Episode 7 - Gears of War · Zencastr Video

Transcript

Speaker: Welcome everyone to episode seven of Control Alt Rewind.

Speaker: Back as always with my co-host Dan Knapper.

Speaker: Welcome Dan, I am Bradley Steinbach.

Speaker: Today, Dan, we are going to take a deep dive into one of our absolute favorite games that was in a lot of ways, I would call it genre defining and has defined a lot of those genres from...

Speaker: It defined a lot of the modern genres of what we'll say the third-person shooter genre.

Speaker: It was cover-based third-person shooter.

Speaker: Dan, what was it?

Speaker: Tell us about it and let's get right into it.

Speaker: Yeah, Gears of War.

Speaker: Wow, what a crazy game.

Speaker: Amazing game.

Speaker: So it hits the scenes and you see the trailer.

Speaker: It's like, did that guy just get chainsawed?

Speaker: It's like, oh my God, like this was crazy at the time.

Speaker: And it was just like, I don't know, it was just like that, like edgy, I guess I would say.

Speaker: And in dark tones.

Speaker: Super dark.

Speaker: Yeah, and then they were like Microsoft was going full in on it.

Speaker: It was a Microsoft exclusive.

Speaker: And that's right, really pushed the multiplayer on it, which is where we spent most of our times.

Speaker: And they also have the campaign.

Speaker: A campaign was what two player co op?

Speaker: Yeah, you could do it.

Speaker: It was.

Speaker: You know, I was I'll I'll talk about campaign quickly, Dan, because you don't want to leave that one out because I think that the campaign for Gears of War will get into the multiplayer in a minute because that's obviously where we spent most of our time.

Speaker: But we were we were obsessed with this co-op, all of them as well.

Speaker: So first one, this was when I say genre defining, there wasn't really like a a sticky cover system like in Gears of War, you could rotate cover.

Speaker: You could shoot over the top of the cover that you were in with your Lancer.

Speaker: blind firing and it just the concept of of being able to sort of it was like really really visceral it was like the new dune movies like visceral like you could cut cut through it with a knife like the the atmosphere what was that

Speaker: Can I jump in for a second?

Speaker: Please.

Speaker: Yeah, so yeah, what he's talking about is, which is really cool, they have the over the shoulder view.

Speaker: And when you're running, it was very cinematic.

Speaker: Very.

Speaker: Yeah, and actually one of the main inspirations for Resident Evil 4 was Gears of War.

Speaker: And that's why in Resident Evil 4, Leon, you know, it's over the shoulder.

Speaker: It's the same thing.

Speaker: So yeah, this game was groundbreaking.

Speaker: Yeah, the producers said, well, like the genre defining part of this is that the cinematic view and the, what was it?

Speaker: It was just super intense when you had that vision because you could see sort of everything around you close up.

Speaker: And then when like something that was super, super, super popular in Gears of War was the amount of gore and violence that was in it.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: And the...

Speaker: uh exposure to that gore and that violence from that perspective was unbelievable and i'm digressing slightly but we're talking about you had a machine gun which you often do in a video game but on the top of that machine gun was a chainsaw and that's so cool

Speaker: It was the concept of that at the time.

Speaker: This has never been done.

Speaker: It had never been done.

Speaker: It was just done in like, it was almost like a, Dan, you, you can probably build off this, but it was almost like a game that was, I never loved like a horror, a true horror game.

Speaker: Cause I was too scared of them.

Speaker: I've said that before in this, in this, but this was like a mixture between a, a hardcore military action game and a horror, horror game.

Speaker: But you felt like,

Speaker: frigging badass with the weapons that you had.

Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: 100%.

Speaker: Like the atmosphere of that game and like especially the campaign, it was so dark.

Speaker: And, you know, just like the music was like so eerie and like you just don't know, you just didn't know what kind of monster you're going to be seeing next because the Locust has just taken or like they're just attacking Earth.

Speaker: The humans are just, you know, they're like, I don't know, like,

Speaker: dwindle down to however many and everything's just destroyed and it they've just been in this massive war and and a lot of times you're just like walking through like a mansion or something kind of like resident evil kind of beautiful atmosphere yeah it is a mix of uh tactical military shooter and or i would say yeah

Speaker: I think that another big thing about the campaign before we get into the multiplayer side, which I can't wait to talk about, is like there was so many, especially at this time, there were so many games that were aliens attacking Earth and it was like the enemy from above comes attack Earth.

Speaker: Like that's just like gaming.

Speaker: That's been going on for years and years.

Speaker: But the big difference here was...

Speaker: the enemy, the antagonist of this game, the Locust, came from the ground.

