I got the chance to play Mountaintop Studio’s first game that has been in the works for the past four years. It’s another tactical shooter but it’s not like any you’ve seen before… trust me on that. Spectre Divide is a genre-evolving 3v3 tactical shooter driven by duality. Duality is a big part of this game and what sets it apart, and I’ll get into all those details in just a moment.
Not only did I get to play Spectre Divide early to bring you this Hands-On Impressions, I also interviewed Game Director Lee Horn (Valorant, Apex Legends, League of Legends) and Mountaintop Studios CEO, Nate Mitchell (Oculus), who gave us deeper insights into the development process of Spectre Divide and what it has to offer.
Hands-On Impression of ‘Spectre Divide’
I got to play roughly 2-3 hours of Mountaintop Studio’s latest game, Spectre Divide, a game that’s here to change the definition of a tactical shooter. I’m usually extremely cautious when hearing there’s any new type of game in a genre. Marvel Rivals and Concord were two of the most recent hero shooters to be announced. Marvel Rivals has the Marvel name attached to it which has me hooked as a Marvel fan, but as a hero shooter, it does nothing new. Concord is an original game, and while they’re trying to advertise features that seem exciting, it doesn’t seem like they’ll work in practice, and it’s once again another generic hero shooter.
When first discovering Spectre Divide, I just thought to myself that this was going to be another generic tactical shooter. Valorant had just come to the console and I’ve been having fun with my friends. What makes this game any different from that? I was wrong to think that, as this game has one feature that sets it apart from any tactical shooter game: duality.
When starting out my session, I first played the tutorial to get a grasp of the game and understand how this duality feature really worked. Duality is a feature in Spectre Divide that allows you to have two bodies: your body and your spectre. This allows you to have two lives during your rounds and opens up many different play styles and opportunities. The tutorial also reveals several more things such as Reveal Zones. These are zones that are activated during the first 30 secs of each round; entering the zone will alert the enemies of your location and these locations are ideally used to flank through the enemies’ spawn to end up behind them.
There were also minor additions such as the way you aim in this game. They have what they called true to crosshair accuracy. Usually, in tactical shooters, you gotta be still when shooting and track where you’re shooting as the bullets start to stray from where you’re aiming. There’s none of this in Spectre Divide and as someone who isn’t the best at these games and rarely plays on their PC, it makes the experience more welcoming.
This game has one game mode at the time of writing this and that’s Search & Destroy, which is very common for a tactical shooter. In Spectre Divide, you’re either attacking or defending. If you’re attacking, it’s your job to plant the Zeus and defend it. If you’re a defender, it’s your job to stop the Zeus from being planted and if it already has, then it’s your job to defuse it. Thanks to the addition of duality, you can begin planting the Zeus, switch to your spectre and defend yourself. It goes the same way if you’re defending; begin the defuse, switch to your spectre and defend yourself. This is an example of how duality begins to spice up the gameplay.
Before the start of each round, you can buy your loadout. There’s a section for beginners that will help ease them into the game, but if you’re a veteran at tactical shooters, then you can make the decision for yourself. When buying a primary weapon or a secondary, you’re buying one for yourself and your spectre. This was slightly confusing as at first, it looked like it was a primary weapon and my secondary weapon, but that was simply me not thinking as there was also a secondary tab which I never touched. The buy shop is also split into five tiers, each tier being more expensive with better weapons to use.
As mentioned previously, duality can be used in many ways to switch up the way you play. Do you want to do your usual fake a plant at A site and flank to B site? Well, don’t worry because this will be the quickest you’ve ever done this. With duality, you can leave your spectre with the Zeus at B site, begin attacking A site, and as soon as the enemies begin making their way over to you, switch to your spectre and plant. By the time they’ve found out that it was a fake-out, it would’ve been too late by the time they switch back to their spectres.
As for when you’re playing on defense, you can put your spectre on B site while you stay at A site, staying ready for any sort of flanks or any attack on any side. The switch between spectres is flawless and it doesn’t feel like it’s interrupting the flow of the gameplay. The only downside (which isn’t really a downside) is you won’t be a pro with duality when you first start. It’ll take you a few matches to handle it and even after I played a few matches myself, I was still making mistakes with my spectre such as forgetting to bring it along with me or accidentally doubling it up in my body, making it easy for the enemy to kill both me and my spectre.
