A blog has been posted on the offical SiN Episode site by lead designer, Shawn Ketcherside. The update responds to the question 'What does episodic gaming mean?'.

As we looked at it, we realized that for us, it didn't make sense to simply make "one" game and chop it up into multiple pieces – To me that seemed to negate many of the advantages of being episodic. Specifically the freedom to innovate and evolve.

So, we started thinking about how to structure things. We landed on a high level story concept and spent a lot of time working on the world of SiN itself. From the beginning of the project, I was adamant that every episode serve as a standalone piece of gameplay. Meaning that each episode has the components of a story in and of itself (A beginning, middle, and an end.)