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NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
Original Gears Of War Trilogy Director Believes New Games Lack “Heart” In Comparison
He thinks the devs may have written themselves into a corner.
www.dualshockers.com
Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer and game director of the original Gears of War trilogy, recently appeared in the IGN Unfiltered podcast to promote his new book, and he candidly expressed some criticism he had of the series' newer titles. Bleszinski was far from unkind, stating "[Gears of War] 4 and 5 were really, really good," but he added that, despite liking them, he "didn't feel some of the heart" that was present in the first three games.
Bleszinski didn't elaborate too much, but he did point to one specific design choice he had a particular problem with. To keep it light on spoilers, Bleszinski explained how one of the newer titles had the player decide the fate of certain characters towards the end of the game, to which his reaction was "Dude, really?!" He adamantly pointed to the narrative decisions made by him and his team, who committed to the deaths of their characters, making them part of the set narrative canon, not allowing players to have any agency in their outcome.
It's clear he believes having the player choose which character lives or dies isn't the best way to go, at least when it comes to this particular series, stating that the devs have "painted themselves into a corner narratively," by doing this. Indeed, other games with varying endings have had such issues, in which their sequels have to somehow adjust to the two or more separate branching paths the players had available to them.
Often, games either have to choose which of the two was the canon ending and continue that story or make both endings relatively inconsequential in order to realign the narrative. Either situation basically makes the player's choice at the end of the first game lose all of its importance.
Bleszinski also touches on why the Gears of War franchise was sold off after the original trilogy. The first three games in the series are well-known Xbox exclusives, but the IP was actually owned by the developers, Epic Games, which sold it off to Microsoft later in 2014. "Epic had to keep the coffers full," said Bleszinski. He believes that after his and other Gears of War developers' departure, the company "didn't really know what to do with the franchise," and preferred to sell it in order to focus on other ventures.
