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Matthew Wiggins, chief army programmer at Black & White Studios has his head buried in a book called The Art Of Warfare On Land, brow furrowed in a state of absolute concentration. He's been reading the text for months, painstakingly dissecting each page, every diagram of war and subtle battlefield formation, before attempting to translate them into game code.

His dedication to perfection and accuracy is an embodiment of the ethos at the studio, a 43-strong team working 12-hour days (16-hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays) - each an essential cog in this creative machine of game development. The collective aim is to produce one of the most ambitious titles in history, god-game-come-RTS, Black & White 2.

Matthew's desk is our last port of call in an exclusive tour of studio and game, a journey led by gaming legend Peter Molyneux and studio head Jonty Barnes. During our stay, we visit every nuance, subtlety and groundbreaking idea within the studio's epic vision, in the process revealing a game of huge potential. If all of its ambitious visions are realised, Black & White 2 could well change the face of strategy gaming forever.

Anew Beginning

But back to now. Still far from finished, B&W2's distinct parts are already melding into a potentially breathtaking whole of revolutionary physics, graphics and freeform gameplay. Mistakes were made with Black & White - the epitome of a flawed masterpiece - and Peter and Jonty, in their determination to right these flaws, are listening ceaselessly to the views and opinions of the B&W community. Their goal is to bring you a game with almost infinite choice and personalised gameplay, yet one with instant accessibility too. A tall order indeed, even for this pair.

B&W2's fabric, its very essence is based upon cause and effect, with every action creating a reaction. As Peter explained before we began our tour: 'The core of B&W2 is for the world to change to reflect what you're like, and to look after your people and creature. The game will mould itself to you, depending on how aggressive or peaceful you are.' Even how you choose to treat your people will decide what kind of god you become and which paths you ultimately tread.

Blessed Are The Greeks

Your role is to play as the god of the Greeks, a people on the knife-edge of annihilation, forced to flee their homeland by the barbaric Aztecs who are led by power-hungry high priests intent on world domination. Cast out to sea with the remnants of your race, you embark on a voyage to 12 beautiful and diverse islands populated by the Norse, Japanese, Egyptians - and of course, the bastard Aztecs. Your reaction to this neargenocide will be completely up to you.

If you want, you'll be able to follow the path of 'good' and concentrate on building up a thriving metropolis. In doing so, you can have Helm's Deep-like defences, full of vast buildings and farms, and let the game and the enemy come to you. On the other hand, you can just go out and reap your revenge on the jfc enemy by building huge armies and waging all-out war.

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The Laws Of Physics

But more on wars and battle tactics later, as our tour begins with a visit to the physics department. This is the one area that Peter Molyneux believes - more than any other - will shape the game and allow you to do things you've only ever dreamed of.

As with its predecessor, you'll control your on-screen actions via a giant omnipotent cursor-like hand, which use to pick up and manipulate any object in the world and cast a devastating array of spells. 'Imagine the ability to pick up and start to build things with your hand. The gameplay mechanics of that are almost infinite. Every object in B&W2 has its own properties: that's every tree, branch, pebble and rock, everything. This new physics system doesn't just apply to objects interacting with each other correctly, it also applies to their interaction with heat, light and water'.

Folding like a fat man punched in the gut the container collapses, ceramic splinters cascading to the floor, their descent merged with tumbling rocks and pebbles which ricochet off each other and scatter wildly across the ground. He repeats the process, again and again, each time the result different.

'Now imagine doing that at the top of a hill in order to start a giant landslide to attack a town below,' enthuses Peter. 'Or you may want to create a makeshift prisoner of war camp by putting people in one of these containers and half filling it with water. This means that the ones at the bottom are either crushed or drowned, and when you break it open, they all fall out correctly depending on whether they're dead or alive, wet or dry.'

Peter continues: 'You can be as destructive or creative as you wish. You can stack things, quickly and easily. You could create a barrier out of rocks and wood or any other object in the land, or make a giant seesaw with a plank and a stone, then put a rock on one end to make your own makeshift catapult.'

Hasta La Vista, Baby

Studio head Jonty Barnes interjects with an idea that came to him in a dream, in which he defeated Peter in a multiplayer game by freezing all his troops, then shattering them with rocks.

Peter looks impressed and makes a mental note, an example of the everevolving and open-ended development process that he both preaches and allows his team to practice. While the two jokily discuss their multiplayer prowess, Chris loads up a new level with a towering wall arching majestically across a valley floor.

