Clones Hurt the Popularity of Gears of War, Says Epic Games Developer

Chris Perna, the current art director working on the Gears of War series, says that the first game in the franchise was fresh and innovative and that its success led to the development of many clones that hurt the popularity of the core experience and created a negative stereotype about it.

The developer tells The Official Xbox Magazine that, “It was a brutal game – it was meant to be. Then everybody copied us and copied our look, and the market was flooded with Gears clones, which hurts the original.”

In order to keep Gears of War interesting, the team made changes, Perna adding, “We evolved the colour palette, and the engine and the lighting and the technology and stuff through Gears 2 and then on to Gears 3 was so colourful because we upgraded the renderer and global illumination lighting, which just worked better with more colour, brighter lights and things like that.”

Many reviewers commented negatively on the gray and brown color range of the original Gears of War, but the game benefited from the graphics style, which emphasizes the ravages of war while also capturing the heroics of the main characters.

At the moment, Epic Games is working with People Can Fly on a new Gears of War title called Judgment, which is set to be launched exclusively on the Xbox 360 on March 19 all over the world.

The new game is a prequel that focuses on Damon Baird and Augustus Cole and their experiences during Emergence Day, when the Locust first burst to the surface of the planet and destroy much of humanity.

Epic Games seems to be moving away from the Gears of War look for its next projects and is currently developing a new Unreal Engine 4 tech, which will first power a very colorful game called Fortnite.