Speaker: It came up from the ground.

Speaker: It was called Emergence Day the day they arrived.

Speaker: They came up from the ground.

Speaker: And it just made for this really cool story.

Speaker: But, like, cities were falling before they even knew what was going on because the Locust was emerging from the ground.

Speaker: So it was just, like, at the time, I think tons of games have done that now.

Speaker: But at the time, that was pretty new.

Speaker: And that was really, really, really...

Speaker: cool um love that about it and yeah just the arsenal of weapons the armor the voice acting was as as good as you possibly can get as good as you can get um in a video game that was incredible marcus phoenix is one of the most iconic video game characters to ever step foot on the earth and remember remember coltrane as well

Speaker: You know I love Coltrane.

Speaker: Coltrane's like, I used him a lot in Gears of War 3 multiplayer.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, he's awesome.

Speaker: Yeah, Coltrane was like in this.

Speaker: It wasn't actually Earth.

Speaker: I think it was called, was it Eden?

Speaker: Was it Eden was the name of it?

Speaker: I forget the name of the, it was basically just Earth, but it was like an alternate reality Earth.

Speaker: So things were just a little bit different so they could be creative.

Speaker: Saren, Saren.

Speaker: Yeah, so Saren was the name.

Speaker: Sarah.

Speaker: Yeah, Sarah.

Speaker: That was the name of it.

Speaker: And Coltrane was a character in it that was basically like,

Speaker: a football player and yeah yeah he can't play football anymore because he's the world is well sarah has been overrun by locust so now he's in the military but he was just charisma oh he's amazing you know like you just you just love it it's like oh yeah you're just killing people and he's just like has so much charisma the hype span on the planet i don't know it's just

Speaker: He brought exactly who he was in football and the passion he had in football to killing locusts.

Speaker: It was just awesome at the time.

Speaker: It was awesome at the time.

Speaker: And you felt like you genuinely valued the lives of the people in the, like the campaign was built so well.

Speaker: You felt emotionally attached to each and every character.

Speaker: Like you did not want them to die.

Speaker: It was very method driven.

Speaker: Oh, it was amazing.

Speaker: It was more character driven.

Speaker: So you learn about Marcus and you learn about what was his friend's name?

Speaker: Anthony Diego or whatever his name was.

Speaker: He was awesome to Dom, Dom, Dom.

Speaker: That's it.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Dom.

Speaker: And yeah, you just learn all about the characters and, you know, you had a general.

Speaker: Oh, oh my God, I'm John the Blank.

Speaker: Tell me, Dan, you were just looking at the timeline.

Speaker: So putting it in perspective, when did Gears of War come out?

Speaker: And like in reference to some of the other AAA titles that you just mentioned, like Gears of War was, so we're talking the console of Xbox 360.

Speaker: So this was, was it a launch game, Dan?

Speaker: It was.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: No, Xbox 360, that was released November 22nd, 2005.

Speaker: And

Speaker: Gears of War was approximately one year after that.

Speaker: One year after.

Speaker: So this was the Microsoft game.

Speaker: And at this time, Microsoft was beating PS3s in sales.

Speaker: Eventually PS3s beat them in sales.

Speaker: But at the start, Xbox 360s destroyed them because the PS3 was so expensive.

Speaker: Yes, they were ridiculous.

Speaker: But this was the first...

Speaker: game like this was like the first console buying game um for the xbox 360 i would say yeah so we had so what what was the actual year that gears of war came out what did you say it was this 2016 uh there's war november 7th 2006.

Speaker: 2006, sorry, 2006, a lot longer ago than that, sorry.

Speaker: And then a year later is when Halo 3 launched.

Speaker: So Halo 3, obviously we've talked about in this podcast before, was obviously enormous and genre-based.

Speaker: just unbelievable.

Speaker: But Gears of War took like, we spent, so this is a good segue because this, we, we started this, like we were playing a lot of Halo two, but this took us away from Halo two.

Speaker: I was, I was even playing a lot of Call of Duty at this time as well.

Speaker: Cause that modern, modern warfare one, modern warfare two had come out in that, in this sort of era and it was pre Halo three.

Speaker: So I was playing that as well, but Gears of War, when the multiplayer, when we realized how amazing this multiplayer was and fair,

Speaker: and competitive and like this took this took our lives over at dan i remember racing home from school to get on this game oh yeah it was such a great experience because you know you just step into the to the campaign um you have to unlock the hardcore but you know you're just going with a friend and split screen which is awesome i know that's kind of deprecated now i know one knows what that is but um

Speaker: Yeah, it's like, you know, you're doing your call outs, you're pushing like, look at the enemy locust behind the cover.