Once again he picks up a boulder, and tosses it at the structure. But the wall holds firm. Instead, the rock shatters, its razor-like splinters dropping impotently to the grass. 'I bet you weren't expecting that, were you?' beams Chris with a hint of deserved smugness. 'Bet you thought the wall was going to crack didn't you?' I'm duly impressed. But it's time to move on and Peter and Jonty, now seriously considering the shattering troop idea, lead us on to another section of desks at the other end of the office.

Creature Discomforts

Anton Kirczenow and Sebastian Schoellhammer are Black & White Studios' 3D creature programmers. They're both clearly very passionate about their work, and on seeing us are already jockeying for position to be the first to show off their work.

On Anton's monitor, a titanic battle is unfolding between a gargantuan lion and a grey-haired wolf. The creatures, circling each other warily at first, suddenly spring into action, rolling along the ground as they battle for the upper hand. Their momentum slows and the regal lion is pinned to the floor by the now rabid wolf, which is viciously lashing out at its trapped prey, filling the air with a maelstrom of hair and skin with a barrage of ripping blows. But Peter wants to talk about the creatures' other abilities first, so Anton's demonstration will have to wait.

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'In B&W you couldn't instruct your creatures, but now they'll obey your instructions,' begins Peter, settling down in a seat between the two men's desks. 'You can choose from a lion, ape, cow, wolf and maybe a tiger, each of which has their own unique characteristics. A massive fault with B&W was that you had to sit and watch your creature the whole time and wait for it to do something before telling it whether it was right or wrong. Now you'll be able to see a list of things it's done recently, and punish or reward it accordingly - even if it's done the deed ten minutes ago.'

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A Quick Summary

Peter's in his stride now, furbishing me with golden nuggets of information on the subject of creature training, detailed enough to fill three previews. Here are the highlights. First off, there's 'the leash of mimicking'. You do a task, it does a task. Simple. Your creature can also learn by watching your behaviour, then act autonomously when it deems certain tasks need doing. Example? Your villagers run low on the game's only resource, ore, so it'll help to gather more. And if its actions satisfy you 'Oh Mighty One-Handed One', then you can place rewards in its all-new creature pen.

With Anton and Sebastian wanting to show us more, Peter is called away to an important call and Jonty takes over the tour, urged by his departing boss to tell me about the final new way of teaching your beast. 'There's a whole new mechanic called Blueprints. These teach your creature specific things, so you don't have to. These may vary from building a wall, repairing buildings or military tactics, such as using archers on high ground when it leads your armies.' With that, it's time to see Anton and Sebastian's amazing 'creature circus'.

The Good And The Ugly

Back to Sebastian, who's keen to show us his creation, a monkey. Presented on the screen before me is a giant ape, rotating. He shows off its bumpmapped textures, pointing to the leathery, horn-studded back of the maniacal creature that looks one banana short of a bunch. 'Even the scars will be bumpmapped,' he enthuses, injuring the beast so gaping gashes appear on its torso. I stare in disbelief, but with time running short, we have to move on again.

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Return To End

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And so we arrive at our final destination, the desk of Matthew Wiggins, head buried in The Art Of Warfare On Land. Looking up, he scrabbles to his keyboard to show us how he's putting theory into practice.

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'Some of the game's bigger battles will feature thousands of troops,' says Jonty as Matthew lines up a column of troops two-deep and 50-long at the base of a hill. 'You've got siege engines too, like catapults to knock down enemy walls, but it'll take a very long time, just like in real siege warfare,' he continues, while Matthew brings up several groups of enemy foot soldiers, and places them into a variety of formations.

Watching from above, they look like tiny dots, an army of ants, not a group of baying soldiers. As if sensing my trepidation, Matthew explains how you keep track of whose troops are whose. 'Certain coloured bubbles encircle your troop formations, making it obvious from above which groups of warriors are yours and how they're faring in battle.' Without warning, he unleashes hell. Ranks of red bubbled formations surge towards the thin, green bubble-enwrapped column on the hill, slowing slightly as they hit the incline, their wedged set-up cutting deep and scattering the defenders.

Zooming into the action, we can see the massacre up close: individually modelled soldiers are scrapping for their lives as their swords cut into flesh and send out a cacophony of screams from the straining speakers. However, just like the fallen, we've run out of time.

It's six o'clock and Jonty, Peter and the rest of the team still have five hours of work ahead of them. Their tireless and undying dedication to the job, a labour of love, a way of life, clearly paying off from the results I've seen. As I bid my farewells, it's hard not to be impressed. Although it's still some way off completion, if Black & White 2 can deliver on its promises, it could well be as near to a life-changing experience as a game can get. Time, as ever, will tell.