14 DAY TRIAL // The upcoming Gears of War: Judgment is designed to re-introduce the idea of terror to the venerable franchise, according to one of the main developers who has worked on the game.
Rod Fergusson, who was a producer working on the new Gears of War, told the Official Xbox Magazine that, “One of our design principles was the idea of sweaty palms when you play you’ve got to have sweaty palms or we’re not doing it right. So far in all of our playtests we’ve all got sweaty palms so that’s good.”
He added, “And it’s about making the Locusts scary again when you spend eight years with the Locusts it feels a bit like Germans in a WWII game, after a while they just become a known enemy.”
The new Judgment is set just a few weeks after the day when the Locusts emerge and attack human settlements and the entire tone of the game aims to show how scared both the populations and the soldiers are when facing them.
The development team at Epic Games is also making the new Gears of War much harder than previous titles in the series, giving Locust enemies more health and better attack options in order to make the player fear them again.
Judgment will focus on the adventures of series regulars Damon Baird and Augustus Cole, while main character Marcus Fenix will only have a cameo role.
The developers are also planning to include a new take on the traditional multiplayer mechanics of the series.
Rod Fergusson has moved from Epic Games to Irrational Games recently and is now working on BioShock: infinite with Ken Levine.
That game was delayed from the fall of this year to 2013 in order to allow the team to implement its vision of it.
Gears of War: Judgment will be launched in late March 2013 exclusively on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft.