It goes without saying that there are a whole lot of World War II-based first-person shooters to choose from. However, Activision and Infinity Ward's smash hit, Call of Duty, manages to distinguish itself from the pack. With Call of Duty, Infinity Ward took the cinematic nature of the war, from the epic battles to the sheer chaos of combat, and translated it into a thrilling and exciting game. Now the company is working on Call of Duty 2, which promises to up the intensity and realism, as well as the gameplay, across the board. The sequel was just announced last month, so, naturally, questions abound as to what to expect. We'll definitely hear more about Call of Duty 2 at E3 in a couple of weeks, but for now, we managed to catch up with Vince Zampella, chief creative officer of Infinity Ward, and Zied Rieke, the game's lead designer, so we could grill them about the game.

Brit fans take note: You get to play as, not one, but two different British characters in the game.

GameSpot: Could you discuss the different soldiers that you'll get to play as in Call of Duty 2? In previous games, you played as American, British, and Soviet soldiers. Will any familiar faces from the first game, or United Offensive, return? Or do we have a whole new group?

Zied Rieke: Call of Duty 2 features new battles and new military units, so your comrades will be mostly new faces as well. However, our favorite character, Captain Price, the British officer with the big red mustache, will make a heroic return. The shoes that you'll have to step into in Call of Duty 2 belong to Private Vassili Ivanovich Koslov, a regular in the Soviet Red Army. The game begins with the story of the private fighting just 20 miles from Moscow against the German blitzkrieg. There are two characters on the British side: Sergeant Davis of General Montgomery's 8th Army and Tank Commander Welsh of the British 7th Armored Division (the famed "Desert Rats"). For the American side, you'll take the role of Corporal Bill Taylor, a member of the US Army's legendary 2nd Ranger Battalion.

GS: We've already seen famous battles such as Stalingrad, the Battle of the Bulge, and the Fall of Berlin in the first Call of Duty game and expansion. What battles can we look forward to in Call of Duty 2, other than Toujane (which we've already seen), and is there a danger of covering ground that's been covered before?

ZR: Last thing first... The only Call of Duty battle we are returning to in Call of Duty 2 is Stalingrad, and that's just because it was so epic, so mind-bogglingly huge, and so important to the entire war that you could easily make five to six games about it and just get started on fully depicting it all by itself. Other than Stalingrad, we are also featuring the winter war where, in 1941, the German army rolled to within 20 miles of the gates of Moscow before the terrific cold and the tenacity of the Russians brought it to a halt. A new setting for us is North Africa, where we are featuring battles in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt between Montgomery's 8th Army and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his famous Afrika Korps. The best known of these battles is the huge and critical battle of El Alamein, where the British went so far as to make fake tank units, using wood and paint, in order to trick the Germans into defending in the wrong place. As you can see, there is so much of the war left to cover. There are also a couple more very exciting battles that we'll be showing and talking about at E3 this year.

GS: The vignette system is supposed to let players jump between the three different characters (American, British, and Russian) when they want. Could you explain in detail how this works? At the end of each mission, do you simply choose to switch to another storyline? What's the purpose of this?

Vince Zampella: We've given you the freedom in Call of Duty 2 to play how you want, and because of that, you can choose to become more involved in each character's story by staying within one vignette at a time, or you can play through the war chronologically, year by year. The game is divided up into many different missions or "vignettes." Through these vignettes, you experience the story of four different common solders, representing the Russian, British, and American campaigns. The action begins in 1941, during the Russian campaign. After you complete the first mission, the following year, 1942, is unlocked. Then you can proceed to continue the Russian storyline that you've begun, or, alternatively, you can open up a British mission and begin that vignette. And the experience unfolds from there, with the American campaign coming in to play later in the timeline. So, as you go deeper into the game, more of the game is opened up. You can jump back to return to any existing vignette whenever you want. This gives you so much more freedom to play Call of Duty 2 the way that you want to and still get that Call of Duty experience.

The game covers the 1941 winter invasion of Russia, where the Germans froze and stalled at the gates of Moscow.

GS: In the first Call of Duty, players could control tanks and even sit in the gunner's position on a B-17 bomber in the expansion. We understand that the sequel will have much-enhanced vehicle interaction. Tell us about which vehicles players will drive and/or fly in the sequel. Are there any other new sequences in which players will take a secondary gunner or passenger seat?

VZ: It's a bit too early for us to nail down a set number of the various vehicle-based missions, but rest assured that in Call of Duty 2, we'll have not only driving, but also riding--plus providing escort--missions. As an example, one of the driving missions places players in a British Crusader Mark II tank in the middle of an epic desert tank battle. Immediately, players will notice the much larger scale of battle; we're talking an order of magnitude bigger than the original. In this particular mission, your orders are to take on the larger and well-armed German tank division of General Rommel. Players will be in a lighter, faster squadron of tanks battling these enormous Axis machines, and the action unfolds from there. Call of Duty 2 focuses on the infantry throughout epic ground-based assaults. In the sequel, there aren't any flying missions. It would take players out of the experience that we're immersing them into.