But if it accomplished nothing else, Homefront , in 2011, did a credible job setting up the idea that such a situation could happen. John Milius, the Red Dawn writer who had an easier job selling 1984 America on a Soviet invasion and occupation, consulted on the story and brought his A-game. Homefront spun a plausible, cascading series of incidents that led to North Korea annexing or dominating most of the Far East. The United States, meanwhile, was left friendless and resource-strapped, with a military bogged down in multiple foreign engagements, and a public sapped of any political will to fight, much less nuke the hell out of any nation that invaded — which you know we'd do if push really came to shove.

Crytek hopes its open world delivers a "living, breathing occupation."

Of course, the game went mostly downhill from there. Despite a premise more novel and scenes more emotionally compelling than anything Call of Duty, Medal of Honor or Battlefield had done since 2007, Homefront supported its story with a disappointingly short campaign, helping cement the current perception that the only worthwhile thing a military shooter can deliver is online competitive multiplayer.

THQ pressed on with a sequel anyway, but hired Crytek for the job after closing down the spent husk of original developer Kaos Studios and firing all of its demoralized workers. If there's reason for anyone to be happy in THQ's subsequent dissolution and the fire sale of its assets, it's that Crytek, the home of heavyweight shooter Crysis, ended up owning Homefront outright, and was liberated from creating a sequel that under THQ's command sounded like it would be more of the same.

"The original Homefront was quite a linear shooter," said Fasahat Salim, a Crytek designer for Homefront: The Revolution, which will be jointly published with Deep Silver. "That was kind of what we were," with the sequel at the time THQ imploded. "We weren't going completely with it, but it was kind of a level-by-level game.

"When we acquired the IP, all of a sudden we had the freedom to take this game wherever we wanted," he said. "We thought, what better way to do that than just go open-world with it."

That open world is the fightin' city of Philadelphia, seat of the American Revolution and the setting for Homefront: The Revolution, planned for launch in 2015 on PC (Windows, Mac OS and Linux) PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Its events unfold four years into the occupation of the United States by the Korean Peoples' Army, or roughly the year 2030 in the original canon's timeline. Players inhabit the persona of a fighter named Ethan Brady along his journey to becoming a radicalized American patriot.

Ideally, Salim said, Homefront: The Revolution will emphasize completing a single mission objective and running like hell from overwhelming reinforcements, as opposed to going full Rambo and shooting every enemy in the face.

"If you're gonna go in all guns blazing, you're going to get hit with a lot of firepower in return," Salim said. "They've got a lot of guns, they've got a lot of drones, they've got a lot of superior tech that you don't have. All of these things may come together based on how you approach the situation. If you can get in and get out before they have a chance to respond with all of their firepower, you've done well.

A short demonstration underlined that. Brady and his mates were tasked with busting some militants out of jail, and took advantage of an improvised bomb diversion elsewhere in the location to get into position. Salim later told me that diversion was not a scripted event; it was supposed to represent a human partner — there will be four-player online cooperative multiplayer — providing a big assist to the operation. (Salim would not discuss what multiplayer modes other than campaign co-op, if any, are planned for the game.)

Brady then whipped out a remote control car, slapped some plastic explosive on it, and drove it underneath a patrolling KPA troop vehicle to the door of the jail, where he detonated it. As Salim warned, heavy KPA reinforcements arrived to wipe out the resistance, and there was no realistic way to eliminate them. The only option was to retreat into hiding but it didn't matter. Brady and his cohort fought their way out of the area, content to have harassed the KPA and bolstered popular sentiment for the uprising.

Though what we saw appeared to be the optimal way to resolve the mission, Salim insisted players could accomplish it however they see fit. "You could have sat back and used a sniper rifle," he said, to eliminate the jail security before moving in on foot to open the door yourself. Other open-world encounters will entirely open-ended and subject to player interference. In one case, a civilian spewed profanity at an aerial camera drone, and KPA soldiers beat him to a whimpering pulp. If that pisses you off enough to fire on the soldiers, Salim said, go ahead, you'll just have to deal with the aftermath, which sounds like an escalating response similar to what you face in Grand Theft Auto as the star count rises.