Thanks to the original soundtrack and the star wattage of hip-hop mogul 50 Cent, Sierra struck gold with its first collaboration with 50 Cent: Bulletproof for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PSP. Video game critics weren't happy with the actual gameplay experience, and neither was Swordfish Studios, the new UK-based developer that Sierra handed the keys to the second iteration of the franchise. Swordfish licensed Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 to bring 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, to life. Julian Widdows, the game director at Swordfish, talks to us about what to expect when they step into the sneakers of 50 Cent and his G-Unit posse this fall on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

50 Cent shows off in one of six shots of bling and bullets.

What were your goals going into this game?

To develop a gamer's game that would appeal to 50 Cent fans and gamers alike; to deliver the sort of quality gameplay experience that they'd normally only find in the top 10 percent of released video games; to prove that you can release a licensed property that makes the best of the license and also transcends the license -- that is a game in and of itself. These were our overriding goals going into this game.

What were some of the things you chose to improve upon or erase from the original game?

More than anything we wanted to improve the quality ten fold and give the player what they'd always wanted from the first experience and didn't get. So you have a very tactile, accessible core experience, as well as an AI buddy, online collaborative play, more ways to make money, more takedowns -- this time interactive, more guns, and the points, scoring, combos and scenarios system hooked into the metagame and unlockable content. The game's stayed true to this vision throughout.

Can you talk about the gameplay experience for this title?

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand is a linear, narrative, set piece and scripted event-driven, third-person shooter played looking over 50 Cent's right shoulder. It's a collaborative experience in both single and multiplayer. At the start of each mission the player selects a member of G-Unit to join them: Tony Yayo, Lloyd Banks or DJ Whookid. We allow anytime join, and so if you're connected to the Internet and [you] are broadcasting your game, other gamers can take control of the AI buddy and start collaborating with you.

What kind of shooter is this?

At its core, what we've developed is a cover shooter. Unlike most cover shooters, however, we actively encourage open ground play and work to define a careful balance between tactically using cover in encounters that are more difficult and then working the open ground in easier encounters. Our controls and mechanics work together to encourage this balance. Harder enemies drive you into cover through use of grenades and rockets, while more straightforward enemies encourage you to move through open ground, getting in close for one of the 20 interactive takedowns.

How did the story evolve for this game?

When we were first asked to create this game, we were given a pretty high-level brief -- to take 50 Cent and position him in this exotic and fictional pseudo-Eastern setting. Taking this brief, the art director presented the team with a range of locations to choose from -- settings that would support the high-level goals but also allow us to create something surprising, something original. Once we started distilling this down into a list of probable locations, it became clear that all of us were driving towards a linear narrative experience rather than a HUB-based game. We very much wanted the sense of 50 Cent diving deeper and deeper into the criminal underbelly of this country the further he traveled through the game. A linear structure really supported this -- a journey into the heart of darkness, so to speak. These early decisions created the structure of the game we still see to this day.

Did any Hollywood talent help with the story of this sequel?

As the licensor became more involved in the development, we added another writer to the team, Kamran Pasha, who's currently producing Bionic Woman. Kamran helped us really bring the game world to life, producing the original working script for the title. A core of us have taken that working script and turned it into a cinematic shooting script, the script our chosen FMV house, Rainmaker, is using to create the cinematics. The result really focuses on key exchanges and critical relationships. We've worked to make the FMV's engaging and pointed -- none of them are there for the sake of being there. They all serve a purpose and help support the in-game narrative development.

What are the challenges of working with a game that incorporates real people into the gameplay experience?

In the case of 50 Cent and G-Unit, this has been remarkably easy. These are really pragmatic businessmen and they haven't been at all invasive, which has given us plenty of creative freedom. In many senses, because what we're creating is obviously a huge fiction, a fantasy not unlike a music video, the constraints have been easier to manage. Clearly, we've had to ensure the whole experience is the right side of plausible, but the whole hip-hop vibe has allowed us to be more playful than we could have been with a more mundane set of characters. These are big personalities who work well in a big setting.

Can you talk about the cooperative experience of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and what challenges this posed?

We've included cooperative online and leaderboard support in this game. As our last title, the PS2 shooter Cold Winter, had a very comprehensive online game, and as Unreal Engine 3 is in and of itself an online engine, we didn't really encounter many technical issues. More than anything, the challenges have been design-based issues, particularly to do with the interactive takedowns and the scoring system. Making sure that both these systems worked in both single and cooperative play modes has been a challenge.