Gears of War 3 has just gone on to sell 3-million copies, making the franchise the best-selling title of 2011 to date and first Xbox 360 exclusive series to make over $1 billion. But Epic Games Creative Director Cliff Bleszinski hopes to continue that success by steering away from Gears of War’s trademark camp and towards its sober, more serious side.
"Camp is something that I would love to continue to evolve the franchise away from – there’s no giant worm in Gears 3," said Bleszinski in a recent interview with Edge. "Gears was always intended to be more ‘Band of Brothers’ than ‘Predator.’ We got a lot more towards ‘Predator’ and I’d love to steer it towards ‘Band of Brothers.’"
One of the more heart-wrenching moments of the current trilogy came in Gears of War 2 when Dominic Santiago finally reunites with his wife, who has been tortured and mutilated nearly beyond recognition, only to be forced to put her out of her misery. However, not everyone found the moment to be an emotional one thanks to the game’s campiness, which Bleszinski admits are warranted opinions.
"The problem was that we didn’t earn it," stated Bleszinski. "The cutscene was very well done, in my opinion, even though it was, you know, buff guys in armor, things like that. If I could go back and change it I would have had many more flashback scenes where you build up how Dom and Maria were before as well as teasing the fact that it might not end well.
"The other problem of course is our GUD system, which stands for Gears Unscripted Dialogue," he continued. "The fact that we put in these barks of the characters shouting out things as gameplay feedback – for a perfect active reload, ‘shit yeah’; or you take out an enemy, ‘suck it.’ Those contribute to the game’s dude-bro perception but they’re designed to serve as gameplay feedback mechanics."
Bleszinski then admitted that this concept ended up biting the developers in the rear with regards to Dom after Maria’s death.
"I had wanted to disable Dom’s GUD system for at least the next few levels after that, so he didn’t just kill his wife and now he’s yelling out ‘hell yeah!’ as he’s killing Locusts, but I believe it got unhooked before we shipped," he said.
[Edge]
