Pixar helping with Gears of War Judgement – Video Games Update
Gears of War is one of the most profitable franchise on the Xbox 360 but the series is continuously criticised by the fans for having shallow writing. Well, Epic Games has heard the fans and are now turning to Pixar for some help.
The first Gears of War (GoW) was a trendsetter which started the ‘cover based third person shooter’ genre on current generation consoles. It was also the first game on the 360 which was graphically next generation and showcased the powers of the newly unveiled
Unreal Engine 3 at that time.
The only shortcoming of the series, for which it was criticised a lot, was that it had a really weak and shallow narrative. Even though the game is based in an interesting Sci-Fi Fantasy Universe, fans felt that Epic was not making the most out of the setting
because of the uninteresting dialogue during game-play.
The story was only limited to the acts of ‘Delta Squad’ and didn’t shed any light on the world around them. The script is pretty simple and short with cheesy one liner jokes, bad puns and obscenities at every turn.
Game-play in the Gears of War games consisted of trudging through a linear path, killing enemies along the way until you reach the end of the level for which you are rewarded with a cut-scene. Rinse and repeat, and throw in a few driving sections and on-rail
sections in the game and you have yourself a Gears of War game.
The second game, GoW 2, tried to improve on the flaws and tried to reveal more of the story but failed in the end as it left gamers with more questions than answers. The third game was slightly better than the first two as it tried to tie up all the loose
ends of the first two games and end the story of ‘Delta Squad’.
For the fourth title in the Gears franchise Epic has turned to Pixar, who sent a story director over to Epic Games studios for a one day workshop related to story creation. Pixar are the famous animation studio behind the popular Toy Story films.
Epic Games producer, Rod Fergusson, stated, “...We've been trying to improve on storytelling since we started. And [a workshop with Pixar] seemed like a natural way of getting a little bit of insight into how what we consider to be the best in the industry
and how they tell stories and what we can learn from them."
Now whether or not Epic can learn anything from Pixar remains to be seen. Don’t miss Gears of War: Judgement rumoured to come out in February 2013.
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