Bruce Springsteen is 65 years old. Two key members of his E Street Band have passed away in the last seven years. In fact, for a decade-long period that covered most of the 1990s, Springsteen and his band broke up, and The Boss spent most of the Clinton years not doing much of anything, musically.

All gameplay images (c)2015 Harmonix Music Systems, Inc.

The Beautiful People

“ Harmonix wants you to be able to put your own signature touch on them.

All gameplay images (c)2015 Harmonix Music Systems, Inc.

Pick Up Sticks

“ New drum additions include counting in your band when you’re ready to begin the song.

All gameplay images (c)2015 Harmonix Music Systems, Inc.

“ This new drum fill feature is backwards compatible.

Sing Sing Sing

Rock Band 4 First Screens 6 IMAGES

“ You don’t have to stick with the prescribed part; you can make up your own harmonies on the fly.

On the Road Again

“ Rock Band 4's campaign is, effectively, a Rock Band RPG.

Loading

“ Even the old, somewhat-obscure Rock Band Stage Kit will be compatible with Rock Band 4.

Born to Run

The point is, Springsteen was gone. Not forgotten, but gone. And then one day, he came back (2002’s The Rising album), and everything was both familiar and comfortable again, but also brand-new.Kind of like Rock Band.The story of its rise and fall in the last console generation has been well documented, but none of that even matters anymore. What counts is that Rock Band 4 is a real game , with the intention of being the only Rock Band game you’ll need for years to come. My band (read: IGN’s Mitch Dyer, Zach Ryan, and I) traveled to Harmonix Music Systems to see, play, and understand Rock Band 4. Yes, it’s getting back to Rock Band’s basics – guitar, drums, bass, and vocals, while ditching the keyboard – but it’s also energizing the game with five years’ worth of added wisdom and perspective, along with a new focus on self-expression that should help players live out their rock ‘n’ roll fantasies in a new way for the remainder of this console generation.“Personal expression is one of those areas where, when you’re playing a song, regardless of one of those areas, whether you’re playing in your parent’s garage, or playing on a giant stage at Madison Square Garden, the music doesn’t happen unless you play it,” began Rock Band 4 Product Manager Daniel Sussman. “And giving people that sense of ownership of the song is really important, and it’s a huge part of the fantasy, and it’s one of the things you want to do as the spotlight’s on you. It’s your moment to do something, and it’s not just about execution, it’s about expression.“And to me, that’s one of the big missing pieces of the Rock Band experience, and it’s where we’ve really doubled down. And not at the expense of the original gameplay, which was very refined, and well-presented and really fun, but across the board, for guitar, for drums, for vocals…I feel like we have features that really allow you as a player to color outside the lines. It’s a phrase [Rock Band 4 creative lead] Greg [LoPiccolo] uses a lot, and it’s not about specific thing that you have to do. It’s…as an artist, it’s what do you want to do? And as a developer, can we develop the tools to make you feel like you’re doing something amazing without any musical background or training? And that’s what this game is all about.”More impactful, however, are the new mid-song drum fills. Harmonix says it found most Rock Band players to be thrown off by the old system’s completely free-form fill sections, used to trigger Overdrive, and have responded in Rock Band 4 by authoring a massive suite of fun, realistic drum fills that the game will randomly throw at you, based on the song’s genre and difficulty.“If you have enough Overdrive power to complete playing the fills, the system will just serve up a random sequence of fills from a pool,” explained LoPiccolo, noting that, since not every fill is appropriate for every genre, they’ll have pools of metal fills, pop fills, country fills, etc. “Every fill that you play is completely in time and sounds great. They are all authored, but you have the real experience drummers have of having to be random every time through the song.”In other words, you’re going to get tailored drum fills that are more fun to play than wildly thrashing about.For singers, Harmonix hopes that Rock Band 4 will be the best karaoke game ever made. Not only will the vocal harmonies added in The Beatles: Rock Band return, but a dedicated group of the Rock Band fan community have gone back and authored harmonies for every previous song and handed it over to Harmonix. For free.One other clever touch on this feature: as you sing your custom vocal performance, your score multiplier meter fills up both clockwise (traditional scoring) and counterclockwise (Improvisation scoring). Thus, you’re able to mix and match singing by the numbers and going off-script, while still contributing to your maximum reward either way.We’ll have much more on this later in our month of IGN First coverage (along with the first batch of song reveals, instrument deep-dives, and much, much more).One after another, everyone I talked to at Harmonix said virtually the same thing when I asked them why they felt the time is right for the four-player, plastic-instrument-wielding multiplayer music game to return: they miss playing it with their friends.That the developers themselves want Rock Band back for the same reason I do – and are just as excited about it – comforts, reassures, and energizes me. This is a studio intimately familiar with the feelings of synergy, empowerment, and joy that stem from playing live music with and in front of other people – they were founded in 1995 and many of their employees still play in active, touring bands. And as anyone who has been to a great rock concert (like Springsteen’s) knows, when the group puts that much enthusiasm into the performance, the result is a show you’ll probably never forget.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews and Xbox Guru-in-Chief. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan , catch him on Podcast Unlocked , and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

Don't miss everything we're doing on Rock Band 4 all month long!