Gears of War: Judgment Message Board older than one year ago

Cliff Bleszinski, Design Director at Epic Games, along with Production Director Rod Fergusson, voice actor Fred Tatasciore (the voice of Baird as well as "most of the Locusts") and writers Rob Auten and Tom Bissell all took the stage at Comic-Con 2012 for a panel about Gears of War: Judgment. The biggest piece of news out of the panel was that Judgment has a release date: We'll be killing grubs as Baird in the prequel on March 19.

The rest of the panel, however, contained a few juicy bits of Gears trivia, just for fans of the series. If you've lived and died with the COGs for three games now, read on.

The upcoming Gears of War: Judgment now has an official release date.

When Gears of War: Judgment launches next March, its "OverRun" mode will add a new wrinkle to the multiplayer you've grown accustomed to in Gears titles. For instance, you can totally ride a blood mount! See what we mean above.

Gears of War: Judgment will see Baird and Cole head to the clink at some point in March 2013, according to Epic Games Director of Production Rod Fergusson. The news was revealed to G4's X-Play and confirmed on the show's Twitter account - apparently Fergusson wouldn't allow any more specifics about when the game will be launched.

Gears of War: Judgment follows Baird and Cole as they deal with events preceding the main Gears of War trilogy. Polish studio People Can Fly is working on the game in collaboration with Epic Games proper.

Update: Epic Games revealed the full March 19 release date - on fan Waldo Kinney's body in tattoo form - during a panel at Comic-Con today.

Gears of War: Judgment will see Baird and Cole head to the clink at some point in March 2013, according to Epic Games Director of Production Rod Fergusson. The news was revealed to G4's X-Play and confirmed on the show's Twitter account - apparently Fergusson wouldn't allow any more specifics about when the game will be launched.

Gears of War: Judgment follows Baird and Cole as they deal with events preceding the main Gears of War trilogy. Polish studio People Can Fly is working on the game in collaboration with Epic Games proper.

Update: Epic Games revealed the full March 19 release date - on fan Waldo Kinney's body in tattoo form - during a panel at Comic-Con today.

#gearsofwar The next Gears of War game is coming this March, Epic said during a panel at Comic Con today. More »

Last of the overrun mode from Comic-Con.

Even more overrun mode.

E-Hole under attack!

More overrun mode goodness.

Gears of War: Judgment will see Baird and Cole head to the clink at some point in March 2013, according to Epic Games director of production Rod Fergusson. The news was revealed to G4's X-Play and confirmed on the show's Twitter account - apparently Fergusson wouldn't allow any more specifics about when the game's launching.

Gears of War: Judgment follows Gears main campaign side characters Baird and Cole as they deal with events preceding the Gears of War main trilogy. Polish studio People Can Fly is working on the title in collaboration with Epic Games proper.

Check out the new Overrun multiplayer mode.

#gearsofwar Cliff Bleszinski and the team at Epic are focusing hard on making sure next year's Gears of War: Judgment actively challenges players. And if that results in a narrower audience? Bleszinski's okay with that. More »

Memory is a fickle thing. You may think one thing, but the reality of the situation in question could be entirely different. Was that thing there? What even was that thing?

In Gears of War Judgment, Lt. Damon Baird is on trial for disobeying COG orders - being a military outfit, they're kind of big on following orders - and must recall the events that lead up to the disobedience in question. His recounting of the events while on trial is the entire campaign, but this being a military trial, certain things are classified. It's an idea that will play out in the campaign: the first time through, certain elements from the game environment will be missing; a second playthrough of the "Declassified" campaign will change events and those in-game elements.

It takes millions of dollars and a lot of manpower to create a AAA product like Gears of War. For Gears of War: Judgment, Epic Games will share development duties with People Can Fly, Epic Games' subsidiary studio based in Poland. During an interview with Epic Games design director Cliff Blezsinski and People Can Fly founder Adrian Chmielarz, the duo explained the choice to share development of Gears of War: Judgment.

"If you look at the slightly compressed timeframe for these products - we don't have the two and a half years like Gears 2 had - the fact that with the feature set needed, we're in a world where if you look at the Call of Duty interviews where they're like here's the CEO of Sledgehammer, here's the CEO of Infinity Ward, here's the CEO of Duncan Hines, you're like, 'Jesus, what's going on here?' It takes multiple studios now to really make a game that can have all of this between the campaign and multiplayer and the co-op elements and things like that, and plus they're quite *crag*ing crazy, to be honest with you," Blezsinski said. Chmielarz added that the addition of People Can Fly brings something "fresh" to the Gears franchise.

