Examiner

Cliff Bleszinski, the Gears of War game designer also known as Cliffy B, spent the afternoon today in a AMA on Reddit. An AMA is a type of post on Reddit which stands for ‘Ask Me Anything’. This allows both everyday people and celebrities alike to come in and answer questions posed to them by the public.

During his time answering questions, Bleszinski (who is currently working on a Gears of War prequel) stated that it was never a specific design choice for all the characters in Gears of War to be muscular guys. That it was simply a by-product of how the art team felt men should look if they were fighting hordes and hauling around gigantic weapons and it was never intended for them to become 'dudebros'

I never wanted to build a game with muscle-bound characters; the art department produced the concepts and models and they simply felt good slamming into walls and cutting one another in half with chainsaw guns. I do hope that in the future we can get some of the ‘dudebro’ out of Gears, to be honest.

In addition to speaking about wanting to tone-down the 'dudebro' meat head aspect of the games male characters, Cliffy Bleszinski also noted that he wants to add more female characters to the Gears of War franchise who can give a better representation for women in gaming.

http://www.examiner.com/article/cliff-bleszinski-wants-to-get-the-dudebro-out-of-gears-of-war

I can't prove it but I think Cliff made exactly what he wanted to make at the time. Now, he's wishing he'd gone a different route.

Yeah. If he had been more gender-balanced and it didnt sell as well, I think he would be bemoaning NOT making it a dude-party. Maybe thats what GeOW4 will be about?

Without "Dude-bro" you don't have Gears or War...sorry to say cliff. Thats like Activision stopping COD from being a "Dude-bro" game.

Even if it was gender balanced (in-game) it still would be a Dude-bro game. The game generally attracts males at 90% or higher.

I don't think he means he wants to change the audience of the game, just the aspect of big muscualr male characters

Honestly, this just demonstrates how the art teams in videogames are more influenced by Hollywood than reality ...

Look at what armies see as the ideal fitness level of a solidier and you will see that it doesn't look anything like the muscle bound super-soldiers Hollywood and many gaming companies envision.

The muscular characters gave the game its charm. If they had normal realistic looking characters the game would've been boring to look at. Take Darksiders for instance. That game has a lot of charm in its comic book style approach. A lot of western made shooters are dude bro games. LOL basically most shooting co-op games that represent America in general. "Dude-bro" is a cultural thing and its huge in America. It sells.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unreal_Engine_Comparison.jpg

Epic games along with other western companies have been championing thick characters for a long time (on PC before this gen). They've been doing Dude-bro for quite a while. They like characters with hulking bodies in bloody worlds meant for men to enjoy. As I said before, the PC mentality was brought over to the Xbox via Microsoft, opening pandoras box for more people to be exposed to it.

I hope it doesn't change. I always thought the dudebro image was great in Gears of War. Gears's story was never meant to be deep, intimate, or even realistic. It's just there because it's a requirement for the narrative. In fact, I find the dudebro image actually pretty comical. Especially Cole; Every thing he does & says is so exaggerated and ridiculous, I can't help but smile when he's on screen. When I play Gears, I'm not looking to be 'moved' or anything like that. Seriously, if you want to be moved, then go watch a dramatic movie, or better yet, read a book. When I play Gears, I just want to sit back, relax, get some headshots, blow some shit up, and on the off-chance that I do actually pay attention to the characters, they usually crack me up.

QFT. This is the same reason I why love Gears.