Bearing much in common with Epic’s series, Dark Void also bucks the trend for cussing, head-stomping sports-stars-cum-space-marines in action games.

What’s more, it finds a small opening between that and another towering cliché, the Parkour-loving platformer. Inspired instead by boyhood fantasies like The Rocketeer and Back To The Future, its course, which also neatly dissects the east/west divide, is no accident.

“In the western style, and certainly in the thirdperson realm, your character is more like an avatar,” says Gray. “So Master Chief’s this guy you can pretty easily slide into. But there’s an educational process that everyone understands with Dark Void.”

Will is a well-defined character, he continues, with a backstory and personality expressed through every cutscene and interaction. “He’s more the lens into this fantastical world. There are other primary actors but the player’s always in the driving seat.”

Still, Inafune was quoted recently as saying that Will himself ‘needed work’, Gray conceding that: “What we’ve shown so far still isn’t hitting the mark.” The feedback was invaluable, though, focusing more on reflecting character through action than, say, giving the hero more lines.

“Subtleties like Will kicking a fallen enemy exoskeleton as he walks by,” says Gray, “little things that convey more than just mugging for the camera. The alien environments come later, we’re told, changing to mirror his incredible abilities.

“It gets crazy,” says Gray, though Inafune’s advice still rings in his ears. “’Don’t rush it’, he said, ‘you’ll get to the cool stuff soon enough’,” he recalls. “’Take your time to build up Will and enter him into this world. Play with the expectation’. That was revelatory; we just wanted to pick up the jetpack and go.”

So the game you’ll see on the box is delivered gradually, first as Gears Of War-style run-and-gun, then as PilotWings-style hover, and finally as the complete Rocketeer package full of daredevil corkscrews, kamikaze bombing runs and last-ditch 180s. Fleshing each of these out to several hours apiece has challenged Airtight, each game type having to stand on its own merits.

“We don’t want to bait and switch,” says Gray. “We need every aspect to be as competent and pleasurable as possible. But the Airtight guys have the Crimson pedigree and my first job as a designer was on the X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter series, which is all about the fun of flying. It’s not Falcon 4.0, anyway.

That’s our goal: to have enough realism not to feel like complete rubbish, but enough else to give people what they want: stunts, guns and tricks. OK, so a few weird people want to fly from airport to airport; we can’t help them, sadly.”