Shacknews interviews Ritual about their soon-to-be-released episodic content, SiN Episodes: Emergence, the first episode in a series of games in the SiN game world. They also have a new gameplay movie you can check out.

Shack: Have you made any kind of changes to the Source Engine to better serve SiN Episodes?

Ritual: We added a number of features to the Source engine so far. Obviously the most substantial upgrade is the dynamic difficulty system, which we talked about earlier. On top of that, we’ve got the Context Look system, which allows characters in the game world to respond to what the player is looking at. So Jessica can actually tell if you’re staring at her and respond accordingly. This system is also used in a few puzzles here and there, where the player has to find a certain object with JC’s help. We’ve also added locational damage for vehicles, so you can shoot through certain areas like the windshield, and even shoot off fenders and doors. The HardCorps vehicle in the game, for example, is pretty much fully destructible, so if you’re not careful, you might literally end up sitting on a board with wheels.

Preordering this game on Steam lets you play the original SiN before the game comes out on May 10th. You can see a gameplay video of the original game in action.