Gears of War 3 single-player preview: Two paths coming together
During Microsoft's E3 2011 press conference, Cliff Bleszinski and Ice-T took to the stage to show off some single-player co-op action in Gears of War 3. In a small room high above Microsoft's booth here at the LA Convention Center, I was given an extended look at that sequence by Bleszinski himself, who was keen to show me the destructive capabilities of the mech, which I would ultimately get to see more of in my time with Horde mode.
As you can imagine, the Silverback mech is pretty powerful. But before we could get to that, Bleszinski set the scene. "The section we saw at the press conference showed Marcus and Dom on a flotilla, dealing with a Lambent Leviathan. It's ultimately taken out by them in a Silverback while Cole and Baird up above take a giant crate of Tickers and empty it onto it. Once we're done with Marcus and Dom, we're going to swap over to Cole and Baird and play with them during that same sequence."
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Since this was the second time around we had seen the fight with the Leviathan, Bleszinski was extra quick about jumping into the Silverback. It's got dual chain guns and rocket launchers, but also some extra capabilities. A stomp maneuver makes short work of smaller enemies, while a deploy function turns it into a piece of cover your teammates can shield themselves with.
But let's get to Cole and Baird, since the Leviathan fight at this point is old hat. They're high atop the flotilla on a collapsed bridge -- the ultimate goal being to dump the giant crate of tickers onto the Leviathan. I have no idea why the Locust would be hoarding Tickers in a rusty box, but there it is.
Of course, in typical Gears fashion, there's a slew of Locusts between the COG soldiers and the Locust. It's just a bunch of Drones who wouldn't put up much of a fight normally, but are hilariously outmatched as soon as Bleszinski introduces me to the game's newest weapon: the Vulcan Cannon.
One COG holds and operates the actual gun, while the other stays in the rear, continually cranking the ammo box and feeding ammo to the gun through a tethered belt. As for everyone else? Well, red mist.
Methodically plodding forward with his death cannon, it didn't take long for Bleszinski to dispatch the remaining Locust and make his way to the rusty box full of Tickers. It's dumped on the Leviathan and, presumably, puts it down for the count. And with that, the preview session concluded.
"The great thing about doing this, kind of allowing the two little stories to exist together in parallel tandem, is that -- the game opens up with Marcus, Dom, Anya and Jace -- and now our cast is so big that we need to have time to actually spend with these guys. So when you play as Cole, Baird, Sam and Carmine, you get a couple of hours together to experience their section, then we kind of do the shell game and bring characters in and out, giving everyone an equal amount of screen time." He would go on to say that it's kind of "the next generation" of the split paths seen in previous Gears of War games.
Cliff was pretty up front that the storytelling in Gears of War 3 was inspired by Pulp Fiction. "Gears isn't Shakespeare -- we know that," he said, "but we can play with a Pulp Fiction type story, so we split it up, let characters do their own thing, have flashbacks at certain parts, then ultimately tie it all up." While I didn't get a taste for a majority of what Blesinszki promised, I can say my demo session left me feeling confident that players wouldn't be staring at the back of Marcus Fenix throughout the entire campaign.
Gears of War 3 launches on September 20 for the Xbox 360.
