VideoGameWriters
Gears of War 3 is easily one of the most anticipated titles of the year. Even though it’s still six months from release, it’s still generating nearly as much heat as any other title set for release this year. From a wildly desired beta testing phase that starts in about a month, to some of the longest waits at PAX East, there is no denying the sheer buzz that exists around the title.
Expectations are high among the fanbase, but Chris Wynn, Lead Producer for Gears of War 3, claims that they combat that by setting some incredibly high expectations of their own. “You set high expectations and you make sure you live up to them,” Wynn said. “We’ve set a hugely high quality bar for every single thing we do; art assets, the quality of the game, the polish, and if something’s not up to [those expectations], it’s gone, or we go back and work on it to make sure it lives up to it. It’s just a relentless amount of focus from everyone on the team to make sure we live up to it.”
Those lofty expectations have allowed the Gear of War franchise to enjoy plenty of success, but Wynn claims that doesn’t mean we’ll start seeing more and more Gears of War titles. “[The hardest part about carrying on a series like Gears of War is] making sure you don’t get fatigued,” Wynn claims. “You see a lot of brands go out, not just video games [...], and they try to capitalize on success too hard and you end up fatiguing the brand. We don’t want to be so in everyone’s face that you just get tired of it, we don’t want to be so in our own face that we get tired of it. It’s really about challenging each other and challenging what we’re going to do and how we’re going to present it and just kind of keeping fresh about it.”
Keeping the series fresh is one thing, but expanding on an already elaborate set of mythology is another. Wynn has a lot of confidence in where the campaign mode of Gears of War 3 will take fans. “Luckily we had a lot of time to work on the story mode,” said Wynn. “We brought in Karen Traviss, who is just an awesome writer. She just jumped into the universe and became just crazy obsessed with all the details of the story. Really, from there, it just evolved with the voice actors and how we tell the story. Really really solid. I can guarantee it’s the best campaign yet in the series. It’s longer; it plays out to be about 10 – 12 hours long, so it’s quite a bit longer than 1 or 2. There’s a lot of great moments and really cool storylines. You’re going to love it.”
One issue that fans have always seemed to have with the Gears of War series has been the final boss battles. Whether you hate General RAAM in the original Gears of War for being too tough, or loathe the end of Gears of War 2 for being anticlimactic, Wynn feels as though you’re going to like the various boss battles in Gears 3. “We always do a lot of testing to determine for ourselves what’s good and what’s not good,” Wynn said. “We’ve taken [the final boss criticisms] to heart with Gears 3 and we’re doing a lot of focus testing on the boss battles. We’ve brought in users that have played Gears, maybe not haven’t played Gears, sit them down in front of the game and we go through the various boss battles in 3 and see how those rate out. Are they too easy? Too hard? Just right? Was it fun? Do you get it? We just keep tweaking from there. Some of the boss fights have just gone through dozens of iterations to fight that right mechanic and the right balance to make sure it’s fun and engaging. I think we got there; I think it’s really good. Obviously we’re still working on it… it’s not done yet, but the boss fights that you get to are different than some of the ones we’ve had before and they’re a lot of fun and I think they’re going to be good.”
Looking past launch, Chris Wynn claims that the Gears team is plotting something huge for post-launch support by way of downloadable content. “We’re looking at launching September 20th and we’re thinking ‘what do we do after that?’ and we have big plans,” said Wynn. “Much bigger than what we did for Gears 2.”
After Epic, along with People Can Fly, successfully launched Bulletstorm through multiple platforms, there were questions on whether or not Gears of War could make the jump somewhere down the road to become multiplatform, not unlike Mass Effect did recently. “Between Microsoft and Epic, we have a really good partnership, actually, and there’s some really big advantages there,” Wynn said. “Microsoft can bring to Epic different things that are exclusive to the 360, that they can get access to or get insight to that no one else can. That allows us to maybe try out some new things that other platforms just can’t do yet. So, those advantages are really good, and are things we see as very positive, and so we’re taking that forward as we go.”
One of those benefits is that Gears of War, which has a very strong online following, utilizes the strengths of Xbox Live to only increase the overall experience. “Xbox Live is a key contributor to Xbox, which Gears benefits from. I mean, it’s absolutely differentiates [the 360]. It’s by far the best online platform out there. Gears has a big online following and we really value online play, and so that’s a key component of [the franchise]. By proxy [Xbox Live] is a part of the [Gears of War] success.”
Now, what does that mean for PC gamers, who have been clamoring for Gears of War 2 to be released after the original Gears was made available? “We’re always looking at which strategy we go with. Right now we’re just staying exclusively on the 360. It’s really about where we can put our focus, and our focus on the 360 hardware makes it really that much better of an experience. As we look at the future and look at our overall business strategy, we don’t want to rule it out, but it’s not really in the plans right now”
Wynn also confirmed that the Gears of War 3 would likely feature a similar 100-level cap in multiplayer, mainly due to the fact that it allowed players to feel a sense of success for reaching such an exclusive landmark. Not much else is known regarding auxiliary features of multiplayer, but we are sure to find out more in coming months as the beta rolls out and conventions become more and more commonplace for the upcoming Gears of War title.
http://videogamewriters.com/chris-wynn-lead-producer-of-gears-of-war-3-talks-story-boss-fights-and-console-exclusivity-4640/2
