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Gears of War IP sold to Microsoft Studios: The End of an Era

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Posts

  • NocrenNocren Lt Futz, Back in Action North CarolinaRegistered User regular
    Well, if anyone is still interested in this game, in honor of it's 1 year mark, it'll be 3X xp weekend.
    Special Horde mode (Creepy Crawlies; Tickers, Bloodmounts, Reavers, Serapedes and the like) and "Brothers to the End" 2v2 deathmatch event (with ribbon).

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  • NibCromNibCrom Registered User regular
    I might be playing some Horde if I have time.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    It's ironic how the announcement of a new Gears game sapped my enthusiasm for the franchise.

    Too soon, executus, too soon!

  • MagellMagell Detroit Machine Guns Fort MyersRegistered User regular
    I've been thinking about playing some Gears again soon so triple xp sounds like a good idea. I'll probably be playing Gears during the day this weekend.

  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    edited September 2012
    I was excited for Judgement, but then I realized how soon it was coming. God, March 2013? I'll still have Halo 4 and Blops 2 on my plate, just for multi. Factor in all the single player games I still need to bet and the fact that I still have fun with Gears 3 horde and I think I might skip Judgement.

    Also @Undead_Scottsman, I think they said that the mission Involving Barid and Cole was top secret. And no, it still doesn't make sense why they wouldn't talk about after the COG fell apart. And you'll have to just accept that just like Halo Reach, they somehow have better weapons and tech in the prequel.

    JusticeforPluto on
  • MagellMagell Detroit Machine Guns Fort MyersRegistered User regular
    I like that release date for Gears because that's when I'll start to get bored of Blops 2 and want a new shooter.

    I'll still want to play Blops2 after that, but there's that period in the 4-5 month period where I start to resent the game I'm playing and want a change. And my GoW3 play was definitely hindered by only having two months between that and MW3.

  • NocrenNocren Lt Futz, Back in Action North CarolinaRegistered User regular
    I was excited for Judgement, but then I realized how soon it was coming. God, March 2013? I'll still have Halo 4 and Blops 2 on my plate, just for multi. Factor in all the single player games I still need to bet and the fact that I still have fun with Gears 3 horde and I think I might skip Judgement.

    Also @Undead_Scottsman, I think they said that the mission Involving Barid and Cole was top secret. And no, it still doesn't make sense why they wouldn't talk about after the COG fell apart. And you'll have to just accept that just like Halo Reach, they somehow have better weapons and tech in the prequel.


    Given how the worlds went to shit after the prequel it's sort of justified (though Reach has other excuses as well).

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  • NibCromNibCrom Registered User regular
    I agree that Judgment seems to be coming out prematurely. Seriously 3.0 made me think they weren't going to release another Gears of War game for like five years.

  • Idx86Idx86 Long days and pleasant nights.Registered User regular
    Maybe Cliffy B has run out of good ideas?

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    2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Idx86 wrote: »
    Maybe Cliffy B has run out of good ideas?

    CliffyB is mostly likely focusing on Fortnite at this point; Judgment is primarily being made by People Can Fly

    Honestly, Judgment seems like Epic/Microsoft trying to squeeze one last Gears of War title out before we get to 720-mania.

    NibCrom
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited October 2012
    So Lead Designer and internet personality CliffyB left Epic, if you haven't heard. He follows Rod Fergusson (Director of Production-Basically in charge of everything Gears of War related) and Adrian Chmielarz, Andrzej Poznanski and Michal Kosieradzki who were the top guys at People Can Fly. Not to worry, they still got Mark Rein!

    Oh...

    Anywho, it seems the Gears of War movie is stirring in development hell.
    Plans to turn Epic Games' "Gears of War" into a film franchise are being revived.

    In development at New Line since 2007, with Len Wiseman once attached to helm, the studio has now put the military actioner into turnaround to focus instead on "The Hobbit" films. But with "Gears" having generated more than $1 billion in sales since the first game bowed in 2006, and a fourth set for release next year, Creative Artists Agency is eager to meet with producers in the coming weeks and set up the project elsewhere, Variety has learned.

