Cliffy B. talks about FPS in general and "Gears of War" in particular on Next Gen...

[lailoken]

The Blezniczik talks about the "FUTURE" of the FPS genre and manages to make HL2 out to be the logical evolution of the Adventure genre... wow didn't see that coming...

We had this great graphics engine and I didn't just want to see this barrel of the gun, so we decided on the third person view.

Which is his true motivation AND imho a load of shit... but there you go! He goes on about other reasons and how there are arguments for either first person or third person but essentially I think it's the graphics and that is clearly NOT the best reason to implement something as crucial as this...

[linkage]

[Steve]

Note to Cliffy B: what if you did make an FPS where the gun wasn't constantly hanging at the bottom of the screen??

OMG INNOVATION!!!!

[lailoken]

Well maybe I am just bitter...

But it sure seems like a LOAD of bullshit to me. The kind of Bullshit EVERYMAN needs to buy because it is teh awesome!!11

To sum up this LOAD:

-Wow it's set in a world scarred by constant warfare where for some obscure (and probably to be revealed) reason a totally alien race is introduced who look like demons and bear guns...

-Cliffy B. got the "inspiration" (Hahahahahaha...) for it when he ... (drumroll) WENT TO EUROPE! Wow, he deserves a medal for that! OMG he's such an insightfull person (sorry can't help myself)

-they spent a LOAD of time to come up with the look of the protagonist who looks exactly like the guy on the boxart of Unreal Tournament 2004

The Reality behind all this IMHO:

They did a techdemo based on Gothic Architecture and threw some nicely rendered and shaded badass basic monsters to demonstrate the power of the latest Unreal engine. Reactions to that were so good that they thought to themselves:"Hey why actually bother to do something original, this might just work!" Then they threw together the most overused stereotypes in modern fps gaming and PRESTO! Everybody goes wild over "Gears of War"...

somewhere somebody better be laughing, I am all out of laughs...

Addendum: Oh yeah, [linkage]

Addendum to Addendum: found on www.kotaku.com

[Twilo]

Wheh?

Did Cliffy B eat your baby or something?

He's a decent guy with a talent for level design and woirking with the graphics side of engines.

I don't think he claimed the choice to go third-person was based on any creativity on anyone's part, just a pretty justifiable decision that allows you to show a lot of nice animations on something that's going to be onscreen all the time. It also works well on consoles with the control pads.

Also, it was made pretty clear from the start of those UE3 techdemos that a lot of the resources used were pulled from the (then) unnamed not-unreal game which ended up as Gears, not the other way around.

No, Gears isn't original, but it is very pretty and may well be fun to play.

What's a bear-gun? A gun that shoots bears?

[Graeme]

My guess is that the alien invasion is down to the exploitation of "Imulsion", which is the source of the original war in the backstory posted at Shacknews. I also suspect that the COG will be proven to be the villains of the piece, on the grounds that: (a) They're an oppressive government; and ( they're socialists.

I'm with Lailoken on the fact that this title has Generic Game Aesthetics: Big Guns, bigger aliens, rusty machinery, gothic looking architecture? It's all there.

Graeme

[Twilo]

I also suspect that the COG will be proven to be the villains of the piece, on the grounds that: (a) They're an oppressive government; and ( they're socialists.

What's up with (?

[lailoken]

Cliffy B. did not eat my baby.

I am tired of lazyass gamedesign! I am tired of the FACT that you can sell a LOAD of bull with shiny (unoriginal) grafics and get away with a claim to originality.

Are you familiar with the term "to bear arms"? As in to carry arms? There you go.

And about the Socialist part (yawn) check this out...

[pj-]

Cliffy B. did not eat my baby.

I am tired of lazyass gamedesign! I am tired of the FACT that you can sell a LOAD of bull with shiny (unoriginal) grafics and get away with a claim to originality.

Are you familiar with the term "to bear arms"? As in to carry arms? There you go.

And about the Socialist part (yawn) check this out...

Calling the graphics unoriginal and linking to that image in the same post was not a good idea..

[DanJW]

The graphics look very nice.

ALso, while gothic architecture is not original in games, this looks like it was designed by a real architect. Good stuff.

However the visual design of the human troops and alien enemies completely fails to interest me in the slightest. What very boring concepts.

[Twilo]

What I was taking issue with was your association of socialism with evil.

All hephelants are grue, but not everything grue is a hephelant.

on another note

[ysbreker]

7 or more cards in your graveyard? that's easy!

That is one cheap 4/4 bear :nerd: