Interviews

Interview: Cliff Bleszinski, Epic Design Director, Talks Some Gears 2

May 28, 2008

Cliff Bleszinski is under a little pressure at the moment, actually a “fuck load” in his own words. Not only is he keeping an eye on porting Unreal Tournament 3 over to the Xbox 360, he’s also spearheading Gears of War 2 for a November release. In our last interview with Cliff, ensconced between a pair of Penthouse Pets at GDC, he admitted that the last sequel in any series is the one that fails to make money. If the demo of the second level of Gears 2 is any indication, Epic should start mapping out the third installment.

We sat down with the Bleszinski to talk redneck survivalists, chainsaws and using another living being as cover from incoming gunfire – you know, the hairy, nasty heart beating in the chest cavity of the Gears sequel. Check the full interview after the jump.

Das Gamer: So what’s your title now?
Cliff Bleszinski: Design director.

Does that encompass all Epic titles?
Cliff Bleszinski: Yes. That means I get a lot more hands on time with guys like Steve Polge who are doing a tremendous job with the Unreal Tournament franchise as well as helping us spearhead any potentially new endeavors.

But you were very separate from Unreal Tournament 3 – it’s seems like you’re the Gears guy now.
Cliff Bleszinski: I played UT3 at least once a week, and gave some feedback to the guys, and talked to Steve Polge on a regular basis. It’s just now that process is a bit more formalized.

Yes, but you were more behind the scenes. Where here with Gears 2 you’re the face of the franchise. A lot of people are pigeonholing you as the Gears guy.
Cliff Bleszinski: Well, we’ll see if Epic and Midway choose to leverage that in a different way in the future.

When did development on Gears of War 2 begin? Was it right after you guys wrapped the first title?
Cliff Bleszinski: Pretty much.

Was there anything happening pre-production wise during the first Gears?
Cliff Bleszinski: There were always ideas kicking around, but every single fucking available body was busy cranking on shipping Gears 1, as well as working on UT. Once those people were available we immediately started working on a sequel. We didn’t do it preemptively. Once we heard the numbers Microsoft was shipping to stores, we were like, “Let’s do it!” But we never made the assumption there would be a sequel. It really bothers me when people say, “Well you said it would be a trilogy!” We never said it would be a trilogy. (laughs) We’re going to take it game by game. We’ll see how Gears 2 does. If it does great we’ll consider doing a third, who knows.

So obviously, Gears 1 did phenomenally well. Were you expecting to pull down anything close to the eight AIAS awards?
Cliff Bleszinski: Yeah, that was fun. It was such a weird time too because we hadn’t gone around the dark side of the moon and saw all the sales numbers yet, and everything hadn’t settled, and I was like, “What the fuck is going on man!” It was hilarious. We’re glad to be around the dark side of the moon and have a multi-million selling franchise.

But how much pressure does that put on you guys?
Cliff Bleszinski: It puts a fuck-load of pressure. But I have the utmost in confidence in the talented people I work with on a day-to-day basis that will deliver something that really knocks it out of the park.

I’ve heard you say this phrase a hundred times. “It’s bigger, better, and more bad ass.” Is that the new “Stop and Pop?”
Cliff Bleszinski: It is. It’s cheesy marketing shit, and I know it is. That’s the message. Suddenly now, every game has stop and pop, and a roadie run and all that stuff given the cheesy Cliff names. They are cheesy. It is a bigger game as you saw with the demo. It is better. The cover system is that much better. It’s got much more badass stuff going on in it, and that’s why, you know, it’s alliteration – it’s a good way of selling it to people.

You’ve shown a lot so far, and from what we’ve seen - we’ve seen some of the new combat stuff – we know the chainsaw duels, we know some of the tweaks with the weapons. Are you still holding a lot of the combat surprises?
Cliff Bleszinski: Oh yeah, there’s still a lot of stuff that we haven’t revealed yet. A lot of the finishing moves, cool things we do with active reload, multiplayer game modes, there’s still a lot to be revealed.

In the latest demo you’re starting off with Dizzy? Who the hell is Dizzy?
Cliff Bleszinski: He’s a fucking redneck truck driver, man! (laughs) He’s a stranded guy. The stranded guys are the ones everyone cast aside when they went to Jacinto. They are these rugged individualist survival guys who managed to eke out a living in no-man’s land when the Locusts were invading. Eventually enough is enough and he decided he would officially join the army and let his family live safely on Jacinto.

But why Dizzy? Where are the normal cohorts?
Cliff Bleszinski: I assure you, you will be up to your ears in Gus and Baird. There’s plenty of that. There’s also Ty the spiritual warrior type guy that you run into as well. We have to introduce a few people – and Carmine is back in a certain way – you’re going to have to wait and see how we do that.

By introducing new characters can we assume that you might go with more than two player co-op?
Cliff Bleszinski: We can’t confirm or deny anything there yet. You’ll have to wait until E3. We have some cool plans there - you’ll just have to wait. Patience man! Quit sweatin’ me!

You’re other new buzz phrase was “deeper, darker story.” You and I joked about it at the AIAS awards when you won, and you even joked about it on stage when you won the award for best story. You laughed about it because you seemed a bit surprised because there weren’t a lot of story elements in Gears of War until the end.
Cliff Bleszinski: Yeah. It was a straightforward Jerry Bruckheimer-type production, and I’m okay with that. Gamers are so intelligent that they expect something to be so fucking tremendously deep that your average person can’t understand it – which is the way a lot of game stories pan out. I’ve seen EGM graph them out and you’re like, “Really? What?!” But at the same time we’ve established who these characters are, established what this world is and you’ll get answers to a lot of questions that were raised in the first game. What’s up with the Locust hierarchy? Where do the Locust live and how do they live? What’s up with Dom and the search for this wife? Where is Jacinto? What is the COG hierarchy? We answer a lot of those questions in the sequel – and we ask a few more.

Whenever Epic launches a new Unreal, you guys usually roll out the same weapons but you’d have modifiers. Is that what you’re going to have with Gears?
Cliff Bleszinski: We’ve improved a lot of the old weapons. The Lancer has a new model, you can do all that neat chainsaw stuff like chainsaw dueling. The Hammerburst - we did a reduction of the model, changed its functionality. We’ve just got a whole buttload of new weapons. I can’t really expose a whole lot of them due to embargoes. But you have the semi-automatic pistol, which ties into the meat bagging–grabbing somebody, taking them as hostage and a lot of other nasty things with which to kill the Locusts.

Do you regret not having the Brumak fight in the first game, and is there anyway that you could allow that for downloadable content for Xbox 360 gamers?
Cliff Bleszinski: It’s not going to happen. Our team is knee deep in making Gears 2 and making UT on 360 happen. Yeah, I may regret it a little bit, but the whole time the gamers were asking for it, it’s like, you guys are going to be so knee deep in Brumaks in Gears 2 that you’re just going to frickin’ crap yourself. Once they fire up that second level they’re going to forget about that. There’s a whole bunch of cool stuff that we do with Brumaks in the game.

–Billy Berghammer