Gears of War 3 Officially Confirmed For April 2011 76
A few days after an untimely leak on Xbox Live, Epic Games has now officially announced Gears of War 3 for next April. Details are scant (though Edge speculates on possible new gameplay features), but it will contain 4-player co-op and be an Xbox 360 exclusive. A trailer was released for the game, and designer Cliff Bleszinski had this to say:
"When we released Gears of War more than three years ago, we set out to tell the world an unforgettable story of bravery and sacrifice in the face of insurmountable odds, and a year from now, players will get the chance to experience the final chapter in the story of Marcus Fenix and his companions in Delta Squad. This is definitely the biggest and most dramatic chapter yet in the Gears of War saga, and we can't wait to deliver it."
I propose a rename. (Score:1, Troll)
Maybe "Gears of War 3" sounds much like a twist of the formula, and we know this will not be true. Is also not 3.0, we know will use the same engine, maybe with minor buffs. A more honest name could be "Gears of War: Episode 3".
A ironic name will be "Gears of War, Episode 3: shot from cover", or "Gears of War, Episode 3: Run, Sprint, Shot..choose only one" based on the limitations of the FPS genre on the console where a especial cover system is added, to let players choose one action, to cope with the unabi
Re:I propose a rename. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is decidedly harsh (and probably just a troll, as has already been reflected in the initial moderation). I'm not necessarily sure that having a new tech engine is required to make a sequel. I also disagree with the implied assertion that anything which isn't a PC run and gun fps is inferior.
I quite like the Gears of War games. I'm not a massive fan; I don't like the online competitive multiplayer much (but I don't like the online competitive multiplayer in pretty much any action game these days), but I've played them both through in single-player and co-op and had plenty of fun with them. They're third person shooters (not fpses, like you say) and they make good use of the mechanics of the genre. If you want fast, free movement, then you probably want an fps, and there are plenty of good titles on both consoles and PC. Third person shooters generally lose some of the pace and precision of an fps. However, what they bring to the party (when done well) is a sense of physical presence. In the Gears of War game, you are controlling large guys wearing heavy armour - and it feels like it. They have inertia. Actions - even turning around - take a bit longer than they might in an fps. You need to think a littke bit more about your immediate surroundings, and be aware of your character's whole body. This can make for a very fun experience (when it's done well - and the GoW games do it well), but it's not comparable to a Quake-style fps.
I actually find third person shooters substantially more intuitive to play on a console than on the PC (with the reverse applying for fpses). We have an expectation that mouse controls will translate into very rapid changes of direction - with a quick flick being enough for an instant 180 degree turn. This is disconcerting when controlling a "heavy" character, who is actually designed to turn relatively slowly.
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I agree with you about the tech engine and all that, but regarding the "fps on console" issue, I somewhat agree with OP.
It works great on console, as you say yourself, however, have you tried GoW on PC?
It's horrible because of those exact same features.
Don't get me wrong, I am no PC fanboi, and I got both Xbox360 and PS3 with big stereo and HD TV to enhance the experience.
But as I've said somewhere else when this discussion came up, what works on console, doesn't necessarily work on PC.
I prefer FPS on PC, b
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To be honest, I've never assumed that GoW on the PC has ever been anything other than a second-rate consolation prize for people without a 360 (I don't think the second one ever came out on the PC). Certain genres work better on certain platforms. If there's a cross-platform fps, then I'll generally get it for the PC, unless there are truly hideous DRM issues. If there's a cross-platform third person shooter, I'll go to a console. I played Dead Space on the 360 and enjoyed it; later, I had the opportunity t
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Your comment is very good. Full of substance.
But you still avoided the main issue. Why I can't sprint & shot in a third person shooter? I do these type of things on movies, so ... why not in a game?
Also, play Mass Effect 2. EVERYTHING is a cover. The whole map of the game is made of cover areas. Is like a Doom2 map made of barrels on fire. I think this "shot from cover" gameplay break the inmersion, is too "gamey" and result on a very artificial, predictible, (and imho) boring gameplay.
My comment is
Re:I propose a rename. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, maybe you weren't trolling. However, I think that the lack of ability to run (or rather, sprint) and shoot comes back to the same point - the presence of a "physical body" in the game. GoW's "sprint" is just that - heads down, arms tucked in, running hell for leather over a short distance. Your chances of hitting anything at all with a gun in that kind of posture is almost zero. People occasionally do it in movies; but generally only in silly action movies aimed at the "box of popcorn and no brain" crowd. Gears doesn't aim for realism (far from it), but it does aim for verisimilitude - something that has the outward appearance of being realistic. The traditional PC fps ignores this (though a few more recent examples have moved in this direction) and allows you to bounce around hell for leather at full speed while shooting. That's one way to play and some people like it. However, it's also valid to have a style of play that restricts the player and forces them to make choices within a tightly defined rule-set.
