Now Billy don’t you get all jumpy and all. A guy from Neogaf.com has got an early subscription of GameInformer and has decided to share the info on Gears of War 2. The info is so amazing that it will make any Gears of War fan shed a tear out of happiness. For all the unlucky chaps in India who can’t get the magazine, here are the details.
Gears of War 2 is going to be bigger and better, we all know how the first Gears game did not have any depth in story whatsoever but this time Epic is working hard on the story element of Gears 2. They have brought in Joshua Ortega who is a novelist / comic writer. He said, “Darker and more heartfelt narrative. The stakes are raised. This is humanity’s last stand. Everything is at risk. Nothing is safe.”
I don’t know about you, but that just made my day. The story is said to be continued four months after you deployed the light mass bomb. This time round, more characters are introduced. Some info on these new characters in Gears of War 2 are:
Tai Kaliso: While Cole and Baird are still a big part of the story, they won’t be attached to Delta Squad as the new game opens. The reunion with those popular characters will have some lead up first, and until then, you’ll be meeting some new personalities. The most memorable of these new additions may be Tai, a spiritual and meditative warrior from a tradition of honor-bound fighters. This familiar archetype should add a fun and perhaps mystical dynamic to the squad.
Chairman Prescott: Lots of gamers found themselves wondering if Marcus’ domineering superior officer was the head of the human government. It turns out that Hoffman is only second in command. Above him stands the Chairman, an almost dictatorial military leader who nonetheless has made the hard choices necessary to keep humanity alive through decades of warfare. As Gears 2 opens, this leader of the COG forces will deliver a speech to the troops before sending them reeling into the suicidal mission ahead.
Dizzy: In the seemingly unending struggle with the Locust Horde, the military forces of the COG have taken massive casualties. Somewhere along the way, Operation Lifeboat was enacted to bring in some fresh blood. Under this new act, the Coalition government will rescue a Stranded family and bring them into the relative story of a COG-protected zone. In return, the able-bodied men of that family join up and contribute their skills to the war effort. Such is the case with hardened soldier Dizzy, a new character who drives the massive Derrick on which Delta Squad ascends into the mountains. With a trademark drawl and an insistence on calling his truck “Betty”, he’s a colorful new addition to the cast.
Maria Santiago: When Emergence Day struck, Dom’s wife Maria became a victim as surely as if she had died in that first attack. On that day, her children were killed. Unable to deal with the shock and loss, Maria lost herself in the ruins of civilization. For Dominic, who joined the COG to protect his family, no priority is higher than to retrieve his lost love – his very personal quest to find her is a major part of the story that unfolds in Gears 2.
The Boss fights will still be huge and epic. Cliff Bleszinski said, “We have creatures that make the Brumak look like a baby panda bear.”
Sure, unfortunately the Xbox 360 users don’t know what in the name of jelly beans, a Brumak is. The new game will incorporate all the new updates to UE3 Engine will have new character lighting, it’s a step away from realistic lighting and towards cinematic lighting. New version of Unreal 3 constantly shifts the lighting technique in order to make a character stand out in the environment. Ambient occlusion is another tech being used. Unreal’s new ability to render huge numbers of individual creatures at the same time, hundreds of Locust troops, each moving independently and as unique individuals. Awesome water effects, soft body physics. Finally, we were tired of fighting those 4 Locusts all the time.
Few changes have been made to the co-op multiplayer as well. With the drop in – drop out, the player will also have the option to change the difficulty. While Player 1 might want easy and Player 2 might want hard and when they split, they will encounter their respective difficulty related enemies. We don’t know how effective will it be.
All of this sounds too juicy, with Gears of War 2 expected to release at the end of the year, we just can’t wait!