Guitar Hero Live has a split personality, and one of its halves is more mysterious than the other. On the one hand, there’s the main game itself: Guitar Hero Live. As instrument-based rhythm games go, this one is self explanatory.

It’s the Guitar Hero we used to know in 2010, before the franchise’s five-year hiatus, with note highways, song libraries, and a career mode. This time around, there are live-action crowds that react to how well you play. They can cheer. They can boo you. They can scream you off the stage. Even your bandmates can stare at you, dejected, watching as their show falls apart because you couldn’t nail down that chorus. And of course, there’s the new control scheme, with three buttons stacked on top of another three, creating notes more akin to real guitar chords.

This is the half of Guitar Hero Live we’ve come to understand, after numerous trailers and demos and gameplay videos have helped us do so.

But then there’s the other half: Guitar Hero TV. In concept, it’s more of a platform than just a game. It’s developer Freestyle Games’ and publisher Activision’s attempt to revamp the way they distribute DLC.

At first glance, it looks like the MTV many of us used to know, with music videos set to a predetermined rotation, cycling through numerous bands across several genres. But these videos have a note highway bisecting the screen, urging us to play along to our favorite songs while the stars themselves perform for the camera.

This, in itself, is a novel concept in the rhythm game genre. And what’s more, Guitar Hero TV will also implement a free scheduling system, which players can reference in order to gauge what genre they want to play, and what time of day that genre will be in the rotation.

But then there’s the Play system. Plays, the in-game currency of Guitar Hero TV, allow you to choose songs immediately that would otherwise appear at random. Spending one Play guarantees, for instance, that you can play Haim’s “The Wire” once, without having to hope for it. Furthermore, spending an unspecified amount of Plays may lock that song down permanently in a Guitar Hero TV library. And lastly, you can spend real-world money to do the same.

And this is where the Guitar Hero TV model becomes hazy. To be clear, Activision isn’t withholding any content if you refrain from spending actual money. Guitar Hero Live is a full-priced, $60 game, and by buying it, you also get access to Guitar Hero TV, and all of the content it has to offer at launch.

What happens after that is still up in the air. This is a game that releases in five weeks, and Activision still hasn’t announced what payment model they’ll pursue with Guitar Hero Live. The publisher still hasn’t clarified how many plays it will take to lock a song down, or how long it will take to accrue Plays, or even how much real-world money they’ll cost.

These details are important, because they’re the deciding factor in the major question about Guitar Hero TV: will this model strike a chord with players? It could be a promising for future DLC, wherein Freestyle Games can continually release new songs for consistent players. But can players have fun and achieve what they want without paying extra money? Or is this Activision’s attempt to make Guitar Hero a pay-to-play game? In short, is Activision creating a system that tests the extent of your patience?

I’m optimistic that Guitar Hero TV will deliver a unique experience with Guitar Hero Live’s release on Oct. 20. The idea of playing through an old school music channel could be the thing to set this installment apart from earlier games in the franchise, and if I’m playing often enough, spending Plays at a steady pace on content that’s set within a fair system sounds rewarding.

But as of now, there are still major questions that could paint this mode in a different light. We have no idea what to expect once we dive into it, and the answer to that question could mean the difference between Guitar Hero TV being an exciting innovation or a one-hit wonder.