Freedom Force will be a revolutionary tactical role-playing game that will let you assume the roles of an evolving team of superheroes as they do battle against evil. The game will feature both an intense 3D tactical battle engine with fully destructible environments and a breakthrough superhero RPG skill system. Irrational Games' Ken Levine, the lead designer of System Shock 2, is the senior design consultant for Freedom Force. We pulled him aside and asked him some questions about the upcoming game.

GameSpot: How many superheroes will you be able to have on your team?

Ken Levine: We're toying around with that right now. Currently, you can take up to four heroes with you on any one mission. Unlike [the units in] a real-time strategy game, each hero will have an incredibly rich suite of powers and commands to utilize.

GS: How many different superheroes or types of superheroes will you be able to recruit?

KL: The single-player game will have around 20 different heroes altogether. There is a huge range of characters to choose from with wildly different powers. For example, there's The Ant, an incredibly agile superhero who can climb walls and burrow short distances, and ManBot, an incredibly potent entity "trapped" inside a suit of powered armor. We've even got sidekicks, such as Sea Urchin, the cute-as-a-button teenage girl who tags along with the noble and powerful Man-o'-War.

GS: Can you build a team of supervillains in the single- or multiplayer component of Freedom Force?

KL: You can build a team of villains in multiplayer (or, if you like, a mixed team of heroes and villains!). In single-player... well, you'll just have to wait to find that out!

GS: What kinds of attributes and superpowers will your team be able to learn? Give us a sense of some of the characteristics they'll be able to develop.

KL: Attributes are more or less permanent features of the heroes and villains. They can be simple things like claws or wings or more complex like a rubber body, which allows you to bounce around if you fall off a building. There are also disadvantageous attributes, like a tendency to go berserk and lose control in combat. Powers are things that can be developed during the game. There's an incredible variety of these including straightforward combat powers like energy projection and more wacky special powers like the ability to tunnel through the ground or stop time.

GS: What about Freedom Force itself? Will it be played from a first-person perspective like System Shock 2?

KL: Freedom Force is a multi-character RPG that lets you control a team of heroes from a "god's-eye-view" perspective. Freedom Force is not a Street Fighter-style fighting game, it is not a side-scrolling punching game, and it is not a linear action-adventure game. It is a complex tactical RPG that for the first time delivers the scope and vibe of what makes comic books so great.

When we thought about this issue in the beginning of the design stage, we tried to imagine what would really bring the player the experience of leading a team of superheroes. We tried to distill the key elements that make comic books great. For us, that was exciting, dynamic (and sometimes flawed) heroes and villains; slugfests that span city blocks; and missions, settings, and dialogue that remain true to the genre.

While we really tried to deliver an interactive environment in System Shock 2, Freedom Force takes that one (or two) steps further. Characters will be able to knock over buildings, hurl buses, attack enemies with lampposts - you name it. We're going to incredible lengths to give the player authentic environments in 1960s New York City that they can wreak utter havoc upon. You don't like Rockefeller Center? Here's your chance to do a little "remodeling!"