X360A

Cliff Bleszinski believes that this generation of titles have become too easy. He doesn’t think games challenge us any more. So with Gears of War: Judgment he’s cranking up the difficulty levels.

Speaking to X360A, the Epic Games Design Director outlined the pitfalls of catering to a broader audience, while detailing the pain we’ll go through in Epic Games and People Can Fly’s upcoming Gears prequel.

“It feels like in this current console generation that we’ve taken a lot of steps to grow the audience and what I think’s happened is that the games have become more linear and easier, so it feels like a lot of quick-time-events,” said Bleszinski.

“The more I play games like that the more I turned off to them and just want to get back to systems interacting with systems, and get back to a game that, you know, when was the last time a game really challenged you and asked something of you, right? There’s a reason why Demon Souls and Dark Souls have taken off lately. It’s because they really require you actually try.”

To help embrace this spirit, Gears of War: Judgment has a few nasty tricks up its sleeve, reckons Bleszinski. Just as in the Souls games he references, you should prepare to die.

“Casual mode will still be casual, whatever, if you just want to see graphics and you don’t want to die,” he said. “But every other mode will be hard in this game and you will die.

“When I played this in 4-player co-op… I mean, I’ve been playing Gears since the beginning of the course and I really have to hunker down and focus, and if my buddies aren’t reviving me, and we aren’t working as a team, you’re going to die, and it’s okay to die a few times in a game to try some different strategies, the S3 respawn system [Ed - as referenced in our preview] provides unique challenges.”

Not only does this system maintain the challenge, it also means that different players will have different experiences with the game.

“We then get some cool, ‘How did that combat scenario play out for you?’ ‘Oh, I used grenades against this one declassified challenge and then my buddy came in,’ which is interesting and cool, as opposed to, ‘I came around the same exact corner and saw the same exact plane crash, the same exact enemies, there’s nothing unique,’” said Bleszinski.

“There’s nothing unique to you,” added Adrian Chmielarz, People Can Fly’s Creative Director. “This is what we’re trying to provide… your own moments, something that you’ll feel like only happened to you and you figured this out.”

Bleszinski concluded, “If this game doesn’t make you sweat, we haven’t done our jobs.”

Gears of War: Judgment is out next year.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-12086-Cliff-Bleszinski--%22Games-Have-Become-More-Linear-and-Easier%22.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

His next IP for the next gen should be something like the Souls series!

Surprised and glad to hear Cliffy B express this huge problem with modern gaming.

"Too easy", "linear" and "a lot of QTE's". Yes, very much so.

It really baffles me that most gamers don't get it. That gamers eat up and consume all this casual interactive movie crap out there that is produced.

:O why Bliff, did you have a clear moment of lucidity there?!

I've thought this for years. The older I got, the easier the games became in my later teens. The first game I noticed is Final Fantasy X.

Im glad he's taking note. Gears is one of the worst for this...

The irony of his words.

well, i like that sometimes.  heavy rain was great imo.  but we had that thread a while back, "the unchartidization of video games"...   i think the problem is most every game is going that route and it is too much, too many.  we need the other side of things equally represented.  and to get that it is psn/xbla or multiplayer deathmatches.

Back in the day when games where games and men where true.... fuck this shit.
Gaming is perfect right now OK the Sequelitis is a problem but everything else is better then ever. 10 year ago games like Diablo 2 Doom and Quake where considered the greatest ever if you would publish a game like this today people would laugh about it they would be mediocre at best. One of the most Linear games ever is Super Mario. Maybe games are easier as they where in the 90s, but don´t forget gaming is not a sport or some kind competition people play games to relax not to exhaust and frustrate themselves, and almost every game has different difficulty levels.

Looks at Gears of War 2 and 3 as well as Bulletstorm.

You are one hypocritical fuck who's studio is contributing to it Beszinski.

@ Slimebeast Most of you guys that complain about the videos in the games are the guys older than 30. Just something I noticed. This gen is the best Sir. I think stories like that are a must in many games to make them better than ever. There are plenty of simple oldschool arcade games out there.