It’s the final part of our Endwar interview with Julian Gerighty, Ubisoft’s Editorial Content Director.

The whole game reminds me of that sequence in the movie Patriot Games, where we watch an SAS raid on a terrorist camp entirely through a satellite’s thermal imaging camera. It has that slight sense of separation…

That’s a good point. When I’m using the command vehicle, which provides a top-down view that cuts you off from all the sound of the battlefield, I feel really disconnected. But once you switch to another unit you’re right back in it and it’s much more visceral.

Are you worried that the game won’t find an audience on the current consoles?

I think there’s a real market for strategic experiences. Games like Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six – they are impossible to play just in terms of action. The real experience is when you’re managing your troops. So I think that the overall promise of World War Three, of controlling units with your voice, is a sufficient hook to get people interested. I could never figure out why strategy was such a big genre on PC but yet companies didn’t expect it to work on consoles. People like strategy, they like taking their time and thinking about things, they like an intellectual war. I don’t think that changes on console. Developers have been lazy maybe? Porting good PC games that make bad console games? I can remember the same sort of questions being asked about first-person shooters on console, you know before GoldenEye or Halo. But now, I’m sure if I asked 100 gamers what they played Call of Duty 4 on, more than half will say Xbox 360 or PS3. It’s become a legitimate genre on console – I hope EndWar is going to do more or less the same thing with the RTS.

Are you supporting clans with the game?

Yes, play group support is in the game already and it’s really important. The companion website is going to be vital here, too. It features the globe – the Risk board – so you can decide which territory your faction is going to attack that night in order to push or defend the front line. We’re also going to have an online white board to develop strategies – you’ll have all the maps from the game, including the uplink sites, and you’ll be able to draw on the white board to explain your tactics to your team – I think it’s called the tactical battle map. They have a similar thing in Battlefield – we got the guy who did that to do our website.

Going forward, do you see EndWar as the beginning of a series?

Has Ubisoft ever made sequels to Tom Clancy games?! I really just want to finish EndWar 1 and get it really polished. I think DLC is going to be a big part of this; I see the future of this game online. It’s almost like a sports game - the constant to and fro – and DLC will inject life into that.

Will this mean extra units and/or maps?

I see it as extra unit upgrades and abilities; I see it as more modes and different rules to play by on the battlefield. I also know we’re developing four vs four multiplayer as a free download post-launch. And extra territories. I love what Criterion is doing with Burnout – constantly updating it with free DLC, paid-for DLC, making that community live around the game. It’s great, it ensures people keep coming back…