I remember a clique back when I was at university that held the Quake games up as the absolute paragon of gaming because they basically applied almost no restrictions to the player's movement. This always seemed to me to be missing the point. It was like saying that Chess would be better if any of the pieces could move in the same manner as a Queen, without all of those pesky restrictions.
And the cover system? Well... again, it comes back to verisimilitude. Since the invention of the repeating rifle and the fragmentation shell, real-world combat has invovled a hell of a lot of use of cover. Most action games, including GoW, are actually ludicrous in the sheer amount and pace of movement they encourage from players. I'm not saying this is a bad thing (it makes for a more interesting game in some cases). But as games that look like they're realistic become more popular, it's inevitable that cover mechanics will become more important. That said, I do agree that Mass Effect 2 went a bit too far. I felt that a lot of the level design in that game felt quite aritificial and "overly convenient". GoW has generally been more subtle, I think.
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Again, a great post.
Thanks Mr. RogueyWon. You made me understand third person shooters better.
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Most action games, including GoW, are actually ludicrous in the sheer amount and pace of movement they encourage from players.
Well, I think some of them are covered (ha) by the presence of 'armor' (or 'shields' ala Halo) that provide protection from flak. Soldiers stay in cover and don't move much in a real-world battle because nobody wants to be turned into mush. If they had magical gear that could completely protect them, at least for a while, even from just light fire, you can bet tactics would chan
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"We have an expectation that mouse controls will translate into very rapid changes of direction - with a quick flick being enough for an instant 180 degree turn. This is disconcerting when controlling a "heavy" character, who is actually designed to turn relatively slowly."
It leads me to wonder, just how long does it take to hear a noise of a gun behind you, turn around to see what the noise is, throw yourself to the ground and shoot back with the weapon you're holding? I would suggest much, much less than
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"I know realism isn't everything (it's only a game) but I think in any FPS there is a certain expectation that sometimes you have to turn around bloody fast, run, shoot vaguely accurately and quickly, and quickly observe your entire surroundings (not all at the same time)."
So in other words, you don't like slower paced FPS' and in your opinion all FPS should be fast paced?
Some of us (quite a lot judging by sales figures of the likes of Gears of War, Rainbow Six etc. that use this style of gameplay) actually
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You obviously missed the word sometimes.
In fact, I'm a Rainbow Six fan myself, but the older versions (I find the latest ones too "showy"), and Thief fan, and Quake fan, and Counterstrike fan, and Project IGI fan, and DoD fan, and L4D fan, so I do cover all types of FPS... you can't play Rainbow Six or Thief by just charging in guns blazing. However you *ALWAYS* need to ability to fine control your shots and then in the next minute turn around fast to react to something, no matter what the game... you hope
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You really just proved my point, because you demonstrated that the FPS' you like are all playable in a Rambo fashion.
I know full well that RB6 prior to the newer ones and Theif were meant to be about slow speed and tactics, but that's simply not how they played.
The older RB6 games were easily playable in a rambo fashion, and that's the point- you like them because you only like Rambo style games.
L4D is another fine example, you can pretend it's about tactics, but ultimately it's not, it's just a braindead s
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Why does every game HAVE to fit into the this little box that every die hard gamer has outlined?
Every single time a game comes along that is on a console and not a PC, not a 'traditional' fps, doesn't have 1080p graphics, etc there's always quite a few people that come out decrying how this game will never work.
I'm not a 'traditional gamer'. I don't normally play FPS, but I did enjoy GoW when I went to visit an old college friend. GoW2 also gave me an excuse to go visit. We talked through them both, played
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What I hate about GoW is that it's not released in Germany. I'm playing The Scourge Project now, it's very clunky (there's fun to be had but I'd suggest holding off until they patch some of the annoyances out of the game, maybe if you play 4 player coop all the way through it'd be good already but if you involve bots there's often trouble) but at least I can get it without importing.
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As Marcus Fenix says.... (Score:2)
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Griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind!
Hahahaha, cheesy as they sound, I love all the short phrases in Gears.
