At the Eurogamer Expo, Chris managed to go hands on with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, you can read his preview here, after playing a few rounds of the game on the PS3 version of the game, Chris interviewed Valve’s Chet Faliszek about the title. Hit the jump to read all.

Chris – What does CS:GO mean for the future of Counter-Strike in general?

Chet – We think CS:GO is the best version of Counter-Strike. So you can never force people to do anything, all we can do is make the best version of Counter-Strike we can, and the best looking version of Counter-Strike, and taking all the player feedback and incorporating that, and then we will see what happens.

Chris – Is CS:S still going to get updates?

Chet – Oh yeh in fact there was this big update the other day to the beta. We will keep supporting 1.6 with exploit fixes, and CS:S with the same thing. But we don’t want to change those games, while here in CS:GO during the beta we are willing to the feedback from the community and make something that may be different.

Chris – Can you tell us about the new Aresenal game mode?

Chet – Well look at CS:S, and one of the cool things of working on CS:GO is there is twelve years of data to look at, so with CS:S we saw how popular Gun Game was, and so we’ve actually contacted those guys, and are kind of working through with them, getting their feedback on it, so we’ve added what we call Arsenal mode, which is essentially a version of Gun Game. There are two versions, one is demolition and that is all about, we remove worrying about the weapons, so your objective is to plant the bomb and you cycle up through weapons as you go. We also have arms race which is the classic Gun Game where every kill gets you a new weapon.

Chris – What is mod support going to be like?

Chet – We’ll have the same level of mod support that CS:S has, so we’ve already started talking to some of the other modders as well with what they want to do, and what they need. During the beta we will probably get even more into that, and keep supporting them through release.

Chris – What is the difference between competitive and casual mode?

Chet – If like you want to play with your friends, and you still want to be competitive in the sense that someone still wins and loses right, but you want to be more laid back about it, you want to sit around and have all talk and not worry about the weapon choices you are making because you can have them all available. And so for that, it is more of a social way to play the game. And then when you want to be more focused, test your skills, your going to play with a skill based ranking. Matchmaking kicks in, and you are playing against people of the same skill level.

Chris – How is the skill based matchmaking going to work?

Chet – So there is an ELO ranking everyone will be assigned, and so as you play your ranking will either go up or down and you will be matched accordingly.

Chris – Is this the next step, along with DOTA, to making more e-sport games?

Chet – It is this weird thing of DOTA 2 and CS:GO were started and worked on independently of each other without that thought, and now as they are coming to maturity towards the same time, it seems that way. I think everyone at Valve, we get excited about different things at different times, and this is what we are excited about now.

Chris – How much feedback has the pro-gaming community given you?

Chet – So we met with the CS:S guys and some 1.6 guys at the very beginning, before we even announced it. Now we are talking with a lot of 1.6 guys, and actually in New York City, in Comic Con in October we are going to and have meetings with a bunch of 1.6 guys and actually let them play extensively and get feedback and they are going to do a demonstration tournament.

Chris – Do the 1.6 guys like the changes so far?

Chet – Some of the guys I think. ksharp put up a really good article where he talked about the need to have an open mind towards this happening, and to just update 1.6 with new graphics isn’t enough, it needs to be more than that, what we are doing so far he is pretty happy with. We will talk with him some more when we are in New York. All those guys, all the pros, we have a private forum to discuss just with them feedback and ideas. It is a bit esoteric right now because they aren’t playing the beta, once the beta gets growing, that kind of feedback we will see getting a lot stronger.

Chris – What changes are you making to the classic CS maps?

Chet – We looked at maps that weren’t being played, so like Dust_2 people are still playing like crazy, so that one works. But Dust we had seen dropped out of being used in competitions, so what is going on there? Oh there is a problem with T spawn a lot of times, we will move that up. One of the things we have done is standardised the spawns, so they are the same all the time. We’ve also opened up another path so the choke point is a bit more expanded. When you go down into the underpass to make sure that is a viable solution for T’s as well, while before, you pretty much get sniped if you go that route. We’ve given it a lot more things for you to hide behind, and ways to move down that area.

Chris – What is the idea behind the weapon choice wheel?

Chet – The wheel is just for the console players as an easier way to access that. PC players will probably have a more standard looking interface for that.

Chris – Will there be any free to play modes, are you looking at that?

Chet – Right now we are focused on making the best version of Counter-Strike we can make, we haven’t even thought about worrying about that yet. We will worry about that when we get closer to release.

Chris – What new weapons do you have?

Chet – There are eight new weapons, some of them are throwable and some are new weapons. We’ve updated all the weapons almost to make sure you have different choices along the way, and it is not just four weapons you are worried about.

Chris – Will there be a quick knife like in Call of Duty?

Chet – No, it is going to be the same as it always has been in the sense, it is about you making those tactical choices.

Chris – Is the bar across the top showing player icons and their dead or alive status going to be in casual and competitive modes?

Chet – Right now that is what it is, it is a lot of stuff we will iron out during the beta on how people feel about different aspects of the game. We are open to a lot of changes.

Chris – How is CS:GO going to solve the design issues such as readability of characters which TF2 avoided my moving away from realism?

Chet – What we did was look to the community again, and what the community was doing was what they call mid-model where there is just one model for each team as a way to distinguish quickly and so we’ve essentially brought that in. As you’ll see in this map here, there are variations to the model, but essentially it is the same model. Its not done out of not doing the work, it is done out of easier identification of the models. It is distinct, so when you are playing in the skill based rounds and you need to make that identification because friendly fire means something, you are able to do it quickly.

Chris – Finally, do you have any date for the beta?

Chet – We are saying early October, what will happen is it will roll out first with keys people have got from this show, and then the pros will be getting keys as well. Then it will start expanding out, we will give them out to sites to give them to their communities. We kind of want to roll it up and scale the beta, but by years end everyone will be able to be in the beta.