Joystiq interview: CliffyB talks Gears of War 2

After briefly discussing our unique spelling and French heritage ("Joy-stique," Cliffy exclaimed!) and commiserating about being confused with other companies (apparently, he gets asked if he works for Epyx, the now long-gone publisher of Summer Games) with Epic designer and Chief Gears Dude Cliff Bleszinski (that's CliffyB to you kids), we got down to the serious business of talking about Gears of War 2: The Gears-ening.

Gears 2. It's coming out. We know it's bigger, it's badder, it's more badass.

Getting tired of hearing that yet?

We've heard it a couple times. Our question is, what was the number one thing in Gears 1 you wanted to change? What did you make that you knew you could do better?

I just wanted it to feel like more of a war. And it's not just about having the big battle scenes with the hundreds of Locust. It's not just about the huge beautiful vistas that the player gets to see or the tank shooting the Brumak down in front of you, or the choppers crashing, it's also about the writing and the levels; going into the Hollow and hearing the other radio chatter from other people who are dropping into the underground and they're lost and it's foreshadowing what you're going to encounter later in the underground. It's everything, to give more of a sense not only of the scale but also what's at stake for humanity -- and that's the biggest thing.

The number one complaint from not only us but many fans of the game is that, while it gets so many things right, it gets repetitive.

The first things about repetition is: what we do is establish the core gameplay and then we start introducing other elements that switch that up a little bit. In Gears 1 we had things such as the crow level and now the player knows how to play the game and take cover and now we introduce nightfall and these creatures that will eat him if he goes in the dark and he has to find his way through. And then we go to the factory level and it's a little bit more about suspense and there's some mining cart rides, things like that. And in Gears 2 we take that idea and we increase it by like five-fold. Where every level, yeah it has the core combat but there's always something switching it up. Whatever that mechanic is, and I don't want to spoil it too much, but there's always something new and interesting to surprise you along the way, to keep everything fresh. You don't just want to be shooting *dudes* you want to be shooting guys while crazy stuff goes on and switching it up a little bit. If it's the same thing over and over again, it can get repetitive. That's why we as designers want to constantly surprise the player with these new events, or new weapons, or new enemies, or new story bits. Because the story as well, it's a powerful thing. From the get-go, Dom's looking for his wife. I'm going to want to know as a gamer, where is she? Is she alive? Is she dead? What's happened to her? Is he going to get his answer? That's another motivator.

As far as the multiplayer goes, we're shipping with at least ... well, I don't know what the embargo is ... but we're shipping with a lot more fucking multiplayer maps this time time around. A lot more multiplayer modes. So when you look at the matrix of maps to modes, it's literally hundreds of hours of gameplay. And there's also some fun stuff that we haven't announced yet in regards to co-op.
%Gallery-22753%
We have games like Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 that have racked up a ridiculous number of hours on Live. Are you looking at them as a benchmark? That level of functionality?

I think they've pretty much set a good standard as far as the game being its own platform of entertainment. Not only having a single player campaign where you ind of get your feet wet, to having co-op as well as continuing with the online multiplayer. Again, I can't talk too much about what we're doing due to embargoes and whatnot, but the feature set will be very rich and will be pretty damn solid by the time we ship as far as what players will get out of the package.

Could you go so far as to say there will at least be a party system this go round?

I think that if we were not to have a feature like that, it would probably be a pretty big fuckup.

We concur! Are you afraid of changing too much in the game? Watching the gameplay video that came out on Friday night, Marcus shooting over the edge into a sea of Locusts, it seems like a totally futile activity.

Well, you can kill them ...

... okay, but you've got hundreds of them! How is the gameplay going to change when you're talking about a scale like that, where you're still controlling just one player -- it's not an RTS -- how do you balance that?

We, as designers, having hundreds of Locusts on screen in one section and the cover mechanic, we have to be very careful of which scenarios we allow the player to experience and engage that many Locusts. And I don't want to go into too much detail in regards to how we leverage that, but there are plenty of scenes in the game in which the player is dealing with hundreds of Locusts and there's also other scenes in which he's dealing with a number that's more than Gears 1 but not quite as much as that crowd. Honestly, it just depends on that scenario, it depends on what's called for, and it depends on pacing. If you were on the ground, by yourself, with hundreds of Locusts coming, they'd look stupid if they weren't all shooting at you, or they wouldn't be taking cover anD that wouldn't be Gears gameplay. There's so many factors we have to take in mind as creatives, so it's a delicate delicate balance of gameplay.

We read in a press release this morning that there will be weapon-specific melees. We have the chainsaw on the Lancer, can you give us any other examples?

I can't spoil too much but, if you look at the Torque Bow and there's blades that come off of it, you could start guessing that there's some fun to be had there.

I think we can guess what you're talking about. How about the Gears universe? You have the Gears movie that's being worked on, and I don't know how involved you are in that. What other opportunities do you see for Gears?

We're working on a comic book. Action figures are about to come out. I'm so happy about those, they've been amazing to work with. The results have been extraordinary. And there's the hoodies, the doo rags, the whole nine-yards. Basically, anything that makes sense, we'll consider doing. I think we have to stop at the lunch boxes, because we're a Mature-rated game, so we don't want to market to grade school kids. But I love action figures and collectibles as much as the next guy.

... until "Gears of War Kart Racers" comes out, then you could do the lunchboxes.

*laughs* ... I don't think that would be good.

[Cliffy's told he's got to be somewhere]

Alright, last one. How do you feel about being the face of Gears of War? You start out designing levels, then designing games, and now you're a figurehead.

Oh, I get a kick out of it, man. I mean, you have to take all the comments on teh internet with a grain of salt because the better you do, the more they love you, but the second that you fuck up, they'll be the first to tar and feather you and your name will be a joke. So I'm very sensitive to that. Plus, I have a thick skin. Whenever I read the forums, it's always like four posts until somebody calls me a "faggot." I think, you know what? Call me whatever you want, as long as you keep playing the games.

That's funny, they call me the same thing on Xbox Live ...

Well, we're not getting into that.

Thanks for the time, Cliff!