Gears 4 wordt minder omvangrijk dan Gears of War 3

Wat betreft omvang was Gears of War 3 een gigantische game. Veel groter dan de voorgaande delen in de serie. Volgens Rod Fergusson, ontwikkelaar bij The Coalition en voormalig lid van het ontwikkelteam bij Epic Games, was Gears of War 3 wellicht te groot en zal Gears 4 veel minder massaal worden en juist meer focus kennen. Fergusson vertelde:

When we were doing Gears 3, we over-scoped it. We felt like it was going to be the last one we’d ever do, like it was our opus, so we put too much stuff into it because we felt like we were never going to make another one. It better have it all. We don’t have this pressure with 4. We know that if things go well, there will be others. We can be more rational around [what fits] and save some of it for the future.

De grootste uitdaging voor The Coalition is het verzorgen van 60 frames per seconde, een upgrade die al verzorgd is in de multiplayer van Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. Deze grafische prestatie eist men dan ook voor heel Gears 4, zo laat Fergusson weten:

It’s something we can talk about in time. There’s a lot of sins hidden in 30, which is good and bad. When you look from 1 to 3 to Judgment, what you see is a focus on responsiveness and the notion of, hey, maybe that footfall doesn’t have to be so precise, because we want faster movement. Or weapon swapping can be a lot faster if you pull out a bunch of animation frames. It maybe looks more clunky, but it happens really fast and feels better.

That’s part of what 60 forces. But I hear about this from the Call of Duty guys. The 60Hz culture changes how you work. You check something in and now you’re below 60, you have to pull it back and figure out what’s wrong.

That idea of getting to a bar and holding and putting that pressure on getting the visuals as high as you can, but not breaking that bar. Because once you break it … all the fallbacks are pretty ugly, except to go immediately back to 30, and that’s a huge drop.

Minder omvangrijk en juist meer focus op bepaalde situaties en omgevingen. Een goede keuze van The Coalition? Of does size matter? Laat het weten in de reacties!