REDACTED: The Gears of War 2 Preview
A spoiler-free examination of story, setting and character
10/15/2008 8:40 PM | 1 Comments | Page 1 of 4
Gus Mastrapa
Status: Chickens that shoot lasers out of their eyes.
"There is that gamer out there, I don't really understand him, who skips every cut scene and roadie runs all the time. I don't get it."
We'd tell you more about Marcus Fenix's backstory, but then we'd have to kill you.
I'm talking to Rod Fergusson, senior producer of
Gears of War 2. We're both slumped in comfortable chairs, bathing in the glow of high-definition monitors in the Embarcadero ballroom of the Sheraton Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. The room is crammed with screens and Xbox 360 units for a three-day Microsoft press event. Earlier in the week I had the opportunity to play through the entire
Gears of War 2 campaign. Today we're spending the day test-driving the game's new "Horde" cooperative multiplayer mode in the classic map "Mansion." I moved through the decrepit gardens and rotting innards of Marcus Fenix's childhood home -- one of the last areas players experienced in the original
Gears of War. Bunkered down in one corner of the gardens, defending our position from multiple directions, I couldn't help but think of the place's significance. This old mansion is a relic from Fenix's past. It's one puzzle piece in a larger story. I realized that we haven't seen many of the pieces.
Between me and Fergusson begins a casual, spoiler-laden discussion about the story I experienced days earlier. We talk about everything from the fate of [REDACTED] to the big blowout on the [REDACTED] at the end of the game. I play devil's advocate. "Maybe some people always skip the story because the stories in most videogames they played were kinda shitty."
Fergusson laughs knowingly. He, like any gamer, has played his share of games with less-than-stellar narratives. "If you have a game with great gameplay but bad story, you still have a great game," he says. "With a movie, if you have a bad story you have a bad movie."
This vehicle-based sequence is the first of many action blowouts.
That's why I'm so comfortable talking to this man almost exclusively about the guys behind the guns and the places where all the blazing gunfights take place. The stop-and-pop gameplay in
Gears of War was already near pitch-perfect. This team has its shit together when it comes to nailing the mechanical stuff --
Gears of War 2 is a taut experience. I liken the sum total of the game to somehow riding all the rides in Disneyland in one go. One moment you're barreling down a waterfall in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean boats, the next you're soaring through the sky in a Star Tours shuttlecraft. The game is one great action set piece after another -- expertly strung together by a lean story that never crowds the action. Fergusson goes into specifics, likening the big action blowouts to sorbet between courses of a meal. "The [REDACTED] and the [REDACTED] and the [REDACTED] stuff," he tells me, are "all just breaks -- to cleanse your palate, so you're more willing to go back to shooting again."
