Cliffy Blizasnski did a session today on the design of Gears of War and how the design evolved over time.

Originally the game started as a concept called 'Unreal Warfare' which was a class based large scale territory controlled team game. Eventually, this concept ended up evolving into the "Onslaught" mode in Unreal Tournament 2004, but the concepts for characters and certain ideas were carried over into the design for what would become Gears of War.

The concept art went through many iterations but originally the COG human soldiers looked more like traditional soldiers and the locust (originally called the geist, but went through a name change for legal reasons) looked more like armored mecha soliders in a way.

When the design was rethought out, Cliffy sold the concept as 'Resident Kill.Switch' mainly because of the feelings and slowness that Resident Evil invoked and the unique sort of detailed cover system that Kill.Switch had. Originally, the game also had a money based reward system for killing guys where you could buy new weapons, a morale meeter which judged how scared or confident your soldiers were, and a detailed order system for your teammates. All of these things were dropped (except for the order system which was heavily simplified) because they didn't fit with the slow tactical action game they wanted to build.

There were also conscious design choices made to try and simplify certain aspects of the game to increase control. The game was made so that you'd be able to tell which objects you'd be able to get cover behind by their size being close to that of the player's and limited to only two levels of vertical encounters so you wouldn't feel the need to want to jump.

Originally, they simplified the controls so much that nothing was mapped to the Y button. So they finally settled on making the Y button just look at anything cool that was happening at the time.

He had quite a bit to say about the design process and the evolutionary design of the game over time and how features evolved and changed like the addition of the 'Dead but not out' system of being down and having players be able to revive and execute that was added in late in the game and the evolution of the torque bow that went from being a wrist mounted player controlled explosive device to a crossbow-esq timed explosive device.

The take really gave some neat insight into how the team went about making games and was a neat behind the scenes look at Gears. Has there ever been a game you wonder how it got made? Ever wonder about how a certain feature made it into something? Also, Who's the game designer you'd like to meet the most and why?

Will Wright. Who else? He's got to be the most interesting current game developer out there. He's also very interested in what the gamers want and less interested in what the company wants in comparison to many other developers that tend to ignore what gamers really want out of the games.

Do composers count? Then I'd like to meet Nobuo Uematsu. To thank him for the inspiration and to ask him to get for me a job as a game music composer :))

Gerald Köhler. He's perhaps the only guy that can develop a strong managing game without gluing to CM/FM.

Warren Spector. Because I have been satisfied and entertained by every game he has been involved with and because I agree with and admire his design philosophies. And also because he has been a loyal and helpful companion in some of the less known Ultima games.

Richard Garriot. Come on, he`s Lord British, that`s a reason enough.

Chris Avellone. Just because I go "Wow, this is so deep!" everytime I recognize his writing style, and also when I notice his recurring motifs (stalker lady love, companions sacrificing everything for the party leader, über-cool betrayal scene, talking about natural destructive phenomen as it were alive, shadows, etc.). And of course I would like to thank him for Kotor 2.

Jane Jensen. Because she`s the mother of Gabriel Knight

Corey and Lori Ann Cole. To thank them for Quest for Glory series and also I would like to get my hands on an autographed copy of Shadows of Darkness.

Dave Gaider, the romance daddy of Bioware. Don`t ask.

EDIT: The word was motifs, not themes.

"Also, Who's the game designer you'd like to meet the most and why?"

Amy Hennig. Hands down, mother of Legacy of Kain series. Although she didn't really create LoK , she was still crucial member in shaping and leading the games in the right direction. Too bad that she left and joined Naughty.

Masashi Tsuboyama. Two words: Silent Hill. 'nuff said.

Akira Yamaoka. Composer, but he is also, if I'm not mistaken, involved in designing the Silent Hill games.

Probably one of the perks of helping run MobyGames is getting to meet a lot of people in the industry. In fact we got invited to the Microsoft party at GDC. Imagine this huge nightclub filled with the who's who of game development with an open bar from 7pm to 1am and tons of free food.

I spent a good portion of the night talking to Katie Stone. Or at least I think it was her. The music was loud. We blabbed about Gears of War sweeping the awards and how unfair it most likely was. How much cool stuff Ubisoft has been doing lately. How much we both loved Beyond Good & Evil and what a shame it was that it wasn't more financially successful.

Most fun, but I was a bit rough around the edges the following morning at the booth.

Will Wright: Definitely love this guy. As per what Riamus said, he's the type of developer who cares more about fans and else about money or what the companies wants. He's also supposed to be pretty approachable.

Hideo Kojima: To thank him for all his amazing games that will continue to inspire me.

Any of the Infocom Implementors would do! But if I had to pick just one it would be Brian Moriarty, the mind behind one of my favorite title: Trinity.

I would pick Brian Moriarty too, but because of Loom. I haven't been able to find any of his Infocom titles.

Warren Spector. First I'd ask him how he managed to leave out almost everything that made DE such a great game when making DE2. And to please, please not make his games more stupid just because he needs to make console versions (I think this was a big part in the failings of DE2).

Well, Chris Crawford. For the simple reason that he's a fanatic freak -- must be an interesting person -- and I really liked his cameo appearances in Siboot.

Speaking of which, I'd also like to have a beer with Al Lowe... For much the same reason.

I can't believe noone mentioned Tim Schafer, you bunch of heretic pricks >:(

One person who is not exactly a game developer (although he has been involved in game development in the last years) and I always wanted to meet was Old Man Murray's Erik. He seems to be a very smart person, and he's probably the funniest man alive.

Yamaoka (besides being composer for the music of the whole series) has been producer of chapters 3 and 4. In any case, when it comes to Silent Hill I think THE man to know is Takayoshi Sato, pretty much the guy who made Silent Hill 2 the masterpiece it is, and who could've given the third game a much, much better story than the piece of shit it has today. In that interview I just linked, also, he sounds like a really interesting person to have a coffee with.




I'm 110% with you here, man. And if you need help beating the bleedin' beejezuz out of him, I'm up for that too.




While you're at it, could you do me a favor and ask her what the hell was she on when she wrote that impossibly stupid puzzle that ended up making me sort of famous in these forums?

A little footnote: Next Generation's Colin Campbell ran an article about the very same Bleszinski's speech that started this thread. I like this part:

Apart from authoring the fastest selling new IP in living memory, Cliff Bleszinski is a regular jack-about town happily corresponding with his fans via forums, blogging smartly on modern culture and confidently appearing in public or media events. He’s not a bad games player either. All this makes him a media favorite and, you can just imagine, darling of Microsoft’s PR machine. Bleszinski is outspoken without being especially controversial; accessible without being trite; camera-friendly but not entirely wholesome.

"Blah, blah, blah, and he's also a fantastic kisser... I, mean, that's what I heard..."

Sounds to me like someone is trying to hit on certain game developer...

[Edit: I'll never understand this quoting system. OK, each one knows who said each thing.]

Never mind.