: Confrontation--is that title meant to reflect this new direction, this refocus on the intimate combat that people liked so much about SOCOM II?

Definitely. But it also reflects the fact that it's an online-only title, so it's all about getting online and getting into different confrontations. Doesn't quite flow off the tongue but...

How much did Sony and Incognito's decision to make Warhawk a multiplayer-only title influence the direction of SOCOM: Confrontation?

1. ARG...Is Bungie up to its old tricks again?
2. USA...American McGee's Shacknews Q&A
3. UMM...Sounds like wishful thinking to us
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5. RND...O.J. Simpson, Tony Blair critique media