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CliffyB Talks Gears, Nintendo, Sony

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the impressive-gears-war-or-no-war dept.

Joystiq sat down with Epic designer Cliff Bleszinski and talked about the much anticipated Gears of War, the news that Epic is in talks with Nintendo to do games for their new console, and his impressions of Sony's showing at E3. From the article: "We're currently talking with Nintendo. It's not really my department to pontificate on other people's system and comments that the wonderful Mark Rein will make occasionally to upset the fans. Again, I reserve judgment of the Wii until I get hands on with it. I was very judgmental about the DS until I actually got to play hands-on with it and I love Trauma Center and stuff like that. You know what, Nintendo is zigging while everyone else is zagging and they'll be just for it. I give them props for doing something different." For more on Gears, MTV Overdrive has the 'Road to E3' special they aired on MTV2 last week available for viewing. IE is the preferred viewer, of course.

25 comments

  1. what it is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Great that he is reserving judgement this time.

  2. Where's the beef...? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Amazing... Everything I wanted to know about the article is in the /. summary even though I kept thinking the article must be meatier. The only redeeming quote from this article is about E3: "It is an absolute trainwreck of noise, and boobs, and sweat, and swag, and there is no worse venue to pick up a game and start to play than the show floor of E3."

  3. Wish I could mod up comments on other sites. by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Although I'm not a girl, reader comment #7 by "girl gamer" elle pretty much summarizes my feelings on TFA, so like a good little blogger I'll use a really short excerpt:

    "This guy is pretty representative of everything I don't like about video games and gamers."

    and direct you to the source (scroll down to comment #7.)

    --
    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
    1. Re:Wish I could mod up comments on other sites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for the link and summary. What's funny (pathetic?) is that she's pretty much spot-on, yet everyone feels the need to flame her. I guess they're really looking forward to paying a hundred and fifty bucks for what should've been a fifty dollar game-a game that offers very little above what's been done to death before, except with slightly prettier graphics. And months-long waits between "episodes."

    2. Re:Wish I could mod up comments on other sites. by 9mm+Censor · · Score: 1

      I'd mod it down. She rants that Epic wanted control of how the game was displayed. Its a trade show. They can display it how they want, to who they want. Gamers can have a look at it when they buy/steal it.

    3. Re:Wish I could mod up comments on other sites. by spezz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "This guy is pretty representative of everything I don't like about video games and gamers."

      Really? I think Sony's "the next generation starts when we say it does" attitude and EA's "if it's the only NFL game, they'll have to buy it" business practices are pretty representative of what I don't like about video games.

      CliffyB's devotion to his work and willingness to stand on stage by himself play his game in front of a roomful of press and Microsoft bigwigs speaks more to his and Epic's confidence in his work than most presentations at E3.

      The industry could use more people like him. He started making games on his own, rose through through the ranks at Epic, growing up alongside the Unreal francise and now he gets to launch his own franchise because of his talent and hard work. What's wrong with that?

      --
      come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
    4. Re:Wish I could mod up comments on other sites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go figure. Commenter #7, in her rant at the link, based her entire complaint about the things she doesn't like about video games around the actual contents of the games-- the gameplay, the graphics philosophy, how complete the game is, whether the game makes an impression. You apparently base the things you don't like about video games around the way the executives of the game's parent company act in public.

    5. Re:Wish I could mod up comments on other sites. by Valdier · · Score: 1

      Its amazing that anyone would agree with that rambling let alone another girl. Must just be a "a girl posted I must agree with her, stick together!" mindset. There was nothing rational or logical in the "why I dislike Cliffy B" statement.

      Epic has done more for game development and pushing technology than Betheseda *ever* will.

    6. Re:Wish I could mod up comments on other sites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure, it's a source for what she claims, but it's not a particularly convincing rant.

    7. Re:Wish I could mod up comments on other sites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      7. This guy is pretty representative of everything I don't like about video games and gamers.

      Laziness, excuses: Blaming the no-show of gameplay at E3 on the chaos of the show floor and a desire to make a strong "first impression" is bullshot. The first impression is going to be when early-adopter gamers pick up the game and recommend it to their friends, not from press twats and bloggers at E3 bitching about things. The truth is that he ?and by extension, Epic ? wanted to be in control of the presentation. Either put a product out to the wolves or keep it in the box until it's ready to defend itself. Half-assing it doesn't convince anyone.

