The first Gears of War game brought a ton of new elements to the table: Massively muscled heroes, roadie runs and the incredible feeling of satisfaction you’d experience whenever you’d bury a Lancer rifle halfway through a Locust trooper’s sternum. But as much fun as that first game was, it wasn’t the single-player action that made it a system seller on the Xbox 360. It was the multiplayer. A feature that almost never made it onto the final game.
So says creator Cliff Bleszinksi, who explained how Microsoft didn’t think Gears of War’s signature cover-based shooting style would be fun in an online environment. “It was just like we always say even with the current game [LawBreakers] we’re building, ‘We’re bulding a freeway while the car’s going 9000 miles an hour on fire,'” Bleszinski said to IGN.
We were under intense pressure from Microsoft to get this game out for holiday, doing the E3 demos and all that, and they didn’t really think the cover-based gameplay would be any fun.
Well thank the strangely attractive Locust Queen then that Bleszinksi and the rest of Epic Games got to keep the online portion intact. Speaking of his favourite game in the series, Bleszinksi also mentioned how the third game hit high notes for him.”People are like, ‘Gears 1 was the best!’ I personally think Gears 3 was,” Bleszinski said.
That’s when we really honed things and had dedicated serves and everything. We had multiple game types, different characters, women in battle …it was cool.
And I have to agree. As part of a complete package across single and multiplayer, Gears of War 3 is also my favourite in the series. Because I’m a sucker for escalation, which Gears of War 3 had plenty of. Hopefully Gears of War 4 can top it then. It’s been way too long since I hurled a grotesquely built bodybuilder into the heat of action with nothing more than a shotgun and some grenades.
Last Updated: May 25, 2016