Speaker: And like Bradley was talking about that cover system, they had it down.

Speaker: They had it down and they had the weapons down as well, like the shotgun and just like and the aiming, everything felt satisfying, which is what you want in a shooting game.

Speaker: So it was just like, what an experience.

Speaker: And like, you know, you and your friend would just run around with the chainsaw, like revving out in the open.

Speaker: not blocking anything and just running around with a chainsaw.

Speaker: And it was like one of the coolest experiences ever, you know?

Speaker: It's another one, Dan, that like we always talk about, we always, you and I love games that are, that are fair.

Speaker: There wasn't any like you kill streaks.

Speaker: There wasn't, it was, it was like, if you got in a one-on-one or if you got in a one-on-two and you won, you know, you're the better player.

Speaker: Like it was, it was so fair and you had to be crampled

Speaker: creative and tactful with all the different weapons that were on the map but at the end of the day the majority of fights that took place were were shotgun battles which is yeah it's even a gun that dan and i we we never really love like cqb weapons in a lot of games because they often don't take as much skill they're sort of just point of shoot

Speaker: But in this game, oh my gosh.

Speaker: You're just bouncing off walls, blind firing with your shotgun, and the guy just explodes into 100 pieces.

Speaker: You're like, oh, he got destroyed.

Speaker: So satisfying.

Speaker: You can start wall bouncing everything, and you do a sprint, you can do a back roll, you can fake run away, you can back roll.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: The sniper was definitely my favorite gun.

Speaker: Oh, the sniper, the satisfaction from using that weapon.

Speaker: And going back to the gore, the visceral atmosphere, like if you land a headshot with a sniper, their head pops.

Speaker: Yeah, it's like a great, I don't know, it's like a watermelon.

Speaker: I don't even know.

Speaker: It's actually almost like what you imagine in every other game should happen, but it doesn't.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: what it does in Gears of War, their head just pops.

Speaker: It's so satisfying.

Speaker: They just get dropped and yeah, well, it's just, yeah, it's so satisfying.

Speaker: And back to Bradley's point is what we like about it because, you know, we really liked Halo and Halo, you start, you start the match.

Speaker: Everyone starts to match even, you know, campaign to win.

Speaker: You can't just come in with a loadout and that's what Gears of War was.

Speaker: Everyone just came in with all the same four weapons.

Speaker: You had your pistol.

Speaker: Actually, I think you just came in with two.

Speaker: Your Lancer and... Shotgun Lancer.

Speaker: Oh yeah, Shotgun Lancer.

Speaker: No, you had pistol at the beginning.

Speaker: You had shotgun Lancer pistol.

Speaker: That was it.

Speaker: And two grenades maybe or something?

Speaker: No, no, no.

Speaker: Grenades are power weapons, remember?

Speaker: Grenades, because you could stick them.

Speaker: Grenades are power weapons in the Gears of War world.

Speaker: Yeah, they go very hard.

Speaker: So grenades in the game, again, like they were pretty much an automatic kill weapon

Speaker: If you pick them up because you could either remember you could double drop them and they'd both blow up and basically you couldn't dodge roll out of them.

Speaker: Or you could booby trap the grenade in the game and you can stick it to a wall.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And it's like an auto, it's like an auto kill.

Speaker: Basically if someone falls for it, they were hard to see.

Speaker: They were hard to see.

Speaker: They were really hard to see.

Speaker: Yeah, it's so cool.

Speaker: And yeah, just like Halo, you know, you have the fights for the power weapons.

Speaker: Normally you have your boomer, you have your sniper.

Speaker: Some maps have the Hammer of Dawn.

Speaker: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker: And yeah, sniper, boomer and hammer of dawn.

Speaker: I think those are the main power weapons.

Speaker: Um, and then there was like also some minor weapons like the hammer burst, which I actually really liked.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: And, and the, the other thing about the game that was kind of, uh, other games had done it, like even like you CS go games have done it when it's, um, basically it was almost always elimination, but.

Speaker: Elimination style in this game.

Speaker: So basically elimination for those that don't know is you don't really have respawns.

Speaker: It's round base.

Speaker: So essentially there's there's five people on my team on our team.

Speaker: There's five people on the other team.

Speaker: The first person to first team to eliminate the other five wins.

Speaker: So that had been done before.

Speaker: But the atmosphere of this game mixed with how hardcore that style of game is.

