It was ”on schedule” but Microsoft delayed its release and Epic ”took advantage” of the new window, which led to Capps’ ”very favourite” multiplayer mode, Beast.
”We’re quite surprised to be here,” joked Mike Capps referring to Gears of War 3 at Gamescom in Germany. The sequel is releasing in the Fatherland without any cuts being made. Recently they just lifted a 17 year ban on id Software’s Doom.
”We had no idea we’d be rated in Germany, so we didn’t plan to have any presence at the show. Microsoft’s done a great job setting up the booth. I don’t know where the signs came from; it was all set up in the last few weeks,” he continued.
Gears of War 3 is the first in the Xbox 360 exclusive series to release in Germany and Capps is fine with that as it’s their best effort to date.
“This is the biggest and best game we’ve done at Epic in 20 years,” Capps said. “I’m really proud of it. It’s a much longer campaign than Gears of War 2.”
“We had some extra time on the product that we weren’t planning for, so we got to put it through its paces and really polish it.” It moved from an April slot to this autumn.
”Honestly, Microsoft came to us and said, ‘We’ve got a better window for you to ship in.’ Normally, as a developer you’re saying, ‘Please, God, I need more time,’ but we were kind of ready,” noted the Epic president.
“Gears of War 3 was on schedule, and when we got extra time, we took advantage of it. It was weird; we’d never had this before. Normally we barely make it to the end, but this time we just had more time than expected, and that made it bigger.”
“That’s where Beast mode came from, for example, which is my very favourite way to play Gears right now. Taking the part of the monsters attacking the humans is a blast. Being a Ticker and blowing yourself up to kill their turrets is a lot of fun.”
Capps teases that he knows what plans are in motion for the next generation of console hardware, thanks to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine development, but he can’t talk.
”The hard part about getting to work with the hardware manufacturers early is that then I can’t talk about it at all,” he says. “‘What would you like to see?’ I can’t tell you, because I know what’s going on.” Developers involved with UE4 are excited he reveals.
”We’ve only talked to a small number, but the ones we have are very excited because we’re doing a lot of core work that’s going to make it easier for them to scale up, especially with lots of processors,” continued Capps.
“That’s what you see on PC; ten years ago you had one, maybe two, and now you have 16. I think we’re going in the right direction, and I expect to have a bigger marketshare, not a smaller marketshare.”
Gears of War 3 releases exclusively on Xbox 360 September 20th.
