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GUIDES: Gears of War (PC) Walkthrough Guides and Codes (Gears of War Video Game Walkthrough Strategy)

With Emergence Day now a fading memory, Planet Gears of War talks to Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein and Lead Designer Cliff Bleszinski about the past, present and future of Gears of War.

Planet Gears of War: If you had to pick one moment in the game and say “that’s why Gears of War kicks ass”, what would it be?

Cliff: For me, it’s the moment when one invites a friend to play the game cooperatively over Live and that pal takes over as Dominic Santiago. Gears isn’t just about the solo experience on the sofa. It’s about sharing the rollercoaster of chainsaws and monsters in beautiful architecture with a buddy.

Mark: I stayed away from the single player game until we could play it all the way through so, while I saw many individual set pieces I never really saw how they were all put together until very late in development. I was really amazed looking around the city at Embry Square. I was just floored at how detailed and expansive everything was. I just wanted to see what else is out there. Prior to that my realization that we were doing something special was seeing all the animation and weapon testing levels. Those were mostly empty levels populated with simple barriers and columns but even back then you could tell we were doing something different and fun with the user interface and it was really enjoyable.

Planet Gears of War: It’s clear now that Gears of War is just the first part in a much larger story. With the first game we have the introduction of Marcus Fenix as the hero. Where might Gears of War 2 be taking us?

Mark: For now we’re concentrating on making improvements and enhancements to the multiplayer side of Gears of War and not trying to get too far ahead of ourselves. Ask again in a year and we might have a better answer.

Planet Gears of War: The Brumak appeared only briefly in the game. What prompted the decision to drop direct Gears vs. Brumak combat?

Cliff: The Brumak was a heavily promoted creature throughout the entire Gears marketing campaign and thus was the most “spoilered” of all the enemies. (Luckily we were able to keep many of the other Locust nasties under wrap.) The realities of the development process ultimately led to this beastie having more of a cameo in Gears while the other creatures (such as the Seeders, Reavers, and Corpser) were able to take front and center and shine like the abominations they are.

Planet Gears of War: How did you get the animation on the Seeders and Corpsers looking so good? Our working theory is that you strapped a bunch of mocap balls to a giant spider. 

Cliff: We have a large motion capture studio with a huge garage door on it. It’s more than ample for capturing the motion of a huge, horrific beast. Seriously? We have extraordinarily talented animators that have a quality bar that is unparalleled.

Planet Gears of War: Any comment on the Windows Vista version of Gears of War?
Mark:  There’s nothing to announce at this time. We’ve said all along that, at some point in the future, we could adapt Gears of Wars for PC. Based on past experience we’ve learned that it takes approximately 5 years for an OS to fully take hold among the gaming population. So unless it takes us 5 years to bring Gears of War to Windows, we certainly expect to keep supporting Windows XP users.  For now however Gears is available exclusively on Xbox360 and we’re still working on improvements and enhancements to it.

Planet Gears of War: What sort of things do you guys have in mind for downloadable content? Are there any plans to extend the singleplayer game as well as multiplayer?

Cliff: Xbox Live is an umbilical crackpipe that an entire generation of gamers are rapidly becoming addicted to.  The versus is where we plan on extending the fun of Gears online and thus any continuation of the single player experience remains to be seen.

Mark: The first update we do will be some housekeeping to take care of a few things we need to adjust. We hope to have that in the pipeline before too long. Unfortunately the certification group at Microsoft shuts down relatively early in December so we’re racing against the clock to try to get it finished and certified for release through the Xbox Live update system. Judging by all the great Xbox360 games that have been released recently these folks deserve to have a great holiday season!

Planet Gears of War: In the long term, what sort of an impact do you think Gears (as a single game or a trilogy) will leave on the gaming world as a whole?

Cliff: I believe that this product further solidifies gaming as the preeminent launching pad for the future of entertainment. This is a gory yet beautiful scifi universe in which players love getting lost in not only by themselves but also with friends. They play for hundreds of hours and share stories about the solo campaign as well as anecdotes of fighting one another.

Mark: From an industry perspective I think Gears helps disprove that nextgen games need to break the bank to be successful. Thanks to the power and productivity of Unreal Engine 3 we were able to make Gears for a lot less than many companies have made, and continue to make, major previousgeneration games for. Despite our small team size we were also able to get it out at the right time as well. We’re equally proud that Ubisoft also shipped their UE3based game, Rainbow Six Vegas, on Xbox360 and we’re looking forward to seeing that game on PS3 soon as well.

Planet Gears of War: In terms of pure hardware horsepower, how much of the 360’s power does Gears use? Are we seeing the limits of what the console’s capable of?