Speaker: And and

Speaker: you can watch like if you're dead you can watch oh that's right like i'm in a 3v1 i had sniper and i just headshot like their whole team everyone's just losing it it's the greatest thing everyone's watching what an experience like everyone's like oh and then everyone's just talking trash and it's like you're just sniping people because they even have like the close like what they had in halo 2 whereas if you're close to the enemy team you could talk to them

Speaker: Oh, the best proximity chat, which has been a little bit archaic.

Speaker: Am I right on that?

Speaker: I think it was.

Speaker: I can't remember, Dan, to be honest with you, but I just remember.

Speaker: I remember the lobby.

Speaker: Definitely speak out.

Speaker: So because it was round base, it was first.

Speaker: It was like best of five.

Speaker: So it was first to win whatever, three rounds or something.

Speaker: I definitely know that.

Speaker: So in between rounds, you could, everyone was speaking.

Speaker: So everyone, you could smack talk in between rounds.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So if you win a three on one, instantly goes to lobby and you can let them know about it.

Speaker: and i've been just screaming it was like oh my god animal house oh yeah yeah and it was a very big game like you didn't wait for games it was it was huge at the time um and the amount of like i swear even though i was like we were like what 16 i didn't even like want my parents to see me playing it because it was so violent i was like they're not gonna be uh overly happy about this one

Speaker: oh yeah, we'd have to go to church or something.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: Is there anything else on Gears of War?

Speaker: Look, actually, I have one more thing to say.

Speaker: So we talked a lot about Gears of War 1, but this was a series that is still going strong today as well.

Speaker: Like it's not as big as it was from the multiplayer scene, but if they announce what Gears of War 4 was the last one?

Speaker: No, five.

Speaker: Five was the last one.

Speaker: If they announced a Gears of War six, I'm playing it.

Speaker: Like I've played them all.

Speaker: I have played all the campaigns.

Speaker: I don't play them as religiously as I used to, but I remember Gears one, two, and three were unbelievable.

Speaker: They were amazing games and all the, like they got, the campaigns got great.

Speaker: worse over time as they as they do.

Speaker: But like kudos to these developers because they have always built very, very, very, very sound games.

Speaker: These are this series is incredible.

Speaker: It's it's incredible.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, they had it down.

Speaker: They fine-tuned it and on release, now people don't understand.

Speaker: You get a game and you get the 50 gigabyte patch.

Speaker: It's still basically an alpha game.

Speaker: They're just going to add stuff in later.

Speaker: If it sells, well enough, they'll add that stuff in.

Speaker: If it sells, yeah.

Speaker: We'll fix it if it sells.

Speaker: If it doesn't sell, nothing gets added, nothing gets fixed.

Speaker: Kind of like Anthem.

Speaker: Anthem, yeah, that's right.

Speaker: But yeah, so like, but like the base release of Gears of War One and the maps like the multiplayer maps gridlock gridlock are you going to remind that's one of the best maps that there is perfect map perfectly built mansion gridlock mansion.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: like the fuel depot i think fuel depot good call yeah that was a sniper show and yeah the train that runs through the map that on fuel depot it comes every once in a while and you get killed by it yeah yeah amazing game yeah they they did amazing things with it the the whole i feel like it's it's been a it's always sort of been like halo's younger brother because it's it's always been like a microsoft flagship but it it has been

Speaker: it's as good if not better in a lot of ways different like it's a different game it's impossible to actually compare them it's a different game yeah um but they they did some brilliant things and some great voice acting some great storytelling and some awesome multiplayer experiences so well done that was epic games dan was it not at the beginning that was epic epic games this is this is pre-fortnite this is cliffy b cliffy basinski built this game um

Speaker: so this is epic before fortnight for those new viewers that are more of like the fortnight generation this is long before fortnight epic games was focusing on the gears of war so just so you're aware yeah and um cliffy b you know everyone just thought he was the coolest guy yes he did but but man they really they really portrayed him they really like

Speaker: built him up to just be like this cool young developer that was just, you know, edgy and he was just there for like, you know, the teenagers, you know?

Speaker: No, that's a good call though, Dan.

Speaker: That's probably like, that's that time of that generation that we've been talking about of it wasn't cool to be a gamer yet, but they were building, it's a very good point because they were building him up as cool.

Speaker: Like he was,

Speaker: How many developers could you name at that time, Dan?

Speaker: Like him?

Speaker: Yeah, I just love Plessy V, baby, you know?

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: So he was really good for marketing, PR.

Speaker: He was in a ton of like their PR videos and he was just cool to hear from because he was passionate about it.

Speaker: He loved it.

Speaker: I don't know what he's doing these days.

Speaker: I don't know if he works on Fortnite or anything, but he was awesome at the time and built some great games.

Speaker: Yeah, for sure.