We take Gears 3's visuals "for granted"

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 18 April, 2011

Epic: "Your memory is far better than reality."

Gamers take Gears of War 3's graphics "for granted".

That's according to executive producer Rod Fergusson, who told Eurogamer in a new Gears of War 3 interview that developer Epic battles against gamers' memories of Gears 1.

"They take it [Gears of War 3's visuals] for granted," he said. "That was one of our biggest problems with Gears 1 to Gears 2. Your memory is far better than reality.

"With Gears 2 we were competing with the memory of Gears 1 and what people remembered it was like. We got to the point where, at the review event in San Francisco, I suggested we put up a single station of Gears 1 so the press could play it and realise it wasn't as good as they remember. They were saying, "Oh, it kinda looks like Gears 1." I'm like, "Really? No it doesn't at all. You just remember it looking better than it actually does." Not only were we competing with the state of the industry, we were competing with our own memory."

Gears of War launched in 2006 as a visual showcase of high definition home console gaming, wowing fans with its Unreal Engine 3-powered visuals.

Now, five years later, Epic faces stiff competition in the graphics race on the Xbox 360 console.

But, Fergusson explained, it is the continued evolution of Unreal Engine 3 that ensures Gears of War 3 will once again raise the graphics bar when it launches later this year.

"The nice thing is Unreal Engine 3 is always changing. It's the same number, but every day hundreds of code changes go in and the engine improves. We keep pushing our engine team and ourselves art wise to keep taking it up.

"Yeah, people have closed the gap. We were far ahead of a lot of games when Gears 1 came out. Everybody's been catching up, and a lot of people are fighting for ownership of that title. But we continue to push the box and what HD means."

The Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta launches today for those who bought the Bulletstorm Epic Edition.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • GamesConnoisseur #1 1 year ago

    I would diss this excuse, but did recall how I was saying to myself, thats looks the same as first one, but when I checked by loading up first one, was suprised by how inferior it was and that I forgotten the pop ups, tearings and lower quality comparee to the newer ones.

    I think we all are naturally inclined to recall only the best, such as Uncharted 3 may feel the same but comparing to first one, screen by screen, wow blown away by the progrees of time.

  • Tiresias #2 1 year ago

    I think this demonstrates the important of art direction over graphics, the art direction hadn't really changed for the second one and as such people considered it similar.

  • ZuluHero #3 1 year ago

    Sure, there is a certain amount of rose-tintedness in people's heads, but thats the same with any game from a number of years ago that people think fondly of.

    On saying that though, Gears 1 still looks pretty good in both my memory and in real life...

    Edited by ZuluHero at 18/04/11 @ 08:39

  • oerhoert #4 1 year ago

    Gears 1 looks great. Technically inferior, maybe, but as far as ugly-grimy brutes-vs-aliens go, it's still one of the prettiest games out there.

    Although he's right, I think this is a good example of 'dev believing people are as anal about the details as the devs are themselves' which tends to be untrue. People often forgive a number of things if there's something compelling to be had.
    Edited by oerhoert at 18/04/11 @ 08:41

  • randompanda #5 1 year ago

    As gamers, we've learnt valuable lessons from iterations of CoD that if you don't change more than your graphics - we'll get bored.

    You can't then change the graphics - leave the rest of the gameplay as is and blame us having a bit of deja vu!

  • Eraysor #6 1 year ago

    The imulsion cave in the original is one of the best looking environments in any game, in my opinion. I was blown away when I first saw it.

  • djed #7 1 year ago

    Nah man, not my memory but my IMAGINATION. It takes like 20 minutes with a N64 before I don't notice the jaggies any longer.

  • CrispyXUK64 #8 1 year ago

    Looks the same to me

  • Mr_Brown #9 1 year ago

    I don't just think it's rose tinted glasses. It's just shows how great the graphics were in the first one to leave a great impression. I don't doubt that Gears 3 is better in nearly everyway. I've massively enjoyed both in the series so far and I would be disapointed if they changed things drastically (both art direction and gameplay). Stick with what they have and add a ton of new content.