Matches last eight rounds, with the first team to win eight rounds winning the whole game. If both teams end up on 7 rounds won each, it ends in a tie. This is an interesting decision as it usually just goes into overtime but it is a feature that I’m fond of because although these matches last long, it doesn’t mean I want them to last forever, and going into overtime can only be frustrating. Going into a tie ends the game and doesn’t ruin anyone’s win-to-loss ratio.
On the main menu from left to right, there are seven tabs and I’ll briefly go into what they offer. The first tab is called Sponsors. As this game doesn’t have individual characters that you play as, the abilities come in the form of sponsorships, and as of playing the game, there are currently eight in total and they all offer different play styles. One sponsorship may offer you grenades, flash grenades, and an adrenaline boost while another sponsorship allows you to throw down a breakable shield and a smoke that deals damage to enemies inside. Some abilities within the sponsorships sometimes have two effects, a main one for your player and then another one when you switch to your spectre. I might not be the right person to experiment with these and find the best ways to use them but I can expect that pro players will show the true potential of Sponsorships. I only got my hand on two but got to experience my teammates using some others that I didn’t get to touch. Choosing sponsorships works like choosing a character; if your teammate has chosen a sponsorship, then you’re locked out of choosing the same one.
Next up is Crew. Unfortunately, it wasn’t something I got to experience myself but after playing 3 matches, I did automatically get put in a crew. Though I can’t give you my own personal experience with that feature, Lee Horn goes into detail during the interview on what exactly the Crew system is. Next, we have the locker where you can customize your character and spectre by changing their head shape, hair, outfits, voice, etc. I love being able to customize my characters in video games but when the options are limited like they are in Spectre Divide, it can be quite disappointing. When exploring the hair options, it only had the two basic hair options for black people, which was a shame as they also didn’t look good on the character and it almost discouraged me from making the character I wanted, but I still pulled through and went with the next best options. I’m hoping in the future more options for customization can be added, and it seems like that’s a possibility with what the store offers, so maybe our issue will be fixed sooner than expected, but in a way that isn’t ideal.
The next tab over is Weapons, where you can view all the weapons in the game and equip your purchased skins. Spectre Divide allows you to have different skins equipped depending on whether you’re attacking or defending, which is an interesting feature that allows you to showcase two of your favourite skins in one game. We then have the Play button, which is self-explanatory. The next two tabs are Career and Battle Pass, which were locked for the test, but hopefully in future tests, Career will be unlocked as it’ll be nice to look at stats and see how well or how badly you’ve been playing.
The final tab is the Shop. I won’t go into too much detail as it gets touched on in the interview, but the store is where you can purchase weapon skins or outfits for your characters. There are bundles for weapon skins that were featured in this preview build and just like Valorant, you could upgrade to add effects to the fun. These upgrades would either cost the in-game currency, or you could activate an endorsement which is also a feature you can use for unlocking sponsorships.
Overall, I had a great experience with Spectre Divide. With 3 maps in rotation, I got to play on two of them, Mill and Metro, with Metro currently being my favourite thanks to its design. The art style used for the game makes it look like it’s come straight out of a 90’s anime, and although the gameplay already sets this apart from its competitors, the choice of art style also helps with that too.
The game is extremely friendly to newcomers with making aiming easier and having gameplay mechanics such as receiving free heavy armour if you’ve lost three rounds in a row. This is a game that I can easily see myself playing with my friends, and thanks to it being solely 3v3, I don’t have to worry about queuing up with a random who could easily throw the entire game for us.
Now if what I said wasn’t enough to make you excited for this game which is being developed by an indie company, then hear what Nate Mitchell and Lee Horn have to say about it.
INTERVIEW W/ NATE MITCHELL AND LEE HORN
Chris: I got to play a couple of hours of Spectre Divide, 2 days ago, and I had such a blast. One of my main concerns when I hear there’s going to be a new tactical shooter is how is this going to be different from the tactical shooters we already have, and Spectre Divide sets the bar high. There’s a big difference between Spectre Divide and games such as Valorant.
For everyone that’s going to have watched the reveal trailer, I wanted to ask if there’s anything else that you could say that would get them on board or make them understand the game better? What Spectre Divide is, why this is the game they should be playing, and what sets it apart from all of the tactical shooters that are already out?
