I’ll often have very fun, crazy, high-concept ideas, with specific examples of what I think would be cool. But I also have to select which interesting concepts to harvest from the development team. Epic polishes its games to the point where you can see your reflection in them, so design here is inherently a very iterative process.
But that’s just the framework for the general process of creating a game. With Gears 2, for example, I'll have my own ideas about where the story needs to go over the course of a level. I'll work with our scriptwriter Josh Ortega and senior producer Rod Fergusson to cycle on that level until we have basically a two-pager of what we think should happen in the overall story arc of the game.
From there, we’ll break down the level into different locales and decide how those locations could fit into the story. Our senior gameplay designer, Lee Perry, might say, “I want to see a mountain hamlet; let's see how we can fit that in.” And so we’ll pore over the level breakdown of the various locations, at which point our lead level designer Dave Nash will cycle heavily on those settings.
We then work with art to define the locales. Ultimately, when we agree on a level’s settings, say the mountain hamlet I mentioned, we’ll have what we literally call “Post-It Note meetings” where Lee Perry, Dave Nash and I will get together and come up with the coolest possible moments we can fit into the scenario. Let’s collapse some bridges, crash some choppers, have Brumaks shouldering into vehicles, and make things fly off cliffs while the ground opens up. We’ll come up with a dozen of these types of ideas. That's where we literally generate the water cooler moments from the game.
The level designer takes what we’ve given him, and, with the objectives from point A to point B in mind, starts filling it in, inserting something exciting and interesting to look at every few minutes on top of the really great cover gameplay mechanic. And then, of course, we add elements like new weapons, and it all comes together as a fun, cinematic roller coaster.
With Gears 2, we want to pay especially close attention to the story. Fiction has become more important, and the team has strengthened its dynamic when collaborating in this respect. We always do the sanity check, “Would Cole really say that in this situation?”
Once you become entrenched in the Gears universe, you know what sounds natural for Dom and Marcus to say. Taking your own fiction very seriously is essential, and it's good to have parameters. It's wise to have a storyline in which you restrict laser weapons or zombies to prevent yourself from throwing in everything and the kitchen sink, because you'd end up with a game that's just weird upon weird which can limit accessibility and mainstream success.
BioShock did a really good job with creating a world and adhering to its rules, and helped break the mold for being unique yet approachable. Sticking with our own rules is something we're disciplined about with Gears 2.
At the same time, though, we want Gears 2 to differentiate itself not only from our competition, but also from the original Gears. It's hugely challenging, because we're very careful with what we add to the game. We don't want to betray the core of what Gears is. We’re not making games in a vacuum either. A lot of emerging trends in the industry today already have me thinking about the possibilities of future game development.
Gameplay-wise I'm looking forward to simplified systems. I think there are new things coming in addition to gesturing, like eye-tracking cameras and even “mind control” mechanisms that will empower gamers to have a tremendous amount of control over their games without having to press extra buttons on the controllers.
I want to see game designers be smart and learn from their mistakes not only in their own titles but in others games. You go back and play the majority of the retro games, and many do not hold up. Our memory of them is a lot better than what they actually were. They're often too difficult or their checkpoints are unforgiving or the graphics aren't as good as the ones in your head. The reason games are the way they are is because we've learned lessons from our mistakes, and now we make games not necessarily easier, but more intuitive.
I think that the development of the original Gears is a great example of finding a great gameplay experience and carrying part of that over to a new game. It's no secret Resident Evil 4 was an influence on Gears. That was the first game that had third-person shooting elements that I thought really worked. All the other ones I'd seen before really didn't work, and they just didn't seem very fun. You always have to look at what other games do as far as game mechanics, cinematics and pacing.
Making games is just as much about looking at other games and saying, “I like what they did,” as it is about looking at other games and saying, “I didn't like what they did.” In the past I had played other games that had cover in them, and I was not a fan of the mechanic. But the day Lee and I looked at Kill.switch and wondered what would happen if we evolved that system with a great campaign, likable characters and next-generation tech, Gears was born. Paying close attention to advancements in gameplay teaches us what to pay homage to, and also what to avoid.