Cliff: The games that leverage the most of any console are always later in the cycle of the system’s life. This is the first Xbox 360 game that Epic Games has shipped. I somehow suspect that future Epic and Unreal Engine titles will be even more beautiful and compelling on the platform.

Mark: I think we pushed the 360 as hard as we knew how to push it during the development of Gears but, even as principle tech development on Gears finished this fall, we’ve already identified areas of improvement and further optimization we can make on Xbox360 so, as Cliff points out, we’ll get better and better throughout the entire generation. We’ve now got the same kind of learning/development curve going on with UT on PlayStation3 as well.

Planet Gears of War: There’s a 50page bitchfest on the official forums about a bug causing squished aspect ratio on nonwidescreen VGA monitors. Will this bug be addressed in an upcoming patch?

Mark: Yes. It has already been fixed and we plan to ship it to users as part of that first housekeeping update I talked about earlier. We’re also fixing a few minor problems and making a few small changes and improvements. I don’t want to go into too many details because we have not finalized the update but once we know what made it in, and passed certification, we’ll put some news up on our forum which I’m sure will start other passionate threads about what we have/have not gotten around to so far. There is more to come for this game in the future.

Planet Gears of War: Who’s the best (and worst) at Gears in the office?

Cliff: I’d have to say that AI programmer Steve Superville is probably the best Gears player at the office. He leaps from cover to cover with the grace of a ballerina and pops heads like a grape. On the other hand, Mark Rein is, without a doubt, the worst Gears player I have ever laid eyes on.

Mark: If you’re looking for a grenade tag target them I’m your man! :)

Planet Gears of War: Rapping Gus in the credits sequence was pure genius. Whose idea was that?

Cliff: Ending credits often start with serious music and then reward those who remain to watch the list with something light hearted. Gears continued this tradition by starting with a somber version of the main game theme which was followed up by a collection of Gus Cole’s voiceovers from the game pieced together in an intentionally silly song. Ultimately, Gears is a mix of high brow and low brow entertainment. The end credits of the game speak to this core of what the product is. On one hand you have humanity struggling for survival  a sad, dismal tale of post apocalyptic gloom. This is contrasted against buckets of gore, squad mates that rib one another, and squeaky voiced recruits who meet untimely deaths.

Planet Gears of War: Thanks for taking the time to answer our stupid questions!

Cliff: There are no stupid questions, only PR approved answers.

Mark: Our pleasure. Thanks for your support for the game!

GUIDES: Gears of War (PC) Walkthrough Guides and Codes (Gears of War Video Game Walkthrough Strategy)

With Emergence Day now a fading memory, Planet Gears of War talks to Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein and Lead Designer Cliff Bleszinski about the past, present and future of Gears of War.

Planet Gears of War: If you had to pick one moment in the game and say “that’s why Gears of War kicks ass”, what would it be?

Cliff: For me, it’s the moment when one invites a friend to play the game cooperatively over Live and that pal takes over as Dominic Santiago. Gears isn’t just about the solo experience on the sofa. It’s about sharing the rollercoaster of chainsaws and monsters in beautiful architecture with a buddy.

Mark: I stayed away from the single player game until we could play it all the way through so, while I saw many individual set pieces I never really saw how they were all put together until very late in development. I was really amazed looking around the city at Embry Square. I was just floored at how detailed and expansive everything was. I just wanted to see what else is out there. Prior to that my realization that we were doing something special was seeing all the animation and weapon testing levels. Those were mostly empty levels populated with simple barriers and columns but even back then you could tell we were doing something different and fun with the user interface and it was really enjoyable.

Planet Gears of War: It’s clear now that Gears of War is just the first part in a much larger story. With the first game we have the introduction of Marcus Fenix as the hero. Where might Gears of War 2 be taking us?

Mark: For now we’re concentrating on making improvements and enhancements to the multiplayer side of Gears of War and not trying to get too far ahead of ourselves. Ask again in a year and we might have a better answer.

Planet Gears of War: The Brumak appeared only briefly in the game. What prompted the decision to drop direct Gears vs. Brumak combat?

Cliff: The Brumak was a heavily promoted creature throughout the entire Gears marketing campaign and thus was the most “spoilered” of all the enemies. (Luckily we were able to keep many of the other Locust nasties under wrap.) The realities of the development process ultimately led to this beastie having more of a cameo in Gears while the other creatures (such as the Seeders, Reavers, and Corpser) were able to take front and center and shine like the abominations they are.

Planet Gears of War: How did you get the animation on the Seeders and Corpsers looking so good? Our working theory is that you strapped a bunch of mocap balls to a giant spider. 

Cliff: We have a large motion capture studio with a huge garage door on it. It’s more than ample for capturing the motion of a huge, horrific beast. Seriously? We have extraordinarily talented animators that have a quality bar that is unparalleled.

