LAZY DAY TRAILERS: GEARS OF WAR 2 GDC 2008 DEBUT TRAILER

You read that right, true believers, it’s official – Gears of War 2 is in production and slated for a November 2008 release exclusively on the Xbox 360. If you recall, this site was pretty much engulfed in Emergence Day fever back in 2006, and I fully expect to once again catch the bug for this next installment. I’d ramble on more and more about this right now, as well as all the other juicy announcements coming out of the 2008 Game Developer’s Conference, but I’m still not really feeling 100% and just want to crawl into bed.

Since this is a Lazy Day Trailers post, it wouldn’t be complete without a video courtesy of the fine people at GameTrailers.com – check it out below!

While we’re talking about Gears of War 2, a free Xbox 360 dashboard theme and gamerpicture set (as well as the above video) are currently available in the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Gears of War 2 will be coming exclusively to the Xbox 360 (though you can just about be sure a PC port will eventually follow) in November of 2008. Expect many updates in the months to come.

• Gears of War 2 – Official website
• Gears of War 2 GDC 2008: Debut Trailer – GameTrailers

RUMOR SMASHED: GEARS OF WAR NOT GOING MULTIPLATFORM

If you’ve been hanging around the internet water cooler, you may have heard a rumor that Epic Games is so pissed off with Microsoft at the moment that they’re considering bringing Gears of War to the PlayStation 3… well, in a post on Gears’ official forums, Epic Vice President Mark Rein decided to set the record straight once and for all;

“This story is complete bull****. I emailed the site and asked them to take it down. We’re very happy with our relationship with Microsoft. If it weren’t for them Gears wouldn’t be the huge hit it has become.” – Mark Rein, vice president, Epic Games

According to this article over at Kotaku, the rumor began on the forums of a small PlayStation 3 site called “The Sony Protection Group“and even went so far as to claim Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski had threatened to move the series to the PlayStation 3. Needless to say, as with anything on the internet, the story continued to grow from there.

Not content with just debunking the rumor over at the Gears of War forums, Rein also sent a little nasty-gram to the staff of the site expressing his displeasure;

“Please remove that complete b******* story about Gears going to PS3. Cliff Bleszinski has NEVER been quoted as “threatening Microsoft to port over Gears to the PS3″. We’re very happy with our relationship with Microsoft and are extremely grateful of everything they’ve done to help make Gears the huge success it has become. Part of that success came from being an Xbox 360 exclusive FIRST PARTY title and Microsoft getting behind it in a huge way. They’re the publisher of Gears of War and, unless they say otherwise, there is no chance Gears is coming to PS3. For PS3 we have Unreal Tournament 3 and it’s going to be fantastic.” – Mark Rein

So there you have it folks, there’s no double-talk or hidden meanings in this one – it looks like Gears of War will be remaining an Xbox 360 exclusive. While I don’t think it’s the case here, one thing I often wonder when I hear wild stories such as this is whether or not the sites in question run these kind of stories knowing full well that they’re false, but are hoping that the traffic the story is bound to create will increase their readership.

• Gears of War coming to the PS3?! – Official Gears of War forums
• Could Gears of War2 go multiplat? – Sony Protection Group Forums
• GoW Definitely Not Coming to PS3 – Kotaku

CLIFFYB’S NEXT PROJECT? LOOKS LIKE IT’S GEARS OF WAR 2

You didn’t think a week was going to go by without me having something to report on Gears of War, now did you? Videogamesblogger is reporting that in a Yahoo News chat session, when asked what his next project for Epic would be once Gears of War is completed, CliffyB responded “Gears of War 2, I’d imagine.”

While certainly not a revolutionary bit of news, as I’m sure we all realize that if Gears of War does as well as it’s expected to it would inevitably get a sequel, it does make a point that whatever is going to happen in Gears won’t be limited to just the first game. CliffyB mentioned in his podcast interview with OXM that Gears of War would start dark and only get darker, and this could be an indication that the entire story arc may take more than one game to complete. Check out the Videogameblogger report here and be sure to get your copy of Gears of War reserved asap. You can also check out our write up of that OXM podcast interview here.

