In a recent live text interview, Game Designer Philippe Therien expressed his concerns over the idea of returning to the hardcore FPS genre. PC gamers and fans of the original Xbox may remember the first Ghost Recon that featured one hit kills, and static life bars, which made it a truly grueling (and more realistic) experience. Therien doesn’t believe the market for such a game exists in today’s gaming world and he doesn’t sound very optimistic about that niche of the industry making a comeback. “I doubt we will ever go back to really hardcore only shooters,” says Therien, “the market was too narrow for it to be a viable business choice. We would like to be able to please both sides but compromises have to be made. We have some ideas to improve on the situation though - keep in mind however that we want our games to be accessible to as many people as possible, otherwise we just couldn’t keep making games.”

You can see that the possibility of additional, more hardcore game modes has not been completely ruled out. We all know that many developers are buying tickets to the DLC express these days and this is clearly an option for them as well.

Still, hearing things like this from someone who is obviously knee-deep in the development side of gaming is troubling, and when you also take into account the removal of 4-player co-op from the next Vegas title, fans of the hardcore shooter genre may feel like they’ve had their collective heart stepped on. All is not lost however, as games like COD4 and Frontlines show that a plethora of hardcore and casual game modes can still be crammed into a single game disc. The one thing that gamers can do to make sure the games they love are still created is to vote with their dollars.

Sadly, gamers will have to make a blind buy of the new Vegas title, as no demo is planned for Xbox Live or PSN. “Unfortunately there won’t be a demo.” Therien explained, “We took the decision to spend our time on polishing the game and the demo option was cut. It’s really time-consuming to create a demo and we needed the dev time to finish our game.” This is bittersweet news to fans of the first game. On one hand it’s a shame that we won’t get a taste of Vegas 2 before it launches, but on the other hand it’s extremely nice to see a developer take extra time to polish a game and make sure dedicated gamers are completely satisfied with the final product. Kudos to Mr. Therien, and I can’t wait to take my second trip to Vegas.

[See also: Rainbow Six Vegas 2 gallery]