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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter will be combat-free, focus on exploration
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is the recently announced (and kind of creepy) new game from creative lead Adrian Chmielarz, formerly of People Can Fly, where he worked on violence-ridden games like Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgement. But while those games celebrated a proliferation of firearms, Chmielarz says his new title will be quite the opposite: There won't be any shooting at all.There will be some death, however. "Take Dear Esther, add gameplay, murder and corpses," Chmielarz said to Eurogamer this week. "That's the closest to what The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is." Dear Esther was a first person exploration game more than anything, but Chmielarz added to expect slightly more interactivity in the new title. Players will play as a detective (presumably researching the titular mystery), and will find clues as the game goes on. Chmielarz said that "the focus is not on mind bending puzzles, but on unsettling discoveries."He also said he was considering supporting the Oculus Rift, and other 3D displays and devices. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is set to launch on the PC later this year.
Epic Games now wholly owns Gears of War: Judgment dev People Can Fly
When Epic Games subsidiary People Can Fly lost three senior employees this past week, Epic Games apparently purchased the rest of the Poland-based development studio. "One of the things that got missed with that story was that we bought the rest of People Can Fly that we didn't own. We didn't announce that, so that was also part of it," Epic Games VP Mark Rein told us this afternoon at GDC Europe."But now we own it all. We had a controlling stake, but the owner still owned a fairly large piece of it," he said. As it turns out, those owners were the folks who left to do something different – despite being in the middle of developing the next Gears of War game, Judgment. "They left, they're gonna do their own thing. They have something cool they're gonna do, and we'll be very supportive of it," Rein added.It's unknown how much Epic Games paid for the rest of its stake in People Can Fly.
Gears of War: Judgment creative lead out at People Can Fly
Gears of War: Judgment creative lead Adrian Chmielarz exited Poland-based Epic Games subsidiary People Can Fly this past week. In fact, a trio of management is out at the studio. Epic Games president Mike Capps confirmed the news in a prepared statement: "Adrian Chmielarz, Andrzej Poznanski and Michal Kosieradzki have parted ways with People Can Fly and Epic Games in order to pursue other opportunities, which they will announce of their own accord. Over the past decade, they have been instrumental in building People Can Fly into the talented team that it is today. We wish them well in their future endeavors. People Can Fly remains excited to release Gears of War: Judgment to fans early next year."Chmielarz also reassured fans via Twitter that Judgment is "in great hands," and that we'll hear more about where he's headed next "soon enough." No word on the other two gentlemen, unfortunately, but it sounds like a group effort if you ask us. We're in Europe all this week, which is where Poland is based, so we're hoping to stumble upon his secret plans.
'We basically inspire each other:' People Can Fly and Epic on teaming up for Gears of War: Judgment
It takes millions of dollars and a lot of manpower to create a AAA product like Gears of War. For Gears of War: Judgment, Epic Games will share development duties with People Can Fly, Epic Games' subsidiary studio based in Poland. During an interview with Epic Games design director Cliff Blezsinski and People Can Fly founder Adrian Chmielarz, the duo explained the choice to share development of Gears of War: Judgment."If you look at the slightly compressed timeframe for these products – we don't have the two and a half years like Gears 2 had – the fact that with the feature set needed, we're in a world where if you look at the Call of Duty interviews where they're like here's the CEO of Sledgehammer, here's the CEO of Infinity Ward, here's the CEO of Duncan Hines, you're like, 'Jesus, what's going on here?' It takes multiple studios now to really make a game that can have all of this between the campaign and multiplayer and the co-op elements and things like that, and plus they're quite fucking crazy, to be honest with you," Blezsinski said. Chmielarz added that the addition of People Can Fly brings something "fresh" to the Gears franchise."The big idea is, yes, we can bring something fresh to this. I think we basically inspire each other – we have these new ideas and then sort of shake the foundation of Gears up without changing too much; it's still Gears." But it's also a question of manpower needed to tackle the technical hurdles of building upon the precedents set in Gears of War 3, Blezsinski explained. "Making the campaign have that many Locust and be that intense made it a requirement for the younger guys working on the Epic side to refine the controls, and there's just non-stop back and forth [between Epic and People Can Fly]."%Gallery-157621%
'You're going to die a fair amount:' Bleszinski on Gears of War: Judgment's S3 system
Gone are the static spawn wells seen in Gears of War entries in the past. With Gears of War: Judgment, People Can Fly and Epic Games will introduce something they're labeling as S3 – a smart spawn system."Previously in Gears, if you wanted a greater challenge, you went for the higher difficulty mode. It basically meant less health for you and more health for them. It worked perfectly fine, but we tried to attack this from a different angle," People Can Fly's Adrian Chmielarz explained to Joystiq. "S3 constantly monitors your performance, from simple stuff like accuracy and your skills, but also like your location in the combat zone." Chmielarz provided an example of a player in one corner, shooting Locust, then having the system adapt on the fly and spawn enemies at more challenging locations."The other thing it can do is run multiple scenarios: you play through a section of the game, from checkpoint-to-checkpoint, and you die at the very end of it. So then you think to yourself, 'Okay, I know how to fix that; I got this.' You replay and suddenly it's a completely new scenario – new enemies and you have to adapt one more time. Another example would be you choose a higher difficulty level to replay a section and then you encounter an enemy type that you have not encountered before. We kept it in reserves for a higher difficulty level. The big point about S3 is to make sure that you are challenged. We think that the word kind of disappeared from the vocabulary a little and games now actually paint the path for you on the floor, where to go next."Cliff Bleszinski then interjected, "I think that's why you're starting to see this love for games kind of like Dark Souls now. In order to try and grow the audience, games have been softened – players can't get lost ever, or they can't die ever. But then it's like you've just lost the point of the game and what games do, having that challenge. We're a little guilty of it – I'm fully willing to admit that. When was the last time a game has asked something of you? I've been playing Gears since the beginning, obviously, but when I go into the playtest lab and we play 4-player hardcore co-op [in Gears of War: Judgment], it takes us a good three or four tries to get through a combat scenario. I play a lot of games where I just get into the flow of combat and it's getting good then, boom, cutscene. I'm like, 'Fuck you, get back to the gameplay.' In this game, the pacing has gotten to the point where when you get past a protracted battle, and you finally get a cutscene, yeah you're happy to see the story progress but you're really just happy to have a break. You're going to die, you're going to die a fair amount, but hopefully you like it," he said."It's definitely going to be harder than Gears of War 3," Bleszinski added. "The thing about Gears 3 that I learned kind of in hindsight is the fact that technically it was the longest campaign that we've ever done, but we accidentally softened the difficulty a little too much. So the good gamers got through it in a similar timeframe to Gears 2, and were like 'No way it's the same length!' So we looked at the difficulty and there are certain little trade-offs that they made where, like, do you go DBNO or just die? Things like that, and also the same thing with enemy damage models. Gears of War: Judgment is going to be tough, even on normal difficulty level." Chmielarz then added that he thinks "normal is going to be more difficult than ever before."%Gallery-157621%