Lee Horn: I think the biggest thing for us is duality. That is the magic of this game where you get to play two bodies at one time. You get to live out a lot of your tac shooter dreams. You get to cover your own cross is one of our famous moments where, you set up the right defense. You get to play both angles and fool the enemy and get them, and that is something that you can’t do in any other game. You get to live it here. You get to play more every round. You get to get more kills, see more action.
So I think you’re just having more fun for more of the time, which we love. Also, I think tac shooter players love mastery. Right? They love going really deep on the game, learning and feeling improvement over time, and we’ve threaded duality through every aspect of the game. So in the maps, in the weapons, in the store economy, in the abilities, and in the core gameplay, it’s all in a familiar wrapper but it’s new challenges and learning those things, really sets you apart. You get this awesome feeling of, like, I mastered these things. We’re also a small team format, so we’re 3v3. We love that because it’s much easier to find two other people to play the game with.
You know, everyone has two friends they can play with, but finding four is much harder. I think we can all relate to that. You get shorter matches and much easier comps. So, like, you know, if the three of us are playing, you know, it’s a lot easier to communicate and hear what’s going on and understand and have it go all through your head. The last big one for tac shooter is that we are ADS gunplay first. So now you can move and shoot, which is huge.
I mean, there’s a lot of freedom and we have true to crosshair accuracy. So you see the dot, that’s where your bullet’s gonna go. It’s not like it kinda goes as you shoot more and spray, it goes above it. There’s none of that. It’s all exactly where you wanna go. So we think that will also help new players get into the game, which is great.
They’ll be able to understand the shooting model. It’ll make sense but it’s still, again, has all that great depth. We have recoil patterns. You have to learn them. You know, mastering those will get you more kills. We love the space that this, you know, these three things have kinda created perspective.
Chris: I’m gonna pick out on a few things that you’ve mentioned there about Spectre Divide. The first one being duality. When playing the game, it took me quite a bit to get used to having two bodies. I’m so used to dying and then being mad that I’m dead and just going on my phone while the rest of the round continues. But in Spectre Divide, I can’t; there’s no time to do any of that.
As soon as you die, you have to get ready on your next spectre and get back to the point. It’s very fast-paced and I wanted to ask how the concept of duality was conceived for this game?
Lee Horn: So we were inspired by small team formats. So we started with 3v3, we played a lot of Halo Doubles, Destiny’s Trials, even CS Wingman and things like that were all inspirations. We love the small team format for all the reasons I mentioned, like, the social benefits of that. So we were playing that, but we were playing with one life and when you have, like, one defender on each site and one in mid, what you find is, you rush in, you kill that defender and, like, the map is solved. Right? It’s like, I know you can basically just run around and you’re, like, I’m good until they rotate. We’re having a good time but, there’s not enough uncertainty there. So we tried a bunch of things. We’re big on experimentation and rapid prototyping.
We tried a bunch of things and then one night it’s kind of a moment of, wait a minute, what if I could just be in two places that would solve the problem? We put it in, like, the next day, the core nugget and it worked and we’re like, oh my god, this is, like, solving the problem, and then from there, it was refining all, the timings and how much, you know, how much is it a strategy tool? How much is it an action tool? Really kinda honing it to where it’s more of a strategic positioning tool than a twitch-based kind of, gotcha.
So it’s really born out of solving 3v3 and making 3v3 work. We think it’s something that you can only find by going really deep and really trying to solve the challenges of 3v3. I think it’d be hard to come up with out of the blue. You know?
Chris: No. Absolutely. It absolutely works. I feel like the gameplay was smooth, even being able to switch between both spectres throughout the game was very smooth and effortless. I really did enjoy it and I do think duality is something that people are gonna pick up on and speak about a lot once this game is available for people to play. So I can’t wait for it to be the talk of the town.
My next question here is for Nate. Nate, you’re a co-founder of Oculus, and I wanted to know how it felt from working at a company that is solely just revolved around VR to now coming into Mountaintop and working on a game that’s a tactical shooter. How was that transition for you?
Nate Mitchell: It was pretty straightforward. I think it just comes back to my background. So I got into engineering and computer programming because I’m a lifelong gamer. So as a kid, I was like, alright, I know I wanna make games. Then I found programming. I was like, okay, I wanna program games. That is my path.
