Hollywood graveyard hosts Epic’s third-person shooter.
There are dead people everywhere, but it doesn’t smell. We’re at a graveyard in the middle of Hollywood, the ghost of Biggie Smalls is burping out of speakers and a couple hundred people are resting their drinks on tombstones — they are here for Gears of War. The game is finished, and last night, at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, CA, Microsoft and Epic danced on the graves of strangers.
After a red carpet walk into the event which featured celebrities like “that guy from Grey’s Anatomy (but not the star-guy),” Jonathan Davies from Korn, Lindsay Lohan (Epic’s biggest mouth Mark Rein couldn’t stop talking about the pop tart) and some guys who looked like they were from a Chemical Romance, but were just another sortie of ubiquitous emo-rockers. We heard Billie Joe from Green Day showed, but by this time we’d left the carpet to do what everyone else was there to do — no, not shake CliffyB’s hand, but rather check out Gears of War — he was nowhere to be seen.
What’s new about Gears of War this time (aside from playing it around dead folks)? Well, the build is the same build we drove around the block at last month’s X06 . Single-player was the same, but the multiplayer sessions, which took place inside a mausoleum finally lifted the veil on some of Gears’ environments.
Gears’ Art Director Jerry O’Flaherty pointed out that the 10 maps (the game was originally expected to ship with eight, that number’s been bumped up) are all locations taken from the single-player experience: “We want these areas to be familiar, either when players step into multiplayer after playing the single-player game, or vice versa, we want these to be familiar places.”
What about the hulking, easy-to-complain-about brutish, very-unreal-like qualities of Gears of War’s bald space marines protagonist, Marcus Fenix and his cohorts in saving the planet?
“Well,” O’Flaherty laughs. “When I came on the project the Locust-look was pretty much in place. We had the basic idea for them done. They were the big creatures they are now. We experimented with a bunch of different looks for Gears’ protagonists, and originally had a character model that was a bit slighter, more like the Splinter Cell-sized character. It was really hard to believe that a guy that size could fight the Locust, though.”
One character model, Carmine, is a bit smaller than the other models (no, he isn’t Gears of War’s Oddjob, relax), but the helmeted fella is still pretty sizable.
In addition to Gridlock and Canals (the E3 and X06 multiplayer levels), another eight maps were rolled out for attendees to check out — these maps, thankfully, do not all look the same. One map looked lush compared to the previously shown Gears’ world. Plants hang around corners, rain gently splashes from above. Another map is a grim, grey-blue warehouse, yet another map as a series of spotlights outside. In the maps that aren’t enclosed cityscapes, the backgrounds look stunning. Sure, the combat arenas look great — no one can question Gears’ visual fidelity, at this point — but the destroyed world in the distance looks pretty incredible, too.
Reviewable Gears of War is expected in the office this week — so plan on seeing some almost all of 1UP’s staff online playing Gears of War throughout the week. Emergence day is inching closer, and last night CliffyB and Epic got to bury their months of hard work in liquor and so-so-hip hop.
Source: gametab.com
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