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When and Where
"It's six months after the events
of Gears 1, and the Locusts have actually returned. We're
right at the onset of winter; it's the last day of fall as
we open the game. Basically the Locusts have returned with
a force that's capable of sinking entire cities."
“When we were building this level
[Act One, Chapter Three: Assault], we wanted to create a scenario
where it was just one thing after another - to build the ultimate
watercooler level. So many of the levels in Gears 2 are like
that, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think people
are responding really nicely.”
Bleszinski was also quick to point
out that while Gears sort of got a name for itself through
it's many underground levels, the sequel will only spend about
30 percent of the game underground.
Cover System
“I believe that hands-down, in
Gears 2, we will have the best cover system ever seen in the
videogame industry. I'd say about 90 percent of the time,
it worked exactly how gamers wanted it to work. About 10 percent
of the time, players were going into cover when they didn't
want to. We put some of those tweaks in a patch for Gears
1, we iterated on them for Gears PC, and now we're bringing
it full circle for Gears 2. I think players are really going
to love the system this time around.”
Locust
“You'll see where the Locust
live, you'll see where humanity lives, you'll see a darker
story with more intimate violence and more executions. And
a whole lot more ass-kicking.”
“They're meaner, they're nastier.
The Locust have been in the underground for a while, and there
are a lot of indigenous creatures down there they've essentially
mastered through various means. So you see Brumaks return
and other nefarious creatures. I don't want to spoil too much,
but I've been quoted as saying we have creatures that make
the Brumaks look like baby panda bears. Very, very large.”
“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.”
Multiplayer
“The whole ‘bigger, better
and more badass’ thing continues in multiplayer as far
as we actually have five on five now. We are shipping with
more multiplayer maps out of the box, that are new, than what
we shipped in Gears 1. And we are going to have many more
multiplayer modes, as well as greatly expanded online functionality.
Can’t go into much detail right now, but what is going
to be, rest assured, it’ll be very competitive with
others titles in this space”
“I think that if we were not
to have a feature like that [party system], it would probably
be a pretty big fuckup.”
“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.”
Chainsaw Duels
“You can chainsaw somebody from
behind, from their taint to their throats; there’s so
many more executions now; weapon-specific executions. There’s
[also] people crawling when they are down, but not out, trying
to get away and you can hit them and they start crawling faster.
The curbstomp is of course back. Take somebody hostage and
watch the bodies explode as your enemies are shooting at it
and the arms are gone flying. And one thing after another
really kind of adds up to this big bucket full of blood.”
“Players who engage in a chainsaw
duel are locked into the duel to win or to loose. There is
an occasional draw scenario, but keep in mind that while players
are into that, there’re not in a god mode, so if you
chainsaw somebody there’s a certain amount of risk involved,
so you wanna try to make sure you kind of catch them at the
right moment before you get away with it.”
“The chainsaw duel itself, moment
for moment, takes about as long as the old chainsaw action
does because what we do we actually make the actual act of
chainsawing somebody at the end of the duel extremely quick.”
Whether the regular chainsaw digs through
and takes that time, the majority of that time in the duel
is spent in the duel and then the regular saw takes the same
amount of time.
November and Beyond
The developer said that
the game will be running at over 30 frames per a second when
it ships and that it will come with more new multiplayer maps
than before. He added that they haven't decided how they will
introduce new DLC maps to the game, but both the concept of
early adopter tax and sponsored maps are being explored.
“We never announced
a trilogy, I don't know why everybody's cramming those words
into my mouth. They're like, 'You said Gears would be a trilogy.'
I'm like, 'I didn't say sh**! That wasn't me! You're putting
words in my mouth, journalists!' But I love this universe,
and if Gears 2 has a wonderful ship-in, if gamers buy it,
then we'll consider a sequel.”
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