My career is really at the intersection of games and tech. You know, sort of my passion for games is what made me really good at my role at Oculus too, and then you know being here starting Mountaintop working with Lee and art, you know our incredible team, it’s another round like Oculus of having an incredibly talented group of people and I think building something really special for folks who are passionate about this space. Right?
At Oculus, it was building a VR headset for folks who were excited about VR. At Mountaintop, we are, you know, tac shooter super fans building a tac shooter, a love letter to players like us. So, yeah, it’s not too different in the grand scheme of things, but, you know, working with an incredible group of people, that’s really an important through line.
Chris: That’s honestly great to hear. It’s nice to hear that you’ve been able to delve into your passion in both companies really, and pour your love into it.
With the game being 3v3, it sounds like it’s always been 3v3 from the start of development. That was always the way to go for everyone at Mountaintop. Will there be in the future any like 4v4, 5v5, or are the maps for the game specifically designed for 3v3?
Lee Horn: Everything is very carefully handcrafted around 3v3 and making sure that we have the best mode. You know, we say we’re trying to make 10,000-hour games. We wanna make your next obsession. Right? Something that you’re thinking about all the time. You’re like, I can’t wait to play again and so that’s all about focusing all the effort on making that the best possible experience.
You know, post-launch, anything is possible. If people are interested, we’ll think about it but right now, it’s all, you know, the next big push is all making this the best possible. So 3v3 is our heart and soul and so it’ll be that for a long time.
Chris: Honestly, it works perfectly for me. I used to be someone where me and my friends, we would complain for the longest and for example, Apex Legends where it’s like, oh, we have a fourth friend who wants to play. They can’t join in. But we’ve noticed that with 3v3 games, it somehow works better than having such a big group of people. It’s easier to send out commands and tell people where to go. You can control the game much better with just three people compared to say six, like other games.
One notable difference between your game and many others such as Valorant and Apex is that they have characters such as Lifeline, Gibraltar, and Reyna. Your game doesn’t have characters. It has the player character that you can customize: the head, the face, the outfit, the accessories, the voice, and you also have sponsorships, which is where the abilities come into play. I wanted to know what made you decide to go that route of having sponsorships instead of having it tied to certain characters in the game.
Lee Horn: So, I mean, one of our pillars is forging your legacy, which is really about your journey in Breakwater and in playing Spectre, which we call Santai within the world. It’s about you. You are the hero, and you can be a hero. You can be a villain. It’s about customizing your pair to look however you want on that journey, and we really wanted it to be all focused on the player.
Sponsors are then just ability sets. You get gear from a sponsor that has their own, let’s say, interests within the world, and some are revealed, some are not. They’re all trying to get noticed, and so the way they do that is sponsor players in Santai. They’re there just to help accentuate your wins and to get you famous, but at the end of the day, it’s you and the pair of you getting all the glory. So we care a lot about the individual player’s journey being as special as possible.
Chris: When looking at the customization, you can also customize the spectre to look completely different from you. Initially, I had thought the spectre was just a clone of me, but it seems like it’s not just a clone. That makes me wanna ask the question, referring back to games like League of Legends, Apex, and Valorant.
They all have well-detailed lore within their games, and they also have trailers that they push out that show the lore and help develop it and move it along. Does Spectre Divide have lore? Is that something you’ve been working on? Is there a reason why the spectre can look different from how you look? What’s the answer to all of this?
Nate Mitchell: I would say yes. There is a bunch of lore and backstory to the world of Spectre Divide. We’re a competitive shooter, so when we launch the game, we’re a small studio, so a lot of that lore is gonna be what you see in the game, in the world, etc., and we’re gonna reveal more of the details kinda as the game progresses. Right? You can imagine in seasonal updates and things like that, we do wanna tell more about the backstory of the world and the current dynamics.
Like Lee was just speaking about, sponsors in the city of Breakwater and what the sponsors are vying for, who runs those organizations, are they community-run, are they corporations? There’s a lot of power dynamics, and not just good and bad, but a lot of gray in the city of Breakwater. So we’re really excited to share more of this world that we’ve crafted with players over time, and there will be even more lore that we reveal in the run-up to launch, so players can get excited for that. There’s a lot more that will be revealed post-launch as well on the lore side.
