InsaneBear

Reactions: Gears of War 3 announcement leaked

You see, all of those Xbox Live ads can be good for something! Well, at least when the Microsoft marketing team forgets that Cliff Bleszinki’s appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon was pushed back from Thursday the 8th to Monday the 12th. Dude Huge is making said appearance to announce a new game from Epic, which we can all assume to be Gears of War 3 after the Xbox Live dashboard told us so. But no need to fret! Kotaku says that Epic will announce another, less heralded game next week. That game is said to be the long rumored shooter from Polish developer People Can Fly (Painkiller), which is a subsidiary of Epic.

But you came here for news on Gears of War 3 and you’re going to get it, gosh darn it! Edge claims to have the skinny on the first gameplay details. Things of particular interest are Locusts with “tentacle-like appendages which are capable of extending to player cover spots…explosives that can travel beneath the ground to take out enemy cover positions…[and] a heavy duty mech suit the COGs can utilise both for protection and to wreak havoc.” Now if any of you have read my review of The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena then you know my disdain of mechs, but the other stuff sounds snazzy.

Edge goes onto relay that “…the game will be set during the summer and introduce a number of new environments to the series, including underwater locations. The end of the last title saw the COGs sink mankind’s last city, Jacinto, and flood the Hollow in order to take out the Locust Horde beneath the surface.”

And while this next part is purely speculation on Edge’s part, it sounds reasonable enough:

Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 demo at GDC in March showed off jungle or foliage-heavy areas, which could also make an appearance in Gears Of War 3 – Epic previously used GDC 2008 to debut Unreal Engine upgrades that went on to show up in Gears 2.

Gears Of War: Jacinto’s Remnant, a novel written in conjunction with Epic, continues the Gears story from the conclusion of the second game. One story strand focuses on the island of Vectes, a former COG naval base sporting fertile lowlands, forests and a river. This setting could be ideal to show off the developer’s new Unreal Engine features were it to show up in Gears Of War 3.

All and all, I’d have to say this is pretty exciting news. Jungle and under-water settings could provide some really exotic environments that aren’t typical of a Gears of War game and the tweaks to the game’s signature cover-based shooting sound cool. Just get rid of the mechs and we’re in business!

Author: Cody

Tags: epic, gears of war 3, microsoft, people can fly, xbox 360