OXM PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH CLIFFYB

The Official Xbox Magazine had a chance to talk with Gears of War’s CliffyB on a recent podcast about Gears, E3 and everything in between. As usual, CliffyB makes for one hell of an interview subject, and doesn’t dance around the subject when talking about the industry or Gears itself. Here’s a small sampling of what the 30 minute interview touched on.

• On E3
  • The Gears team was very happy with the reception the game got at E3, so much so that they had to remind themselves that there’s still a long way to go, and it’s nowhere near time to start celebrating.
  • The tension between Microsoft and Epic over the chainsaw bayonet was played up a bit for the MTV special. While there were some issues involving the decision to put the chainsaw in the demo, it wasn’t nearly as tense as it was made out to be.
  • Despite the great reception Gears got, the team is still working hard to make the game just right. As CliffyB put it;
    • “The difference between good and great are all those small touches.” – Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski
• On taking cover in Gears
  • There’s a huge emphasis in the game on making you feel the “weight” and realism of the game. They use Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter as an example of this. In GRAW, when you come up against a wall, you simply lean up on it for the most part. In Gears they want that feeling of momentum – it’s not supposed to be this delicate little maneuver, but rather express the feeling that you are in a battle for your life, and anything that is going to save you is good, no matter how painful it may be. Since he’s so quotable, here’s CliffyB’s thoughts on the matter;
    • “If I’m being shot at, I’m gonna dive into that fucking wall, man. I’m gonna hit that wall like a ton of bricks. I don’t care if I blow out my clavicle doing it” -Cliffy B
• Grenades
  • Grenades are going to be somewhat rare in the game, and will come both in the explosive and smoke variants.
  • At first, grenades were not in mutiplayer, but have now been added.
• The idea behind Gears of War
  • CliffyB wanted to do something akin to Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers, but didn’t want to go anywhere near the WWII era, as he feels it’s been done to death.
  • The game initially was essentially “Quake Wars”, and featured large open battlefields with massive vehicles, etc.
  • The Locust were originally invaders from space, not an underground race.
  • The Locust originally had a different name that was changed due to legal issues. CliffyB would not go into further details on that end.
  • It’s designed to feature close quarter battles that bring the violence to a personal level.
• On the chainsaw bayonet
  • The idea goes back to a game he wanted to create back in 1998 called Overfiend. This game was the reason he moved from California to the Epic offices in North Carolina, and the loss of the title almost caused him to leave Epic.
• On where his career has taken him
  • I’ll let CliffyB take this one without any further comment from me.
    • “I want to create IP. I think one of my strengths is to create games that feel good, are fun and solid, but also, you know, a decent, interesting, fascinating universe that could potentially transfer well to other mediums…like Underoos.” -CliffyB
• On the plot of Gears of War
  • In discussing the plot and how games tend to try and give you a happy ending, he states that Gears will “start dark and just get darker.”
  • The game will not be totally grim though. They’ve hired Lester Speight, better known as “Terrible” Terry Tate, Office Linebacker to play the part of one of Marcus Fenix’s squad mates. Let me tell you, this game just sounds better and better to me all the time.
  • In summing up the game, CliffyB jokingly took a page from Peter Molyneaux‘s book and gave us some hype;
    • “I tell you, this game is going to do everything for you, It’s going to wash your car, it’s gonna make coffee, give you a hand job, it’ll fulfill all your dreams.” he then added, “Can you tell I’m nervous as shit about this?”

The wait until Emergence Day just feels longer and longer with each passing day, but the more I hear about how much effort is being put into making Gears something special, the more that wait seems worthwhile. you can check out the full (NSFW) OXM podcast here, the Gears of War official website here, and CliffyB’s personal website here. Now get moving!