Chris: Another question for you, Nate. It’s great to hear that there will be lore inside the game. I’m normally someone that plays a lot of story games, and I love writing stories. I’m a big fan of watching film and shows. So story is always important to me. So even if we’re in a game that’s like Spectre Divide, even though it’s a tactical shooter and it’s competitive, I do like there also being a story behind the scenes to follow along. So it’s great that that’s something that your team has been focusing on. Another question I have for you, Nate, was how the development of this game has been since it started. I know that it was a very small team of people when it first started, and now that’s grown to, I can’t remember the number. I don’t know if it was, like, 80.
Nate Mitchell: Yeah. 78. Yeah. That’s exactly right.
Chris: How has the development gone over the years? When did you first start development for this game?
Nate Mitchell: We kicked off development, sort of right at the beginning of the pandemic. You know, I think we opened Unreal project right in May of 2020. So it’s been just over 4 years. I think we had a really small team, you know, as Lee said. Our philosophy here starts with a lot of prototyping and experimentation. We started with the foundation of 3v3 and then we started on that journey to say, how can we build the best, you know, small team competitive shooter? But I would say we really hit our stride. Lee joined, you know, very soon after that. Lee came in, proposed the crazy idea for duality, and we really, you know, as Lee said, we played it and we knew pretty much immediately, oh my God, there’s something really interesting and kind of special here. We were just thinking about it, you know, nonstop. So in 2020, that’s when we really started to ramp up the team, and, you know, just like any development project, we’ve had our share of ups and downs and bumps and everything else but, again, we have such a good team, and it’s such a passion project for us.
I would say in the grand scheme of things, it’s been a really smooth development process and I think the quality of the game that we’re delivering now really speaks for itself, as far as what we’ve been able to achieve as a small remote team. I think we’re punching above our weight class in a big way.
Chris: I mean, even if you do believe that you’re punching above your weight class, I’ve got to say, playing those few hours that I did, I did not run into any sort of bugs, which is so impressive for a game in development. There’s so many other games where I play the alphas or betas, and it’s like constantly running into bugs, constantly running into problems.
I think the only issue I ran into was the servers shutting down for one of our matches. But I was playing with a mentor and he said throughout the past week, that’s the first time any such thing has occurred. It’s very impressive that you’ve been able to keep up that standard with this game.
Nate Mitchell: I think it’s a testament to this team, to Lee and our quality bar that we set but also the team and the quality bar that they set for the game. Really appreciate that. There are a few bugs under the hood, but as Lee mentioned during the presentation, often times we fix some of the issues in the next patch as we go. We’re committed to constantly making sure Spectre is in the best possible state for players, and that’s going to be an ongoing journey but that’s something you can expect from Mountaintop.
Chris: You mentioned having your ups and downs and that it was a smooth development process. Since you started in the pandemic, did it affect development in any sort of way like it did to other game studios?
Nate Mitchell: I think the truth is that it impacted us but not really because we went fully remote from the very beginning. There was never really a disruption for us. In some ways, it enhanced our ability to recruit, to go find the very best people from across the globe who could deliver something really special, which is how we think of building the right team here at Mountaintop. While the other game studios were getting disrupted, Lee, I, and the other co-founders, we were just trying to build the best team and we had that much better access to talent given that everyone was shifting to remote, everyone was trying remote. They’re all like “I might want to work in a remote studio. Oh my God, Mountaintop is building a tac shooter, I want to be there”. That ended up paying off really well for us in the end.
Chris: That’s great to hear! I can see that it has paid off when looking at the screen.
For Lee, one thing I noticed when playing the game is that after three matches, you get put into something called a crew. I didn’t get to explore it much during my session, but I was hoping you could go into detail of what this crew system entails and how it works as I know it involves leaderboards.
Lee Horn: Crews is a social competitive system but it’s based on engagement competition not skill competition. If you want to play skill, then you play ranked. Crew is engagement-based and is about playing matches with your crew. We put everyone in a crew so everyone is going to participate. You automatically got placed after three games. So, a lot of the scoring is going to your roster and going “hey, is anyone available to play?” It’s low stakes because all you’ve got to do is play together. It’s not about winning in ranked.