I'm really looking forward to Gears of War 3. The first Gears has a special place for me. It was the FIRST game I got on the 360 AND it is THE game that sold me on that platform.
I'm hoping they end the trilogy with a GOOD final story.
COG TOWN!
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A story.. (Score:1)
"When we released Gears of War more than three years ago, we set out to tell the world an unforgettable story of bravery and sacrifice..."
and chainsaw guns!
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They do have a weird look for these games, don't they? If you've seen the artbook that comes with the collector's edition of the first game, you'll have seen how they witter on about "destroyed beauty" and all that gumpf, and how they wanted to create haunting environments and stuff. In fairness, if you look at some of the location art in the game, they do a fairly good job of this. Many of the locations do feel like a plausible interpretation of the ruins of a culturally advanced civilisation.
And then they
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I doubt they thought that hard about. They wanted a game full of fist-bumping machismo. Hence the characters. The environments are there to impress us with their graphical wizardry. So that inevitably means all kinds of flourishes and intricate detail, something difficult to accomplish with more modern minimalist designs.
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WH40k's aesthetic was designed to be identifiable in the form of small tabletop figures, the exaggerated proportions remain very visible even from a distance but I'm not sure it's very fitting for a game where you see people up close.
Why announce it so early? (Score:1)
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Kids? for a Teen/adult game?
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Despite the 18+ label, I think it's realistic to say people from 16 years upwards will play and like this game.
Someone in the range of 16 to 20 years old is a kid in my book.
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It's going to take them a year (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, the industry would be better off if it would get rid of "rock star" devs like Bleszinski and get more originality into games.
If you're game cant survive 3 years without one sequel, let alone two it wasn't that good.
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I really don't expect single player games to "survive" that long.
And how do you measure survival in a singleplayer game?
I replay old games now and then, does that count as survival?
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It's a multi-player game
Really? I own both GOW1 and 2, but have only played the single player campaign in co-op mode with a friend. I like the game a lot that way and I've never tried any other mode, nor do I feel the need to.
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Same here. I've found that as I get older, climb the greasy pole at work and generally find myself with more cash but far, far less leisure time, my interest in competitive online gaming wanes. Back in my student days, I pumped hours and hours into Counter-Strike, playing the game, getting heavily involved in the UK community, running first a clan and later a relatively major league. There were plenty of irritations due to dealing with cheaters, whiners and the generally immature, but I put up with these be
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If people still want to play it in 10 years time. I still pop in the Deus Ex (1999) disk now and then (Played multiplayer once over dial-up, it was crap), the original Half-Life(1998) which had excellent multiplayer by all accounts but like many others I've never played it and System Shock 2 (1998) which didn't really have multiplayer at all. These games are still in demand due to the originality of their stories and strength of their gameplay, 10 yea
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Interesting, GoW2 and UT3 are the turning point for you? Wasn't UT 2003 botched because it was based on a console game? Wasn't GoW1 already designed primarily for consoles?
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One year? You think this announcement was made in the same month as development started?
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So you're saying it's going to take more then a year to produce 6 hours of content.
In all seriousness, games do not need to be big budget in order to be good. Sins of a Solar Empire was produced in 17 months on a budget of less then 1 million US dollars and was a huge success for Stardock. 1 Mil may be a bit low but 40 mil is way to high. Something the size of Modern Warfare should have been produced on no more then
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"It's going to take them a year to produce 6 hours of content."
That's 6 years of dynamic, explorable content.
Which isn't too bad when you consider how long it can take Hollywood to produce 2 hours of static content.
"If you're game cant survive 3 years without one sequel, let alone two it wasn't that good."
Who said it can't survive? Thousands of people still play the original. This is not about being unable to survive, it's about providing sequels for one of the top 5 best selling franchises of this console
The only let down is ... (Score:2)
Is i have to wait a year to play it :( My 1st xbox game and i seriously didn't leave the couch for days. Come back a year later GOW still a great game.
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A game where you move freely and aim manually plays pretty much identical independent of whether the camera is inside or next to the head of the protagonist, the first games that used this style were using a first person view so that name stuck but it's really not dependent on the view.
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Because (one of ?) the editors only have an Xbox it seems. For example, all the games that were reviewed here in recent years have been Xbox games.
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Why do we care about a non-PC game on a Microsoft gaming console on /.?
Because slashdot caters to an area of interest wider than is found around your particular cafeteria table?
