Finishing Gears of War - Mike Capps - CVG Online

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Finishing Gears of War - Mike Capps
CVG Online - 3 hours ago
... All our licensees have known that Gears of War, for Xbox360, and Unreal Tournament 2007, for PS3 and PC, were on the way, and while we have an excellent ...


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[GrendelKhan{TSU}]

Finishing Gears of War - Mike Capps 6-Nov-2006 CVG speaks to Epic president Mike Capps as he sighs relief at getting his seminal shooter out the door The Gears of War are finally churning into the shops, and as part of our duo of launch interviews, we've managed to get a word in with Epic president Mike Capps, who shares his disbelief at finally finishing the seminal shooter - as well as spilling some interesting development anicdotes and juicy hints at a sequel. We put the same questions to Gears' lead designer Cliff 'CliffyB' Bleszinski, and you can read his answers right here So without further ado, it's over to Mr. Capps... How relieved are you to finally get Gears' out of the door? Has it been a challenging last few months? Advertisement:Mike Capps: Really, the guys just can't believe it's finally over. Folks are a little shell shocked, dazed even. We started with a hard push for the behind-closed-doors demo at E3 last year. The next one was only a few months later, and then they just kept coming faster and faster. It's really been a constant blur since April, and the dev team really took the challenge head on. We were on seven day weeks, 12 hour days, catering dinners to keep guys working, you name it. Luckily we have a lot of industry vets who knew how to pace themselves. We said it was a marathon, not a sprint - until the end, when it was just a free-for-all sprint to the finish line. After the massive reception the game has received pre-release, are you worried that the excitement might just plateau rather than explode when Gears finally reaches gamers' hands? Mike Capps: That's completely out of our hands now. We've done everything we can to create the most memorable, immersive, cinematic gaming experience we can... now it's up to the gamers to decide if we pulled it off. Personally, what's your favourite feature in the game? What part of Gears' do you think gamers will enjoy the most? Mike Capps: I love the way targeting interacts with cover. You get into cover, and then by holding the left trigger you partially pop out of cover and zoom in on your target. It feels just right, very intuitive, and I think it'll make the game very accessible. It means that you're not constantly doing two-stick move/aim, but rather you move to cover, then aim, then move, then aim. I just spent the last two days watching contest winners behind the scenes at Epic playing multiplayer all day, and I'd have to say that the chainsaw and curb stomp are the features they were enjoying most. How popular do you think Gears' will be over Xbox Live? What plans do you have to release content after it's shipped? Mike Capps: We've been quite surprised by the great critical reception for Gears multiplayer - including best multiplayer of the show at E3 - and I'm hoping that will translate to a lot of playtime online. Plus I do think the co-op single player over Live will be quite popular; a bunch of folks at Epic took our development kits home for that and had a blast. We're not announcing any plans right now about downloadable content, but I'd like to think that Epic has earned a very strong reputation in supporting its products post-ship. You've worked long and hard on the control scheme can you tell us something about that process and how you've refined it down? Mike Capps: This is where Epic is at its best, because everyone here takes control scheme so seriously. It's generally understood to be what separates games like Unreal Tournament from the competition, so we always focus on controls. We have daily playtests where players of all different skills and playstyles would give their input. The design and gameplay guys would tweak a few values and we'd do it again, day after week after month after year. We'll never be 100% happy, because we're perfectionists here, but the fact that we shipped it means we are absolutely satisfied and think players will love the controls. How much of a challenge has it been to incorporate co-op and how important do you think this will be to Gears' success? Mike Capps: It wasn't so much a challenge as a design goal from the very beginning - we always planned that the story and cinematics would allow for two playable characters. There were loads of challenges the team faced in making sure that it worked underneath the hood. For example, we use streaming techniques so we can have levels that are much larger than can fit in memory, but co-op players could break the game by straying too far away and requiring two different levels to be in memory at once. Making sure levels always had enough cover space for two players, getting the split levels working where the two players supported each other separately, all that was hard but resulted in exactly the experience we wanted. Was there anything particularly juicy you didn't have time to implement in the game, or would have liked to? Mike Capps: We did cut a few levels part way through production. They weren't cut because they were less fun or less promising, just that they were the least finished at the time of the decision. Believe me, that's a hard decision - when you know someone has spent a lot of their late nights, and their personal time, it's very hard to make that call. But the decision is usually "cut this, or slip the game, or lower quality across the board", and so it's not so much a hard decision as it is hard to execute. In relation to Unreal Engine 3, how important is Gears' arrival to the market? Mike Capps: It is quite important. Having been an engine licensee myself (with America's Army), I can attest that a major part of the licensing decision is trusting that the engine will get to a shippable state. All our licensees have known that Gears of War, for Xbox360, and Unreal Tournament 2007, for PS3 and PC, were on the way, and while we have an excellent reputation for shipping games, I'm sure they were all happy to hear Gears had gone gold. Now that our first 360 title is out of the way we can turn resources toward achieving the same sort of "finished state", that we've achieved on Xbox 360, toward UT2007 on PlayStation 3 and PC. Another benefit of working with an engine company that makes games is that licensees get all the last-minute bug fixes and optimizations we made while shipping Gears. Plus they'll get all the source code for Gears, to dissect as an example for making their own games. Does Gears' leave the door open for a sequel? Where would you like to take the series next? Mike Capps: We've spent time developing a rich universe for Gears, and the story is absolutely larger than the one told in the game. One could even argue that the ending cinematic leaves room for a sequel - but we have no plans as of yet. We have a fair amount of rest and relaxation to worry about first There are some particularly gruesome kills on offer in Gears'. Was there anything too bloody to make the cut? Did you ever think 'Maybe this is too much...'? Mike Capps: As far as I know, the answers are "no" and "no" :) Finally, can you tell us something about the making of Gears' that no-one else knows? Mike Capps: Tough one - we had reality TV cameras following us around for months, so it's hard to believe we have any secrets left! Here's one, though I'm not sure if anyone has said this before. The original name of the Locust Horde was the Geist, and the drone was called a Locust. At E3 2004 we saw an upcoming Nintendo game called Geist and so decided to make the change. You can read our full review of Gears of War on CVG tomorrow.

omg...so... like.... how is it??! who's playing??

I want to know!! :wall:

[Crow{TSU}]

wait until tommorow

i heard that many stores have them already, but are only going to put them to sell tommorow