"The big idea is, yes, we can bring something fresh to this. I think we basically inspire each other - we have these new ideas and then sort of shake the foundation of Gears up without changing too much; it's still Gears." But it's also a question of manpower needed to tackle the technical hurdles of building upon the precedents set in Gears of War 3, Blezsinski explained. "Making the campaign have that many Locust and be that intense made it a requirement for the younger guys working on the Epic side to refine the controls, and there's just non-stop back and forth [between Epic and People Can Fly]."

Gone are the static spawn wells seen in Gears of War entries in the past. With Gears of War: Judgment, People Can Fly and Epic Games will introduce something they're labeling as S3 - a smart spawn system.

"Previously in Gears, if you wanted a greater challenge, you went for the higher difficulty mode. It basically meant less health for you and more health for them. It worked perfectly fine, but we tried to attack this from a different angle," People Can Fly's Adrian Chmielarz explained to Joystiq. "S3 constantly monitors your performance, from simple stuff like accuracy and your skills, but also like your location in the combat zone." Chmielarz provided an example of a player in one corner, shooting Locust, then having the system adapt on the fly and spawn enemies at more challenging locations.

"The other thing it can do is run multiple scenarios: you play through a section of the game, from checkpoint-to-checkpoint, and you die at the very end of it. So then you think to yourself, 'Okay, I know how to fix that; I got this.' You replay and suddenly it's a completely new scenario - new enemies and you have to adapt one more time. Another example would be you choose a higher difficulty level to replay a section and then you encounter an enemy type that you have not encountered before. We kept it in reserves for a higher difficulty level. The big point about S3 is to make sure that you are challenged. We think that the word kind of disappeared from the vocabulary a little and games now actually paint the path for you on the floor, where to go next."

Cliff Bleszinski then interjected, "I think that's why you're starting to see this love for games kind of like Dark Souls now. In order to try and grow the audience, games have been softened - players can't get lost ever, or they can't die ever. But then it's like you've just lost the point of the game and what games do, having that challenge. We're a little guilty of it - I'm fully willing to admit that. When was the last time a game has asked something of you? I've been playing Gears since the beginning, obviously, but when I go into the playtest lab and we play 4-player hardcore co-op [in Gears of War: Judgment], it takes us a good three or four tries to get through a combat scenario. I play a lot of games where I just get into the flow of combat and it's getting good then, boom, cutscene. I'm like, '*crag* you, get back to the gameplay.' In this game, the pacing has gotten to the point where when you get past a protracted battle, and you finally get a cutscene, yeah you're happy to see the story progress but you're really just happy to have a break. You're going to die, you're going to die a fair amount, but hopefully you like it," he said.

"It's definitely going to be harder than Gears of War 3," Bleszinski added. "The thing about Gears 3 that I learned kind of in hindsight is the fact that technically it was the longest campaign that we've ever done, but we accidentally softened the difficulty a little too much. So the good gamers got through it in a similar timeframe to Gears 2, and were like 'No way it's the same length!' So we looked at the difficulty and there are certain little trade-offs that they made where, like, do you go DBNO or just die? Things like that, and also the same thing with enemy damage models. Gears of War: Judgment is going to be tough, even on normal difficulty level." Chmielarz then added that he thinks "normal is going to be more difficult than ever before."

Gears of War: Judgment is a prequel, and takes place a few months after Emergence Day when the Locust first popped their heads up from underground and began their assault on the human population of Sera.

But fans have wondered why Epic didn't aim to highlight a different part of the timeline in the Gears of War universe - like E-Day or the Pendulum Wars, the great 79-year-long war that raged across Sera. The COG (Coalition of Ordered Governments) won the Pendulum Wars, and became the global government of Sera.

Both sound like good settings for a video game, right? Sure, but according to Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski, neither would've made for the right game - the latter wouldn't have even been a Gears of War game.

"The time came, we finished Gears 3 and obviously it's done well for us, and a prequel seemed like the next logical step. So we started looking at the timeframes and what we could do. I looked at E-Day and was like, 'Yeah, there's no chainsaw on E-Day.' It took the COG a little bit to figure out that the Locust have thick skin and their bayonets are breaking, things like that." Being able to chainsaw scary monster men is essential to anything donning the Gears of War title, you see.

As for the Pendulum Wars, its human-on-human conflict would technically make for a game that isn't Gears of War. "Now you have no chainsaw and now you have no monsters," Bleszinski said. "And now we're not Gears of War anymore. So we looked at the timeframe, looked at the timeline, and figured that there's a window there of several months after Emergence Day, where humanity got hit and quickly got their shit back together and figured out, hey, put a chainsaw on the end of the gun - that'll help. So that's the timeframe for the game."

Gears of War: Judgment launches on the Xbox 360 in early 2013.

Team Nerd Machine takes on Team Epic in a Gears of War: Judgment - OverRun MP match.

Class-based multiplayer finally comes to Gears of War: Judgment!

Baird is back and with a squad of his own!