Gears of War 3 Delivers Good Female Characters

Gears of War 3 is now out, the first big platform exclusive launch of the fall season, and the developers working on it have talked about how they struggled to expand the appeal of the series by creating compelling female characters in an universe that was normally only concerned with bulky men and monsters.

Cliff Blezinki, who is the leading designer working on Gears of War 3, has told Gamasutra as part of a bigger interview about female characters, saying, “I initially wanted to it in Gears 1, but we didn’t have the time to properly model them and everything like that. And by the time we got to the third game, the way the fiction was panning out was that now the women aren’t even birthing anymore. They have to grab their guns and get into the mix as well, right?”

The Epic Games executive says that Gears of War has a surprisingly big female audience and that he wanted to make sure that they are kept interested by expanding the role that Anya plays.

He added, “The evolution of Anya from being just kind of the dispatcher who’s your voice in your ear to someone who’s stomping on Locust heads next to you — it’s an interesting character evolution.”

Bleszinki also said that the team working on Gears of War 3 was careful to give all female character a clear personality and create animations and models that emphasize their roles as fighters while keeping their sexuality subdued.

Gears of War 3 has just been released and the developers have already announced that they are planning to launch downloadable content for it, aiming to expand both the single player and the multiplayer experiences.

Epic has also announced that it is not working on another Gears of War title at the moment.