Interviews// Mark Rein, Epic Games VP

Posted 4 Jul 2008 17:17 by
Gears of War 2
Gears of War 2
SPOnG: How much bigger than the first game is it? Epic's said the first game just scratched the surface...

Mark Rein: It's deeper than the first game. So, you're going to learn more about the characters. The things you wanted to know after playing Gears, I think some of those things – not all – will be answered in Gears 2 and you'll learn a little bit more about the characters and their back stories. I think we did a good job of not overburdening people with that, and then we found out that 'Hey! People really want to know more!' Great! That's a good problem. All the problems in Gears 1 were good problems to have.

Gears of War 2
Gears of War 2
Now we have a party system, that I think is going to be really good for online play. I mean, it's still one of the top 10 Xbox Live games almost two years later so, that's pretty impressive. I think everything about it is improved. I think the story's better, the environments are even cooler, and the multi-player's even more fun than it was before and we've got some great community features too, so we're pretty psyched.


SPOnG: Will it be about the same turnaround for getting it onto PC as it was with the first Gears?

Mark Rein: Right now it's only planned for 360.


Gears of War 2
Gears of War 2
SPOnG: Will there be a demo?

Mark Rein: No. You know, (laughs) we tell our publisher, 'you can have the game this year or the demo this year, pick one – you can't have both'. So, they picked the game.


SPOnG: That's understandable. You are looking at a November release?

Gears of War 2
Gears of War 2
Mark Rein: Yep. You don't want it any later than that. We unfortunately shipped Unreal Tournament III a few weeks later than we would have liked in early December and that's not the best time to do it.

You don't want to go past Thanksgiving, you really want to give people a good long period of time to get to know the game and to decide to buy it for Christmas. You know, by the time that week or two before Christmas comes, people have made most of their decisions.

So, that's the thing, you can't do a demo and get the game in the same year, and it'd be silly to have a demo in November and the game in February – not ideal.
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