US, April 8, 2008 - With the scheduled release of Gears of War 2 less than eight months away, Epic games and Microsoft are slowly beginning to loosen the information valve on the highly-anticipated sequel, first at the Game Developers Conference in February and now in the most recent issue of Game Informer magazine, which has already reached some subscribers.
A few of those magnanimous folks were kind enough to share their impressions of GI's Gears 2 cover story on the NeoGaf forums today, and we dutifully formed our impressions of their impressions, which we shall impress upon you here.
According to the article, the basic gameplay of Gears will return in the sequel. The familiar sticky cover system will be back but slightly tweaked to make it harder to hit characters hiding behind stone walls, barricades or whatever else litters the battlefield.
Many of the first game's weapons will return, and active reloads will be back with minor (undisclosed) alterations. As many Gears watchers predicted, chainsaw duels will now be part of the experience, and a smattering of new weapons will be included, too. The article specifically mentions poison grenades (oh, the multiplayer possibilities) and something called a Gorgon burst pistol. If it's anywhere near as sweet as the Boltok pistol from the first game, we'll take three.
Much of the piece focuses on Gears of War 2's technical advances, which appear to be plentiful. Gamers who followed Epic's GDC appearance will be familiar with the terms "ambient occlusion" and "soft-body physics." Yes, they'll be included, as will hordes of independently animated on-screen enemies, advanced cinematic lighting and bumped-up water effects, all part of the new newest version of Unreal Engine 3.
The GI article is thin on multiplayer details, but the mag does confirm that a re-imagined version of the Gridlock map from the first game will be back. Co-op play will return and, in keeping with current trends, will allow players to drop-in and out of games dynamically. In a change from Gears of War, the sequel will allow each player to choose different difficulty levels in a co-op game, and those choices will affect each player's experience when the team splits up.
Gears 2 will also add a difficulty level at the low end of the scale that promises to make the sequel even more approachable for casual gamers, but the higher difficulty settings will remain "truly devastating," GI says.
We still don't know much about the sequel's storyline, which Epic promises will be more fleshed-out that its predecessor, which had something to do with Emergence Day, some dudes with guns and emulsion.
Delta Squad is split up when the sequel opens, and at least four new characters will be introduced as the story unfolds. Tai Kaliso is described as a spiritual warrior; Chairman Prescott is Hoffman's dictatorial boss; Dizzy is a Stranded soldier/truck driver; and Maria Santiago is the wife of Marcus Fenix's partner Dom, who embarks on a personal mission to save her in Gears of War 2.
The forced walking scenes that masked load times in the first game have also been replaced with a new system that is apparently more bearable than watching Marcus walk around with his finger in his ear while grunting at the disembodied voice of Anya. She'll play more of a role in the sequel, too, finally getting her face in the action as an image on a video screen.
There's still a lot we don't know about Gears of War 2. Will we fight the Locust Queen? Will the active-reload downing mechanism of the Longshot rifle return? Will multiplayer remain basically the same, or will Epic go for a wildly different setup? So far, CliffyB and crew aren't doling out those details.
