We’re counting down until he mentions the ‘r’ word. “It’s about realism,” says Clive Lindop, nine seconds into our recording. Lindop is the lead AI designer on the sequel to Operation Flashpoint, a game that was unforgiving in its attempts to recreate the lethality of real-world combat – and brilliant for it. Dragon Rising, despite a simultaneous release on supposedly sim-averse consoles, aims for even greater fidelity. But, Lindop says, this will actually make things a little easier.

“What made the first one really hard was that there was simply nothing there, and if you can’t hide anywhere that means death. Now, there’s cover. The other reason was that the AI in the original game had no fear of anything. It would see you from 400 metres away and take the perfect shot right through your eye.”

While a bullet is no less lethal in Dragon Rising, suppressive fire is the main use of a weapon. As Lindop says: “You don’t fire a gun for the first time and expect to get a kill, you do it to put a lot of bullets out in front of you.”

Combat in Dragon Rising is far from the close-quarters run-and-gun of Call Of Duty. Instead, the live demonstration sees the tense ascent of a grassy hill, shrouded in a cordite smog – pausing occasionally to spray bullets in the direction of an indistinct shape on the horizon, before speeding to the next patch of cover. Lindop pauses to say something about the tank accompanying the infantry surge – but sighs with resignation at the sight of its smouldering husk. Such are the risks of demonstrating a game with so much unscripted, emergent behaviour.

“We say to the mission guys: never, ever build a mission where the objective is a structure or a person, because you can guarantee it won’t be there,” says Lindop. “Like, ‘There’s a guy in this house who you have to meet’ – well, no, you won’t, because he’ll be dead.”

The fight doesn’t wait for the player, Lindop explains: “You are not the centre of the universe. You could even just hide behind some cover and do nothing. The combat will continue around you – it’ll play out to the bitter end. Your role is to make a difference – to go in there and tip the balance in your side’s favour.”

While battles rage on regardless of player action, Dragon Rising doesn’t wholly commit its 85 square miles (220 square kilometres) of island to the idea of an open-world war. Instead, the game’s progress is broken up into enclosed episodes within the greater campaign, each with clear conditions for failure and victory. Nonetheless, there is a degree of persistence between missions – assault an anti-aircraft position and you may find your life as a helicopter pilot a lot easier down the line, but it would be a shame if this was the limit of the main campaign’s dynamism. Operation Flashpoint has already established itself as the antithesis of the linear cinema offered by other military shooters – with Codemasters’ Ego engine drawing an entire island, Dragon Rising has the potential to create a simulation of conflict on an unprecedented scale.