    "Twilight" producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey were previously attached to the adaptation, while Stuart Beattie ("Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides") penned the most recent version of the screenplay, which CAA is expected to turn to in its discussions. Chris Morgan and Billy Ray also had worked on "Gears" scripts.

    CAA reps both Epic Games and Beattie.

    While a "Halo" movie from Microsoft is still in development -- Beattie wrote a draft of the film -- "Gears" is another top property for the gamemaker that could lend itself to the kind of world-building Hollywood is looking for when launching new franchises with built-in brand awareness. Property is exclusive to Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console.

    "Gears," with its strong visual style, revolves around muscle-bound human soldiers tasked with protecting the planet Sera from alien creatures known as the Locust Horde.

    Epic is expected to consult on the "Gears" pic to make sure it ties into the canon established by the games and books. A line of collectible toys also has been released.

    Interest in "Gears" is picking up right as the game's lead designer Cliff Bleszinski unexpectedly announced last week that he is leaving North Carolina-based Epic Games after 20 years with the company. The exec, known as "Cliffy B" by the gaming community, had been instrumental in all aspects of the design and promotion of the company's games.

    His departure comes as Epic is readying to release the series' fourth installment, "Gears of War: Judgment" next year, and after Epic sold a minority stake in the company to Chinese Internet giant Tencent this summer. Size of the investment has not been disclosed, but deal enables Tencent to cash in on sales of Unreal Engine, the software used for games like "Batman: Arkham City" and "Mass Effect 3," licensed by other publishers.

    Legendary Entertainment considered purchasing the company in 2008.
    Source: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118060511.html?cmpid=RSS|News|FilmNews

    I really hope they get some different people working on the movie; there's not a great pedigree there for the older version.

    Undead Scottsman on
  • PizzleStixxPizzleStixx Parp? Burnett? Really? UghRegistered User regular
    I kind-of hope that it doesn't really get picked up and turned around. Let's be honest, the last first-person shooter that Hollywood turned into a picture (if I'm correct) was Doom.

    Doom

    Where we had an hour or so of awful acting and special effects, 5 minutes of first person movie shooter, then 10 minutes of The Rock literally going buck nutty.

    I would rather that GoW doesn't suffer a fate similar to that.

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  • NocrenNocren Lt Futz, Back in Action North CarolinaRegistered User regular
    Yeah, but Gears is third person, totally different :P

    Besides, it's already near Bay levels of explosion, military industry, and total dude-bromance.

    The problem would be condensing it down to between 90-120 minutes.

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  • darleysamdarleysam On my way to UKRegistered User regular
    Nocren wrote: »
    Yeah, but Gears is third person, totally different :P

    Besides, it's already near Bay levels of explosion, military industry, and total dude-bromance.

    The problem would be condensing it down to between 90-120 minutes.

    You know what, if Neill Blomkamp never gets to direct a Halo movie (as I'm certain he now never will), a Gears of War movie would be a perfect match for his style.

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  • NocrenNocren Lt Futz, Back in Action North CarolinaRegistered User regular
    Never got to see D9, but did see Live and the Halo shorts.

    I agree.

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  • NibCromNibCrom Registered User regular
    No Gears movie, please. In fact, no more video game movies at all. I have never seen one that was good.

  • NibCromNibCrom Registered User regular
    Actually, I did like Street Fighter, but for all the wrong reasons.

    tastydonuts
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Nocren wrote: »
    Yeah, but Gears is third person, totally different :P

    Besides, it's already near Bay levels of explosion, military industry, and total dude-bromance.

    The problem would be condensing it down to between 90-120 minutes.

    Eh, the original script treatment focused on Marcus and Dom during E-Day, so I could see them doing that in a normal movie's timespan.

  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    Kind of bummed that Cliffy B left. He got a lot of crap but he was a pretty cool guy.

    Magell
  • Skull2185Skull2185 Registered User regular
    Just started playing Raam's Shadow. Its pretty cool, playing as Raam is more fun than i thought it would be. Dude's using a Kryll shield/swarm in broad daylight somehow, though...

    Anyway, can somebody please tell me where ive heard Baldy McCigarface's VA before? It sounds very familiar and its driving me crazy.

    Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited October 2012
    Rick D. Wasserman voiced Barrick. He's done a ton of voiceover work. I'm guessing you'll recognize something from the list http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1484330/

    Also, RAAM's Kryll are special.. he was using them in the daylight in Gears 1 (though RAAM's Shadow mentions that if you ink the sky, the Kryll can move about, and the sky was definitely inked at the end of Gears1.

    Undead Scottsman on
  • Skull2185Skull2185 Registered User regular
    Killbane from Saint's Row 3! Man that was killing me... Huh, he was also the Arishok in Dragon Age II.

    Beat Raam's Shadow last night, it was pretty good. You didn't really see much of him in GoW1, but I never really liked Kim. Now I have a reason why
    "Oh, you're hurt and stuck, Raam? Well, let me let you know I'm here and run at you with a chainsaw instead of just shooting you in the head before you realize I'm standing here!"

    Dummy basically killed himself...

    Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
  • shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    Beat Raam's Shadow last night, it was pretty good. You didn't really see much of him in GoW1, but I never really liked Kim. Now I have a reason why
    "Oh, you're hurt and stuck, Raam? Well, let me let you know I'm here and run at you with a chainsaw instead of just shooting you in the head before you realize I'm standing here!"

    Dummy basically killed himself...

    Well, no. You should hopefully remember from playing both Gears 1 and the boss fight that Kryll block bullets. In fact, they're pretty clearly blocking bullets in that sequence... So he's trying to kill him the only way he can. The bad one there was Barrick. If he had rushed in and backed him up, bye bye RAAM. But dude wasn't a career soldier and didn't recognize/care how important RAAM was to the enemy's war effort.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    Killbane from Saint's Row 3! Man that was killing me... Huh, he was also the Arishok in Dragon Age II.

    Beat Raam's Shadow last night, it was pretty good. You didn't really see much of him in GoW1, but I never really liked Kim. Now I have a reason why
    "Oh, you're hurt and stuck, Raam? Well, let me let you know I'm here and run at you with a chainsaw instead of just shooting you in the head before you realize I'm standing here!"

    Dummy basically killed himself...

    RAAM's Kryll act as a bullet shield. You can see RAAM summon the shield when he realizes Kim is going to start shooting at him.

  • Skull2185Skull2185 Registered User regular
    edited October 2012
    Raam was unaware of Kim's presence initially, and did not have his Kryll shield up. He could've killed him.

    I understand that they had to account for Gears 1, though. So its just silly nitpicking on my part :P
    Dude's still a dummy, though

    Edit: Kim didn't shoot at first, he was all "Grr I'm mad at you, eat my chainsaw." He only started shooting when that didn't work, but by then Raam had the Kryll shield going.

    Skull2185 on
    Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
  • shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    Raam was unaware of Kim's presence initially, and did not have his Kryll shield up. He could've killed him.

    I understand that they had to account for Gears 1, though. So its just silly nitpicking on my part :P
    Dude's still a dummy, though

    RAAM can take multiple sniper rifle headshots. A few Lancer bullets would do shit-all.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    So the game is available for preorder (meh), no super duper edition yet (meh), but there are PREORDER EXCLUSIVES! (Yaaaaaaay.. not..)

    Right now, everyone who preorders the game gets the Classic Hammerburst weapon. Not a weapon skin, an actual exclusive weapon. Seriously Epic?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YtmdWFWHEg

    Secondly, specific preorders have specific exclusive multiplayer skins. So far I've found

    Gamestop: Young Marcus
    Amazon.com: Young Dom
    ????: Anya
    ????: Motherfucking ALEX BRAND! (Woo! Wait, it's an exclusive. God dammit Epic.)
    Pics can be seen here

    Young Marcus looks alright (pretty similar to Gears1 actually, sans facial hair), Young Dom looks great, Anya is straight from Gears3 (bleh) and Alex Brand looks fantastic (aside from the eyes, which look untextured).

  • NocrenNocren Lt Futz, Back in Action North CarolinaRegistered User regular
    Wonder if that's the actual "classic" HB from Gears 1 (that fired in bursts).