We’ve all had those experiences where you invite someone new into your ranked game and then you lose and you’re like, never again will I play with you. So crews is really about lowering the stress and kind of soft friendships, and we’re really excited for that. So each week, Crews will compete. The ones with the most points will kind of top four will move up, bottom four will move down, and you compete at getting to the highest division. We’ll have seasonal resets and seasonal rewards, and again, this is another thing about forging your legacy within Spectre. I might not be the best player, but I’m heavily engaged. I’m all about getting other people to engage with me. Together, we are a force, and that ties into the city. My group, my faction is really competing and supporting the game as much as possible.
Chris: That’s great to hear. At the time of this interview being released, the trailer would have been out for people to see the game for themselves and it would be available to wishlist for people on Steam. I wanted to ask what future plans do you have for Spectre Divide in terms of maybe a beta or a release date for when people can expect it to drop?
Lee Horn: So we have a stress test beta. It’s a wishlist sign-up right now, and you can get in. It’s happening basically in a couple of days. So sign up for that, and then we’ll be moving into more open or wider-scale betas very soon after that. So just watch all the channels, follow us and wishlist, and we’ll keep you updated.
Chris: A lot of games have battle passes these days. Does your game have a battle pass? And what type of cosmetics can you expect to find in the battle pass if you do have a battle pass?
Lee Horn: (laughs) So we’ll have a battle pass at some point post-launch. I mean, you can see it in the top tab. It was locked. It won’t be on for launch, but it’ll be there after. It’s pretty classic. You know, it’ll be a mix of weapon skins, character skins, banners, sprays, charms, things like that, currency, all the regulars.
For our players, our battle pass is gonna show off a little bit of the world. The early battle passes will be about 2 districts fighting. So in Breakwater there are several districts that are all different cultural melting pots, and so this will be about kind of district A and district B facing off and a little bit of competition. So you’ll get some flavor and get to explore the world a little bit. Like, what are the authentic outfits from that area? What do they look like?
Chris: This is kind of a little fun one for both Nate and Lee. So I am a big fan of collaborations in video games. I love being able to play a game, and then randomly, I just see something that probably shouldn’t be there, but is there. I was wondering if collaborations were to come to Spectre Divide in the near future, what collaborations would you both like to see in Spectre Divide?
Lee Horn: So I’m a big sneaker guy. So I would love some sort of Nike Jordan, you know, collab. It would be my dream scenario.
Nate Mitchell: I don’t know what my dream scenario would be. I really like the sneakers idea. I think not only though on character outfits, but combining some of Nike sneakers designs with our weapons could make for some insanely cool skins. So, anyway, just more hype.
Chris: I like the Nike idea because you can do so much with just like you said, the outfits. There’s so many mix-ups, the shoes, the tracksuits, whatever they’re wearing, and the guns can be designed off of specific Nike shoes that maybe are currently out or have just come out recently. So that’s honestly a nice idea. It’s rare that you see clothing brands collab in games. I think Fortnite does it quite frequently, but they’re the only ones. It would be nice if Spectre Divide were to be one of the first few to get a clothing brand collab in their game.
Lee Horn: [Nike] give us a call.
Chris: Everyone loves playing their games on consoles. What is the plan for Spectre Divide releasing on console?
Lee Horn: For launch, we’re laser-focused on PC. We want the best PC game possible, but we are big fans of console. You know, we have ADS gunplay that will feel very nice on console. We test with controllers regularly anyway. So console is definitely in the future. We don’t have anything to share on when, but, we are very excited about coming to console.
Chris: Final question, for either of you. You mentioned, there is a shop where you can buy gun skins, and where you can buy outfits. I wanted to ask how this shop is going to work. Is it gonna be one store that everyone sees? Is it gonna be a store that’s tailored to each person that changes every day? Also, is there gonna be a similar system to the night market where items will be cheaper but it’s tailored to that individual?
Lee Horn: So for launch, we’re gonna be direct purchase only. So no loot boxes, no web three, anything like that. Just the item you want. The store will be the same for everybody. Whatever offers are for that week, every player will see those. They’ll rotate, and we’ll change them over time.
I love the night market feature, like, kind of the customized discounted shop. We may do that one day. That’s, you know, another feature to build and things like that, but it’s a really cool mechanic. It’s exciting, and it’s fun. You know, everyone loves a good discount. Definitely something we’ll look at down the road. Otherwise, it’s just pick the item you want. If you love it, pick it up. If it’s not the right one for you, check next week and maybe there’s something cool.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity purposes.