      Mind firmly inside the box: I agree when he says Wii FPSes will need a compelling game under the controls. Then his example is HL2. Give him a FPS already imitated into the ground that you can play with a Wiimote, and he'll buy it. But don't challenge his ideas of gameplay; GoW, as he describes it, is Rainbow Six with a faster pace and smarter AI. A mild evolution, not a revolution, and the FPS genre is sputtering without a gameplay revolution. I'd like to play it, but as it looks, it won't be much more than Unreal with wooden crates to hide behind. Just "paint over it with a new coat of paint and put in new stuff" because it's "so much easier than starting from scratch;" starting from scratch requires you to be creative, and we certainly can't have that in game development.

      Milking "IP": I'm sure he loves episodic content, because he stands to profit from it. On my end, I /spit on it because it's nothing but milking the cool IP he gets to make in 32006 (yeah, I know). He wants people to pace their releases because he wants us "to miss it," but he loves the idea of selling an incomplete game with a cliffhanger. After all, he only has to slap on some new paint and put in new stuff ? but let's pace it down to every 18 months or so. Let's not give gamers the equivalent of, say, a HL2 all at once, because it'll be harder to make $75 off that than selling "the God of War 2 trilogy" at $25 a pop every six months. What, don't want to spend that much? Enjoy playing up to the first intermission, then - be sure to hit up GameFAQs to find out the rest of the crappy, half-hearted storyline.

      Emphasis on graphics: His "mom test" ought to be whether mom can pick up the game and play it, not whether she can tell the difference in graphic quality. My mom can't tell the difference between Morrowind and Oblivion ?everything looks obviously fake to her. But she does like playing Oblivion more, because of the voice acting, character customization and fast travel. Cliffy's mom test is irrelevant to her ? she likes the game because of the gameplay and non-graphic production values.

      If we had more Bethesdas and fewer Cliffy Bs, Oblivion might not be the exception to the rule for successful big-budget games: non-linear, mature, complex storytellers instead of kill-'em-all, "zOMG Sam Fisher blew his legs off, watch the blood spurt!" action.

      But I'm a girl gamer, so I'm only, what... 15% of the market? I'm irrelevant, ignore me. :P

      Posted at 6:05PM on May 19th 2006 by elle 2 stars

    8. Re:Wish I could mod up comments on other sites. by Donjo · · Score: 1

      Although I'm not the OP, reader comment #11 by bv pretty much summarizes my feelings on comment #7, so like a good little blogger I'll use a really short excerpt: 11. elle- Sounds like: A) You don't like FPS's. B) You are a girl and like video games (this is impossible) C) Gears of War wasn't half assed at E3. Watch some videos of it in action or read the billions of articles where people revered it as the best game at E3. D) You don't like Cliffy B. because he wouldn't go to the prom with you. E) I'm kidding about D, unless its true. and direct to the source (scroll down to #11)

  4. Frost PORST! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh man oh man. Mod me down
     
      I have henceforth WASTED A M0DpoINT!!

  5. Duke Nuken Forever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are they going to release Duke Nuken Forever for the Wii?

    1. Re:Duke Nuken Forever by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      Yes. In fact, they just threw out all old development work to update themselves for the new control mechanism. THis move will slightly delay the game, but the devs assure us the end result will be worth it. The release date has been pushed from forever to forever+1 day.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  6. Torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The MTV stream doesn't work in anything but IE (ActivesuX FTW) and supposedly is limited to US residents. So if you're outside of the US and/or hate IE, you can get the torrent right here.

  7. This quote surprised me... by radish · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Did you have a chance to play the Wii while you were at E3?

    I did not and I wanted to. I've been reserving judgment on it completely until I get hands on time with it and I just want to, just control it. My schedule was so jam-packed that there was no way I'd be able to hang out in line like that and I'm not that well connected with Nintendo to be able to skip through the line like Robin Williams is.


    Hell, I was able to skip the 4 hour line into the Nintendo booth and get a guided tour and I'm no-one. I can't imagaine for a second the nice girl at corporate relations wouldn't extend the same courtesy to someone like CliffyB. Not only that, but if you were happy to restrict yourself to just one or two titles at a time, most of the major dev houses had Wii's backstage for private demos of their titles. I had a nice uninterrupted 20 minutes with the upcoming Sega games - and again, I'm nothing in this business so if I can get in there anyone can.

    --

    ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

    1. Re:This quote surprised me... by F_Scentura · · Score: 1

      "Hell, I was able to skip the 4 hour line into the Nintendo booth and get a guided tour and I'm no-one."

      Consider it this way, since you're a no-one you also had the luxury of playing it ;)

  8. Atleast he has some class... by The_Real_Quaid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Atleast he has some class, and brains, unlike dumbass Mark Rein.

