Let's talk about destructible props. We're not making Red Faction where you can blow through everything you see; some things are destructible, some things aren't. What's the process of how you decide what will be destructible and what won't be?

A lot of what we've done so far has been gameplay stuff, and that will always play an element. So we'll get the design team coming to us and they'll be, okay, we want to have this new game mode and part of it is you've got to go and find this thing and destroy it, and it's the first person to destroy it, or that sort of gameplay element. Or it might be that we want these particular cover assets to be able to take cover behind them, but then as you're taking cover and taking fire, they start to come apart, and that sort of stuff. We are making a high-fidelity game, I guess is the right way of saying it. So generally our assets fall into a few different categories. We have our set piece props, that would be tables, chairs, lockers, the larger stuff that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be physicalized. If you bump into it, it's bigger than you, so you're not going to really affect it that much. So that stuff tends to be static. We then have our destructible gameplay ones, which are things that hurt if you shoot them. Environmental hazards. So like gas canisters and the like. And then we have more of our dressing assets, which are generally the stuff that you would be able to pick up. It's still fairly early days with being able to say, oh yeah, every single thing that you can pick up in one hand, you can shoot and be destroyed, because we don't have the data on how much that's going to impact our performance and all that side of things. But that's the goal, really. The goal is that if it looks like you can shoot it, you should be able to shoot it. That's where we want to be.

Anything that's not bolted down really should be physicalized, for the most part anyway. Apart from the Big Benny's machine, because that seems to be physicalized anyway. That's been physicalized since day one, right?

It is. The Big Benny's machine was accidentally physicalized in the early builds. It was not intended. There were several Big Benny's machines in that level, but only one was physicalized, and that began the Big Benny's run. It's a happy mistake.

Being in zero G obviously has an impact. But yeah, things that are bolted down stay bolted down. But generally, we want to have a good variety of things that you can shoot.

And just things like a melon. I feel like it's a bit of a crime in a game if you see something like a melon and you really want to shoot it, but you shoot it and nothing happens. You get a wood particle effect or something. It gives you that sort of texture in the universe when you know these things are actually made of the substances. Well, they act like they're made of the substances they appear to be made out of, right?

Yes. You've got the VFX guys, and they care about what happens when you shoot things. You've got the audio team, and they really want to support these systems with beautiful sounds that are different depending on what it is you're shooting. The ethos is that you want stuff to act how you expect it to. You want it to be that immersive experience.