GoW designer: on the F— Jump blog and Hollywood envy
If you’ve been reading up on updates for the military shooter game Gears of War, you’ve probably come across Cliff Blezinsky’s “F— Jump” blog, and some of you probably had violent reactions while some couldn’t have agreed more. Feeling a bit left in the dark? Then we’ll gladly be your messiah and bring you to the light coz today, we feature a CVG interview with GoW‘s lead designer, Cliffy B., where he explains this ‘controversial’ blog and tons more.
The interview tackles a lot of important stuff such as GoW’s Active Reload system, gameplay modes, post-release downloads, and much more. As an extra, Cliffy B. also talks about Hollywood-envy in the gaming industry and how he just can’t see why some game developers base their game’s success on Hollywood execs’ decision to turn their games into movies. However, he does say that if GoW will be made into a movie, and that’s a big IF, Clive Owen would be his first choice to play as Marcus. Here’s a rundown of the stuff tackled in the interview:
Controls: What their team is aiming for is quick button response and abrupt action. They want the game to be played in such a way that when you press a button to hide for cover, then dammit, in a nanosecond your character should be in hiding already! Well okay, maybe not that exaggerated, but more like a baseball player diving into home base — that quick and abrupt. But if you were being shot at, we’d all agree that the nanosecond-fast hiding for cover would bode well.
Gameplay Modes: Casual, Hardcore, Versus, and Insane mode. Cliff says that the Insane co-op mode will be ” really crazy fun,” so that’s something that only adds further to the pain of waiting for the game to come out!
Active Reload System: The decision to have an Active Reload system in the game was based on the team’s desire to make the gameplay more active and realistic. With other games, you’re just looking at the screen while reloading, and Cliff B. says that this is not at all realistic coz if you’re a soldier in the middle of a heated battle, you won’t be all calm and tranquil while reloading, you could also mess it up. And according to Cliff, that’s the best thing about the Active Reload system, when you mess up, you have no one and nothing to blame but yourself.
Preorder: [Gears of War]
Info on collectibles, downloadables, and the F— Jump blog await in the full article.
If you’ve been reading up on updates for the military shooter game Gears of War, you’ve probably come across Cliff Blezinsky’s “F— Jump” blog, and some of you probably had violent reactions while some couldn’t have agreed more. Feeling a bit left in the dark? Then we’ll gladly be your messiah and bring you to the light coz today, we feature a CVG interview with GoW‘s lead designer, Cliffy B., where he explains this ‘controversial’ blog and tons more.
The interview tackles a lot of important stuff such as GoW’s Active Reload system, gameplay modes, post-release downloads, and much more. As an extra, Cliffy B. also talks about Hollywood-envy in the gaming industry and how he just can’t see why some game developers base their game’s success on Hollywood execs’ decision to turn their games into movies. However, he does say that if GoW will be made into a movie, and that’s a big IF, Clive Owen would be his first choice to play as Marcus. Here’s a rundown of the stuff tackled in the interview:
Controls: What their team is aiming for is quick button response and abrupt action. They want the game to be played in such a way that when you press a button to hide for cover, then dammit, in a nanosecond your character should be in hiding already! Well okay, maybe not that exaggerated, but more like a baseball player diving into home base — that quick and abrupt. But if you were being shot at, we’d all agree that the nanosecond-fast hiding for cover would bode well.
Gameplay Modes: Casual, Hardcore, Versus, and Insane mode. Cliff says that the Insane co-op mode will be ” really crazy fun,” so that’s something that only adds further to the pain of waiting for the game to come out!
Active Reload System: The decision to have an Active Reload system in the game was based on the team’s desire to make the gameplay more active and realistic. With other games, you’re just looking at the screen while reloading, and Cliff B. says that this is not at all realistic coz if you’re a soldier in the middle of a heated battle, you won’t be all calm and tranquil while reloading, you could also mess it up. And according to Cliff, that’s the best thing about the Active Reload system, when you mess up, you have no one and nothing to blame but yourself.
Also, the reload meter is off to the side of the screen and not in the center because if they had put it in the middle, people would get too good at it too quickly, which Epic’s team apparently saw with some of the testers they brought in to play the game. They had to make sure that people wouldn’t get bored with, and too good at reloading so they put the meter off to the side of the screen.
F— Jump blog and the online community: When asked as to whether the online community played any part in the development of Gears of War, Cliff said that they’ve definitely been heeding the comments and requests from the gaming community for a cinematic experience, a cool plot, versus mode, etc., and said that they’ve succeeded in giving the players just that. But, he says that it’s also important to NOT listen to the community when it comes to other stuff, such as jumping.
In his aptly-titled “F— Jump” blog, he basically talks about how jumping couldn’t really be a cool feature in the game because “if a bullet is coming towards my head, the last thing I’ll want to do is jump.” BUT, don’t worry, you will be able to jump while playing the game, just not in the conventional way you’re used to. Cliff says that in GoW, you’ll be jumping along the X and Y axis in that it’s not so much as jumping, but ‘leaping’ into the environment.
Collectibles and Downloadables: The GoW developer team decided to have collectibles because the game is not just a shooter war game, it’s also about exploration, but for this to make sense, they had to tie it in with the plot. So what’ll happen is that when you see a Crimson Omen logo, it means that a spot where soldiers have died, and somewhere near that logo is a Cog Tag. You then have to collect these Cog Tags and give it to the dead soldiers’ families to let them know that their son/brother/husband died in battle.
As for downloadable content in the game, here’s all Blezinsky had to say about that: “Yes, we’re looking into offering downloadable versus maps. There’re no plans for single player at this point but we have the hooks in there to expand upon the eight multiplayer maps that are already in the game.“
Alright, that’s just about all the info we can give to you right now about Gears of War, but we will be posting updates so make sure to check back with us. Or would you rather wait till November 7, when it’s released, to find out more? No? Didn’t think so.
Preorder: [Gears of War]
Via CVG