Gut Feeling Crucial for Gears of War 3 Design

Gears of War 3, which developer Epic Games and publisher Microsoft hope will be one of the biggest launches of the year, was designed with three main sources of inspiration in mind and maybe the most important one was the gut feelings of the developers working on it.

Speaking to Gamespot lead designer Cliff Bleszinski has said that, “The first thing we do is always pay attention to forums and Twitter and social networking, that’s a good temperature check. The second thing we use is metrics; we’ve found sometimes there’s a difference between what people are saying in the forums, and what’s actually going on in the wild.”

The developer offered an example, saying that while the majority of fans speaking on forums indicated that they sawed off shotgun was the most powerful weapon in the game actual usage statistics showed something else and the team decided on not changing its characteristics.

Bleszinski added, “Then the final thing we use is our gut. If we can’t trust that we might as well pack it in.”

The developers indicated the ice lake and tank sequence in Gears of War 2 as something that failed from a gameplay point of view, because it did not take into account the way players approached the game experience.

Bleszinski also justified the lack of emphasis on relation in the game, saying that the team felt it was too tricky to talk about the deep personal feeling of the main characters while at the same time putting them constantly at risk in huge battles.

Instead the developers at Epic aimed to deliver the most polished set pieces ever seen in the series.

Gears of War 3 will be launched exclusively on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft on September 20 and could be the last game in the series to follow the adventures of Marcus Fenix and his supporting cast.