Future Gears of War titles to be less camp
Cliffy B: more Band of Brothers, less Predator.
Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski wants to "evolve" the series away from accusations that it's too camp.
When asked by Edge whether the emotional impact of the sequence in Gears 2 where Dom's wife Maria is found comatose and near death is compromised by the game's "sense of camp", Bleszinski explained that he hopes to steer the franchise in a more sober direction in the future.
"Camp is something that I would love to continue to evolve the franchise away from - there's no giant worm in Gears 3. Gears was always intended to be more Band Of Brothers than Predator. We got a lot more towards Predator and I'd love to drift a lot more towards Band Of Brothers."
Although he defended the scene in question, Bleszinski admitted that with hindsight he might have done things differently.
"The problem was that we didn't earn it," he said
"The cutscene was very well done, in my opinion, even though it was, you know, buff guys in armour, 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. 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.
"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."
The latest entry in Epic's phenomenally successful third person shooter series launched on Xbox 360 earlier this month. Eurogamer's Gears of War 3 review has all the details.
Earlier today, Microsoft announced that the game sold more than three million copies in its first week on shelves.