Planet Gears of War: Any comment on the Windows Vista version of Gears of War?
Mark:  There’s nothing to announce at this time. We’ve said all along that, at some point in the future, we could adapt Gears of Wars for PC. Based on past experience we’ve learned that it takes approximately 5 years for an OS to fully take hold among the gaming population. So unless it takes us 5 years to bring Gears of War to Windows, we certainly expect to keep supporting Windows XP users.  For now however Gears is available exclusively on Xbox360 and we’re still working on improvements and enhancements to it.

Planet Gears of War: What sort of things do you guys have in mind for downloadable content? Are there any plans to extend the singleplayer game as well as multiplayer?

Cliff: Xbox Live is an umbilical crackpipe that an entire generation of gamers are rapidly becoming addicted to.  The versus is where we plan on extending the fun of Gears online and thus any continuation of the single player experience remains to be seen.

Mark: The first update we do will be some housekeeping to take care of a few things we need to adjust. We hope to have that in the pipeline before too long. Unfortunately the certification group at Microsoft shuts down relatively early in December so we’re racing against the clock to try to get it finished and certified for release through the Xbox Live update system. Judging by all the great Xbox360 games that have been released recently these folks deserve to have a great holiday season!

Planet Gears of War: In the long term, what sort of an impact do you think Gears (as a single game or a trilogy) will leave on the gaming world as a whole?

Cliff: I believe that this product further solidifies gaming as the preeminent launching pad for the future of entertainment. This is a gory yet beautiful scifi universe in which players love getting lost in not only by themselves but also with friends. They play for hundreds of hours and share stories about the solo campaign as well as anecdotes of fighting one another.

Mark: From an industry perspective I think Gears helps disprove that nextgen games need to break the bank to be successful. Thanks to the power and productivity of Unreal Engine 3 we were able to make Gears for a lot less than many companies have made, and continue to make, major previousgeneration games for. Despite our small team size we were also able to get it out at the right time as well. We’re equally proud that Ubisoft also shipped their UE3based game, Rainbow Six Vegas, on Xbox360 and we’re looking forward to seeing that game on PS3 soon as well.

Planet Gears of War: In terms of pure hardware horsepower, how much of the 360’s power does Gears use? Are we seeing the limits of what the console’s capable of?

Cliff: The games that leverage the most of any console are always later in the cycle of the system’s life. This is the first Xbox 360 game that Epic Games has shipped. I somehow suspect that future Epic and Unreal Engine titles will be even more beautiful and compelling on the platform.

Mark: I think we pushed the 360 as hard as we knew how to push it during the development of Gears but, even as principle tech development on Gears finished this fall, we’ve already identified areas of improvement and further optimization we can make on Xbox360 so, as Cliff points out, we’ll get better and better throughout the entire generation. We’ve now got the same kind of learning/development curve going on with UT on PlayStation3 as well.

Planet Gears of War: There’s a 50page bitchfest on the official forums about a bug causing squished aspect ratio on nonwidescreen VGA monitors. Will this bug be addressed in an upcoming patch?

Mark: Yes. It has already been fixed and we plan to ship it to users as part of that first housekeeping update I talked about earlier. We’re also fixing a few minor problems and making a few small changes and improvements. I don’t want to go into too many details because we have not finalized the update but once we know what made it in, and passed certification, we’ll put some news up on our forum which I’m sure will start other passionate threads about what we have/have not gotten around to so far. There is more to come for this game in the future.

Planet Gears of War: Who’s the best (and worst) at Gears in the office?

Cliff: I’d have to say that AI programmer Steve Superville is probably the best Gears player at the office. He leaps from cover to cover with the grace of a ballerina and pops heads like a grape. On the other hand, Mark Rein is, without a doubt, the worst Gears player I have ever laid eyes on.

Mark: If you’re looking for a grenade tag target them I’m your man! :)

Planet Gears of War: Rapping Gus in the credits sequence was pure genius. Whose idea was that?

Cliff: Ending credits often start with serious music and then reward those who remain to watch the list with something light hearted. Gears continued this tradition by starting with a somber version of the main game theme which was followed up by a collection of Gus Cole’s voiceovers from the game pieced together in an intentionally silly song. Ultimately, Gears is a mix of high brow and low brow entertainment. The end credits of the game speak to this core of what the product is. On one hand you have humanity struggling for survival  a sad, dismal tale of post apocalyptic gloom. This is contrasted against buckets of gore, squad mates that rib one another, and squeaky voiced recruits who meet untimely deaths.

Planet Gears of War: Thanks for taking the time to answer our stupid questions!

Cliff: There are no stupid questions, only PR approved answers.

Mark: Our pleasure. Thanks for your support for the game!