First Look: Gears of War 2
The Locust Horde is back, and so are the chainsaw bayonets.
Epic showed off its upcoming blockbuster sequel Gears of War 2 at Microsoft's Xbox 360 spring showcase event this week in San Francisco. Gears Design Director Cliff Blezinski gave media members a tour of the game, playing through an entire level, which Blezinski simply called "level two."
Blezinski set the stage for the tour by offering some plot details for Gears 2. The story picks up six months after the end of the first title. After successfully destroying much of the Locust with the Lightmass Bomb at the end of the first Gears of War, the Locust has stormed back by tunneling sink holes underneath the remaining human settlements. The Coalition of Ordered Governments (C.O.G.) responds by sending teams of commandos, including Marcus Fenix and the rest of Delta Squad, on a mission that involves using vehicles that drill underground toward the planet's core - and the Horde's stronghold.
A capture from the Gears of War 2 trailer shows the chainsaw duel between Marcus Fenix and an enemy Locust.
Level two of Gears of War 2 began with Fenix and other COG soldiers riding on top of massive trucks called Derricks in a military convoy that's headed toward Jacinto, one of the last COG strongholds. While trekking through some mountainous terrain, the convoy comes under attack by the Horde, first by an incredible array of mortar fire and then by Reavers. Players must take on the Horde aerial assault by shooting the mortars out of the sky before they explode and also take down the attacking Reavers flying around the convoy. Meanwhile, COG tanks and attack helicopters are engaging the Horde around the convoy and exploding like Fourth of the July fireworks.
Gears of War 2 features new editions of the Locust Horde.
But it doesn't end there. After the convoy is forced to undergo repairs, Fenix and company must fight off legions of Locusts that sprout up from their emergence holes. Soon, the Locusts begin to swarm around the Derricks, climbing onto them via grappling hooks. At one point, a group of Locusts take over one of the Derricks and try to run Fenix's Derrick off the road. And it gets worse: giant Brumak-like creatures with canons on their backs come storming at the trucks, and the level ends with a Corpser. Blezinski finished the demonstration and said Gears 2 will be "bigger, better and more badass."
Locusts attempt to board the COG trucks with grapple hooks in level two.
The action was quite different from the original Gears of War; instead of smaller scale battles with guerilla warfare tactics, level two brought out the big guns with huge vehicles, dozens of Locusts and COG soldiers, and amazing scenery and wide-open environments. While the action and scale was ramped up for Gears 2, Blezinski said the gameplay will still rely heavily on its trademark cover system.
In fact, Blezinski demonstrated a new cover system feature that allows players to grab a wounded Locust and use it as a meat shield. In addition, Blezinski showed off the chain saw duel, which gives players the opportunity to engage in some button-mashing melee combat.
The sequel has some other tricks, too. The graphics, powered by Epic's own Unreal Engine 3, have gotten a major overhaul. According to Epic, the new visual effects include ambient occlusion, dynamic shadows, improved character lighting, and, of course, the ability to render hundreds of on-screen characters simultaneously for the epic, sweeping battles seen in level two. Gears 2 will also feature improved water physics, additional blood and bullet decals, advanced destructible environments, new weather effects and the introduction of fluid objects.
Thanks to some visual enhancements, Gears of War 2 features more sprawling outdoor environments and improved lighting for larger, epic battles.
Epic provided some additional details about Gears of War 2. For example, the sequel's co-op mode will allow players to drop in and out of the game at any time. And better yet, Player 1 can choose "hardcore" as the difficult setting while Play 2 can set his or her difficulty to "casual." Thus, two players can play the same game but at different difficulty levels. Blezinski wouldn't comment on the rumored 4-player co-op mode for Gears of War 2. But he did say that some of the Locust creatures that we've only seen in cut-scenes will play a much bigger role in the sequel. And he said the game will have a much deeper, more complex story than the first game, with new characters and more backstory about the human conflict with the Locust Horde.
Gears of War 2 is scheduled to arrive in November for the Xbox 360. When asked about a potential PC version of Gears of War 2, Kudo Tsunoda, newly appointed general manager at Microsoft Game Studios, said "We haven't announced our plans for the PC." So while there's nothing announced for a PC version yet, it hasn't bee ruled out, either.
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