  • Sodding_Gamer #10 1 year ago

    Mt favourite visuals for the gears SP has got to be inside the worm in gears 2. That looked amazing, then the caves with the luminescent flowers and mushrooms. Looked sooooo cool!

  • ybfelix #11 1 year ago

    @Tiresias: Gears 2 spent far too much time in underground, while it's quite pretty as rock caves go, I still prefer the gothic/romantic architechture orientation of the original
    Edited by ybfelix at 18/04/11 @ 09:13

  • MaFlippinHeadHurts #12 1 year ago

    I agree with what he’s saying. I was blown away by the original even though the graphics where better in the second one

    I really hope they don’t have as much ‘on rails’ as the second one this time around

  • udat #13 1 year ago

    I made a similar point about Turbo Esprit on the ZX Spectrum just yesterday. :)

  • metalangel #14 1 year ago

    @oerhort: I dunno, a lot of people bitch about the graphics in stuff like Homefront, New Vegas, Test Drive Unlimited 2. They seem to forget they're meant to be enjoying themselves, looking at pretty pictures is only a small component of that.

  • Centrifugal #15 1 year ago

    It does look amazing but unlike with Gears 1, which was arguably the best looking game on the Xbox 360 at the time, now we've got games like Crysis 2 and Final Fantasy XIII leaving the competition (graphically) straggling behind.

  • Sodding_Gamer #16 1 year ago

    @metalangel

    I thought homefront graphics were fine. Same as black ops if i'm honest which is poor yes but putting it next to a COD title I was impressed haha. TD2 is absolutely shocking. The whole game is. Felt like I was playing ridge racer 1 but with open world environment :| And new vegas might have poor graphics but the game play there (minus bugs) is really addictive. When gears 1 came out. I went from a ps2 to xbox 360 and for like a whole year or 2 I was amazed at how awesome that game looked. And I still play it every now and then for memory's sake, and I still think it looks a lot better than most games that come out nowadays. And the core mechanics just don't get old, unlike COD.

  • Shadders #17 1 year ago

    He's right, I showed Uncharted 2 to a friend not so long back and claimed it was the best looking game I'd seen. He said "It doesn't look as good as Gears 1" I replied "I think you're memory of Gears is better than the reality.."

    He accused me of being a Sony fanboy. :D

  • Freek #18 1 year ago

    The law of diminishing returns in full effect. It might take a considerable amount of time, attention and resources to up the visuals in a modern game, but the detail level is already so high that adding in a few more higher res textures and models is less noticable when you are actually playing the game.

  • orangpelupa #19 1 year ago

    or maybe the visual jump (in technical and in art direction) is too little?

    example,
    -you played BFBC1, then BFBC2 this feel similar despite if you go side by side screenshot, BFBC2 is better.

    -now BFBC2 compare it with BF3. see the Faultline BF3 trailers. It is awesome. The visual and art "jump" is big :D
    and the level design becoming like CoD corridor.....
    hoping the BF3's MP Map still big as "battlefield-size"

  • MARKIV #20 1 year ago

    From what I've seen so far of GOW3 it looks very much like GOW1. It's a shame Epic haven't made an open Beta though so we can at least try for ourselves what it's really like. And no I'm not buying Bulletstorm or pre-ordering GOW3 just to find out it's a turkey like GOW2!!

  • septimus #21 1 year ago

    I can see a potential DF article out of this...

  • anss123 #22 1 year ago

    I thought the Gears1PC to Gears 2Xbox graphics was a step down, so whatever they did for Gears2 couldn't have been a big enough deal to compensate for the plain drop in resolution.

  • riseer #23 1 year ago

    Gears is one of a few UE3 games that looks really good.Most of the games that use UE3 engine look bad.I don't think gears 3 will look alot better then gears 2.That said they improve everything about it,much like uncharted 3 looks just a lil better then uncharted 2 but it improved everything it seems.I just hate the UE3 engine only gears really pushes that tech.