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Apart from publishers who are hawking games based on superhero
licenses, game people tend not to be too forthcoming about their projects when
you corner them at comic book conventions. To quote Mike Capps from Epic Games,
the real reason he's here is a result of him "leveraging [his] job to be able to
do things like come to New York Comic Con for free." Nice of him, then, to carve
out some time to host a panel on Gears of War 2, isn't it? Make no mistake: this
wasn't a concession to the press. Capps' panel was a way to engage Gears fans in
a direct dialogue, and he's got quite a way with them. In this spirit of
exchange, Capps and company kept their monologues short, setting aside most of
their time for a lengthy Q&A with attendees.
Along with Capps were Joshua Ortega, writer on Gears of War 2, and Randy Falk,
product development director of NECA (the studio that makes the Gears action
figures). Capps did most of the talking, but teased us by skirting around the
sort of substantive info about the sequel that we were eager to learn. That
said, Capps was happy to expound upon a few details, going into a little more
detail about things unveiled in a recent magazine Gears of War 2 cover story.
The Gears of Wars 2 mantra appears to be "Bigger, Better, and More Badass."
According to Capps, this sensibility is informing every aspect of the sequel's
development, with the team taking apart every system in the game to figure out
ways to amplify its component parts. This means more enemies onscreen at once,
an approach to cover that will hopefully be more dynamic and exciting, and
presumably, gorier chainsaw kills. Indeed, the Gears team was disappointed by
the apparent randomness of the chainsaw-bayonet's mechanic in the first game.
Their solution (and the means by which Gears 2's combat will live up to the
team's macho maxim): chainsaw duels, as illustrated in the latest teaser video.
It's like Star Wars' lightsabers as interpreted by the WWE after a six pack of
Mountain Dew Code Red. It's hard to miss what they're going for; hopefully the
mechanics will live up to the bluster.
It's interesting the chainsaw ended up being pivotal to the Gears experience,
given that Capps intimated that he was initially dismissive of the idea. "The
reason [it] exists is because our characters are so bloody expensive to draw,"
he said during the panel. What ultimately started off as a way to reconcile the
relatively complex character models by forcing players into intimate contact
with them (compare a close-up of a Locust grunt to, say, a Covenant Elite from
Halo 3) ended up birthing the interactions that would come to define the game's
ferocious brand of combat.
According to Capps, they aren't going to have to rely on those sorts of
contrivances in the sequel. Pointing to the video showcased at the Game
Developers Conference last month, Capps says that the team is aiming to deliver
the experience of large-scale conflict that was absent in the original Gears.
"It never really felt like a giant war," he said. "It always felt like sort of a
spy incursion, sneaking behind enemy lines." According to him, the technology is
now able to deliver on that vision in a big way. No more smoke and mirrors to
separate players from the bigger conflict, no more small-squad warfare, and no
slower deliberate pacing compared to the more fast-paced shooters out there.
Capps, in short, "[wants his] D-Day." It'll be interesting to see if his team
can transform Gears into a platform for that sort of experience.
If anyone has the wherewithal to make it work, evidently, it's Epic Games. It's
hard to tell if he was joking when he mentioned the team of "twenty-something
psychologists" that monitor the brains and track the pupil-dilations of the
focus testers that the studio invites to play with the game every week. But you
get the distinct impression nonetheless that the brains behind Gears feel that
they've distilled "fun" into something quantifiable, and thus possible to
replicate. "It ought to be illegal, really," said Capps. "We've manufactured fun
like Doritos manufactures that powdered stuff that tastes good, even though it's
not actually food." Which begs the question: if Gears of War is Doritos, which
game is the shooter analogue to those all-natural pork rinds that are fried in
lard?
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