Gears of Failure?

Just read through a gaming piece regarding the possible demise of Epic’s Gears of War 2 slated for release round the 4th quarter of this year. I completely disagree. For those interested on the piece, heres the link: Why Gears of War 2 May Not Reign Supreme

The author of this piece, aptly named Admin argues that Epic Games could possibly fail in delivering an up to par product as to what they brought in to the market back in 2006 with the first iteration of Gears of War. For 3 reasons: new found media pressure, constricted time for development which in this case is 2 years plus they’ve been focused on Unreal Tournament 3 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, and lastly, the lack of Epic Games to ‘WOW’ gamers this time.

Lets argue this point by point, first, on the new found media pressure. Ever since Unreal engine came out and their first game featuring the engine, Epic Games has been in the media spotlight since. Media pressure has been handled quite smoothly throughout the years. And we can’t disregard on how effortless they handled the press for Gears of War after they’re E3 showing back in ‘06. I have no doubt that Epic Games and its staff can handle the media mayhem and the hype surrounding its upcoming title.

Second, on the argument that Epic Games lack development time to weave a ‘quality’ sequel. We must understand that the middleware is ready, some significant updates are being applied to it, the gaming universe has been laid out, which means the creative process is most likely done, just some additions here and there and a more cohesive and deep plot as compared to the first title. Moreover, its true that they’ve been working on Unreal Tournament 3 on a multi platform approach but haven’t you heard of ‘parallel development?’

There are different phases game development goes through, a development cycle occurs. Not exactly sure what they are, its possibly similar to a software development cycle -- It has its planning and design stage, implementation stage, and the like. Its best to assume that while a team was hard at work with Unreal Tournament 3, the design team for Gears of War 2 were already focused on creating a more compelling plot and level design for the sequel -- different development phases for both titles occurring simultaneously.

"me want to eat Cliffy B.!!!"

And third, the ‘WOW’ factor. The author does make a point, but we can’t disregard the significant updates being made for the Unreal Engine 3, now being dubbed as Unreal Engine 3.5 -- it can render nearly a hundred or so characters on a single screen. For the first game, we had to go through less than 20 Locusts for each battle scenario or area. But what if, multiply that to 5 times more and we got tons of huge battles ahead of us for the sequel. If gamers felt the intensity and grittiness of having to massacre 10 to 20 of these Locusts... slaughtering a 100 or a figure near that would clearly be mind blowing. And fortunately for us, there are more updates being done to the engine that would have a significant role on gameplay.

I enjoyed the first Gears of War and I strongly believe in the ability of Cliffy B. (Creative Director of GoW) and his team to satisfy their consumers who have fallen in love with the world they've created. I can’t wait to discover more about Marcus Fenix and his team on a more personal level and of course a macro-perspective on the whole Locusts versus Humans conundrum. Rev up those chainsaws!