    I'll wait to use it before passing judgement - gasp! What a concept!

  9. "Innovation" by warmgun · · Score: 1
    " Based on what you know, and what Epic knows as a middleware developer, can you think of anything in particular, specifically, that you would do differently if you were making Gears of War on the PlayStation 3?

    I like the whole tilt controller. I think we could do some cool stuff there. Possibly do some integration with the PSP. And, to be honest, that's all I can think of right now. I haven't put a lot of thought into it. I've been so nose-deep in Gears on the 360. "

    Nintendo had integration of the Gameboy Advance and the DS on the Gamecube. Yet another Nintendo idea branded gimmicky by developers until a more promiment company offers an implementaion of it. Vibrating controllers being another fine example.

    1. Re:"Innovation" by grammar+fascist · · Score: 1

      Nintendo had integration of the Gameboy Advance and the DS on the Gamecube. Yet another Nintendo idea branded gimmicky by developers until a more promiment company offers an implementaion of it.

      Did CliffyB himself say it was gimmicky?

      If he did say it, is he allowed to change his mind?

      --
      I got my Linux laptop at System76.
    2. Re:"Innovation" by mausmalone · · Score: 1
      Nintendo had integration of the Gameboy Advance and the DS on the Gamecube.
      The reporter asked specifically about the PS3 ... and Cliff pretty clearly had not thought about it before that point. So he pulled some of Sony's press conference out of the recess of his memory.

      I'm sure if he were asked the same question but with the Wii instead of PS3, he'd talk about using the controller, but who knows at this point if the finalized graphics chip will be up to the task?
      --
      -=-=-=-=-=
      I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
    3. Re:"Innovation" by grumbel · · Score: 1

      Even Nintendo themself don't seem to consider that connection feature important at all, else they might have taken the time to add a link port to the NintendoDS, which they didn't, so no NDSGCN link.

      The only game where that linking was used in a good way was Zelda Four Swords, but even that game would have been possible without it if they simply added some splitscreen. Beside from that I have yet to see a game where the linking was used for more then locking up some features of the game to force users to get a GBA and a specific GBA game (MetroidPrime->MetroidFusion) to unlock the whole GCN game or to simply force having GBAs to have the game playable at all (Crystal Chronicals) in multiplayer.

      In the end the linking feature simply was and is very gymmicy in every way, not because Sony-fanboys said so, but because it simply had little to no use in the whole lifecycle of the GCN. And Sonys PSPPS3 link features seems to be no different, given that all they could come up with was a rear-mirror for a racing game for the press conference.

    4. Re:"Innovation" by apoc06 · · Score: 1

      my name is big-time sony exec. i think that nintendo's idea is stupid and gimmicky.

      huh? what's that? the 100 million users that i have to answer to want that functionality?

      okay, okay... stick it in. if our consumers want a nintendo, why dont they just buy one? *grumble

  10. CliffyB??? Stupidests Name Ever... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some of the other comments about this clown are right on.

    This clown is the poster child for all that is wrong with Microsoft and their failure in the console market.

    Gears of War looks to be the world's most dreadfully bland pc-esq shooter - (but, hey!, it's really bumpy, shiny! in the marketing shots) and it is supposed to be Microsoft's 'big game' this year. Ouch!

    The game is basically Microsoft's booby prize for not getting UT exclusive, so they are basically getting Epic's 'B team' to slap together something with the Unreal engine(but, hey!, it's really bumpy, shiny! in the marketing shots). So you have this talentless waste of space CliffyB(god it's almost too lame a name to type) making ANOTHER FUCKING GUY WALKS AROUND AND SHOOTS STUFF IN SHINY ARMOR game.

    Gee, anyone wonder why the pc market is dying and are desperately flocking to the console market?

    The same 120 million Sony and Nintendo console players who ignored the terminally average Halo((but, hey!, it's really bumpy, shiny! in the marketing shots) will once again not give a shit about Gears of War(but, hey!, it's really bumpy, shiny! in the marketing shots)

    With how bad Gears of War is looking in the realtime, not marketing, footage they better have something else for this year or they might as well just give up on the console market with the 360 on track to sell less than 3 million units worldwide this year.

    1. Re:CliffyB??? Stupidests Name Ever... by drewmca · · Score: 1

      Here's a tip: read something about the game, watch some footage, pull your head out of your ass, and go away.

      This clown is the poster child for all that is wrong with slashdot and its desperate anti-Microsoft-at-the-lack-of-any-common-sense readership.

      (Let me guess about the replies: ninety percent will be by my old friend "anonymous coward", and fifty percent will reword the sentence above to attack me.)