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  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    Indeed it is, apparently.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    New trailer from the VGA's
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-1sQvvg410

    Notes
    -New Badguy seems to be riding around on a giant Corpser. I think they call him "Khan" or "Caan" or whatever. Almost looks like he's wearing threads similar to the Queen. Locust King maybe?
    -Officially takes place 30 days after emergence day, it seems, so the Lancers are SUPER anachronistic, having not been even CONCEIVED until like a year later.
    -Weird new enemy that looks like a spike covered Boomer that charges at you.

  • shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    Seriously 30 days after? Cole Train shouldn't even be a trained Gear yet. In fact, according to the books he AND Baird should be total newbs at this point, the idea that Baird went from terrified to "coming up with innovative strategy to win the whole war" in this amount of time is hilarious.

    That having been said, the books weren't NEAR good enough to pitch a fun game over, so yeah game will win.

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    edited December 2012
    If this wasn't primarily a game based IP, the books would probably be my favorite part. I dunno why Epic bothered to have Traviss write five books, 10 comics and Gears of War 3 if they're just going to toss out what she wrote the moment something else pops into their heads.

    Then again, Epic hasn't even done a great job keeping the continuity of the games straight (As RAAM's Shadow can attest) so meh. I'll probably just mentally push the game around on the timeline like I did with RAAM's Shadow.

    EDIT: And yeah, it makes no sense for Baird to already be a Lieutenant (as mentioned in the first trailer) when he was still in boot camp shortly after E-Day in the books.

    Undead Scottsman on
  • sockssocks Registered User regular
    For those of you interested, "The Twelve Days of Gearsmas" starts tomorrow.

    http://epicgames.com/community/2012/12/the-twelve-days-of-gearsmas-2012/

    Might be enough to get me to put Gears back in for a bit of multiplayer action.

  • shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    Some interesting stuff on IGN about the game finally:
    Campaign article
    The devs talking about their approach to story and art design

    I found it interesting that they seem to care a lot about established canon (one guy explicitly mentions details from Coalition's End in fact), but then the story seems to run all counter to logic. Some things are probably just out of their hands. Like making a Gears game without Lancers (or Retros only in other words) would be the dumbest possible thing to do. Somebody probably should have made that clear to Traviss and had her say that the Lancers were rigged up in at least a prototype fashion almost immediately. (But then she'd probably go off about fan Nazis and run away so...)

  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Registered User regular
    The development time on something like a Lancer with a chainsaw is a hell of a lot longer than 30 days. (And the ones seen in the trailers look to be FAR from makeshift prototypes) Even if there hadn't already been an established timeframe for their development, the mere fact that they were developed as a response to the Locust makes them ill-suited to be used in an Emergence Day game.

    Really, this is 100% Epic's fault for wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted a Emergence Day game but didn't want to try and make a compelling Gears game that didn't involve the Lancer.

  • shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    Honestly, the having their cake thing was the Retro Lancer. Nobody would have said anything if they just claimed that changing the bayonet was the only change that they made to fight the Locust. Claiming that they basically redid the whole thing (and that it was weak at mid to long range {wha?}) is what screwed things up.

  • ArteenArteen Adept ValeRegistered User regular
    socks wrote: »
    For those of you interested, "The Twelve Days of Gearsmas" starts tomorrow.

    http://epicgames.com/community/2012/12/the-twelve-days-of-gearsmas-2012/

    Might be enough to get me to put Gears back in for a bit of multiplayer action.

    Day 1- Fortifications for Free
    That sounds like a good reason to put the game back in. Fortifications in Horde were a neat idea, but way too expensive to be much fun.

    I've been meaning to play Gears again, since I bought the season pass but didn't end up playing much of the last map pack or two.

  • Inker2000Inker2000 Registered User regular
    did anyone else have problems getting public matches on the dlc maps in horde mode? that was the main reason i quit playing. i know they had separate playlists for the deathmatch modes, but this wasnt an option for horde/beast.

  • NibCromNibCrom Registered User regular
    Sooo… no DBNO in multiplayer? Can't see how this would be a good thing.

  • shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    NibCrom wrote: »
    Sooo… no DBNO in multiplayer? Can't see how this would be a good thing.

    They haven't "announced" VS yet, so they also haven't mentioned in features or details of VS yet. Once they do, expect it to be unchanged except for how weapons work now.

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