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agreed....plus wasn't the second one all...u know...whiny?
trying to remember...there was this one youtuber who did a review (much like how RedLetterMedia's Mike does Star Wars TPM and AotC but with less comedy and no pizza rolls) and basically hated it for all the whining about ex-wives and crap....coming from a big buff marine...who's suppose to be a bad-ass...killing shit-ton of Cogs...but can't handle a single divorce.
it's not like she's coming after you with a 9-Iron or something.
We get more excited with every re-warming! (Score:2)
If you can't wait for Gears of War 3, then you won't be able to wait to start being unable to wait for Gears of War 4, so get started on that right away!
I guess if you know what you like, then you'll like more of what you know. It's just a little sad that so much effort goes into making games with a number in the title.
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Like "Half-Life 2" you mean?
Whether a game is part of a numbered series or not is unlikely to be the most significant measure of it's quality, surely?
To my mind, the first "Gears of War" - which had no number - was just as disinteresting and dull as this announcement of a 3rd episode.
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To be fair, Gears of War was from day one always said to be a trilogy- something it also notes in TFA.
Epic have had a clear plan for the franchise all along in this respect, so I suspect the franchise was developed with the overall storyline for it developed the same time they were developing Gears of War 1. I don't mind this so much, because if they feel the story they wanted to pull off was too much for a single game, then it's really their best option.
I know what you mean though in general- Call of Duty
Yay another sequel... (Score:2)
Sorry but the sequels always suck. Yes GOW2 is not as good as GOW1. Just like Mass-effect 2 is not as good as Mass effect 1
I was enthralled with mass effect 1 and GOW 1 far more than the sequels... and my current bane... Dante's inferno has the same effect. I'm sucked in completely. something the sequels just cant do.
Honestly, GOW3 will be GOW 2 with even more purchasable content...
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ME2 - far more limited in where you can go. I can explore 1/50th of the citadel than I used to. most planetfalls are super short and dont let you explore or find any hidden sub sub plots or little things that are just cool or gives you more gear. (the gear loadout is so limited in ME2 it's a joke.)
I finished ME2 in 1/4th the time it took me to finish ME1 and that is counting all the planet grinding you had to do.
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No, I don't particularly like the action parts of Mass Effect anyway. For me it's all about the storyline, meeting characters and making though decisions.
I like ME1 a lot, but altough it's story is a bit more epic than it's sequel, the way the story is told in part 2 is a lot more engaging and immerse. The dialog is better and also brought better visually by offering more interesting camera movement.
And even though the universe to explore is smaller in part 2, it's also a lot nicer, offering a few hub world
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I'd agree with you on Gears of War. The sequel was more polished, flowed better and had better integration of its co-operative play into the campaign. I'd disagree on Mass Effect. The sequel felt overly restrictive and I cannot find words to describe how much I hated a) planet scanning and b) the move to an ammunition-based weapon system.
I would definitely agree with what I suspect was your main point; that the grandparent is talking rubbish. There are plenty of sequels, both classic and modern, that have b
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The sequel felt overly restrictive and I cannot find words to describe how much I hated a) planet scanning and b) the move to an ammunition-based weapon system.
Planet scanning is imho less stupid than the automatically generated levels of ME1. And it's more easy to get a child to do it for you.
About the ammunition, well... it's really just a switch between the guns and the health. In ME1 your health is a number and your ammo replenishes automatically. In ME2 it's the other way around. To me it seems like a trivial thing.
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Game sequels often improve on the previous game because the medium is so heavily based on mechanics that can be tweaked to be better. Not many sequels are actually worse, often they just fail to bring as much new stuff to the table as the original did.
*sigh* (Score:1)
I hope it has Natal compatibility! (Score:2)
Curb stomping my friends will be so much more satisfying if I'm actually curb stomping my friends ...
remember when Epic made good games? (Score:1, Interesting)
ZZT? Tyrian?
It's too bad they turned into a console developer.
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I believe they only published Tyrian. BTW, did you know that the Tyrian graphics have been released under an open license and you can use them in your game?
Keep it, Cliffy B (Score:2)
The reason that Gears of War was so popular for so long had nothing to do with the single player mode. The multiplayer was the shooter equivalent of a fighting game. It was wildly popular.
But they decided that since the multiplayer didn't fit their vision, that they'd create a completely FUBAR version complete with a screwed up lobby system where you could wait 10 minutes between matches with levels so large that it almost guaranteed that you'd end up playing hide and seek at the end of rounds while every
It's like boar... (Score:1)