Oh my good lord, I've just seen the gameplay footbage from the conference, I cant believe what i'm seeing! It Looks literally unbelievable!

no way this box art owns all!! :)

IGN: You mentioned earlier about having to fight to get story points in the game. Was that a fight with Microsoft that stuff might have been too dark or what?

Josh: I think it was more in general. There were folks at Epic too. We said, well that's pretty intense and this and that but you know, right away it was more discussion. We never got to the fighting point. Microsoft, Epic, you know, everyone was very cool and they got it pretty quick. Once I was on board and I was pushing for things and me and Cliff and Rod were on the same page. Once that all clicked I think that was the magic thing where people just started going off. People just started saying, "Let these guys go. They seem to have some magic rolling, just let them do their thing." Credit to Microsoft and to Epic, Mike Capps and Mark Rein and everyone, they let us do our thing. I think we're going to show you guys a story that's going to shock and surprise people.

I mean, yeah, I can't talk about it. We'll have some great interviews later in the year where we'll get to the nitty gritty of it all but it's going to get to some stuff that's going to be really surprising.

IGN: Man, that's great. I don't know what else to say except I just want to experience it.

Josh: I know. I'm happy because I've never seen this from a game and there were a couple things that I pushed for right away. I was like, that's it, we gotta do that, we gotta do that. And I just pushed for it. And again, credit to Microsoft and to Epic because everyone said, "We're doing it, we're pushing the medium, that's creative vision." For third-person, again I know, first-person is its own thing. Half-Life and BioShock can do things that we can't do in a third-person game but there are things in our game that first-person games can't do.


IGN: Speaking of seeing potential in an unformed universe, with the characters did you see specific archetypical characters and places you could go with them?

Josh: Yeah, right away there was stuff with the arc of the story that me and Cliff and Rod (Ferguson) as well were all on. We had to fight for a few story points but I think they're going to be things that are new for people. Stuff that people haven't quite experienced, at least not from a third-person videogame. Maybe in other media, but yeah, it was really one of these things where there's a wealth of possibilities and with all the characters and the templates that they set up with the first one. Credit to everyone who worked on the first game for setting up a lot.

Some people say it's a bad story, it's not a bad story, it's a sparse story. Not everything made it in, not really the fault of everyone else, but what made it in was definitely memorable. Like I always say, Gears every once in awhile will get that criticism and I just have to say hey, what was it the third Lord of the Rings that was top at the box-office and one every damn award? And that's what Gears did, it was the top-selling title and it won all the awards. It's kinda hard to criticize a game at that point. You could nitpick but it did its job; it set the universe. I think it's better to be sparse than to say too much and do something stupid which I think they avoided. That gave me a wealth of possibilities to work with.

IGN: You just said X amount of time but how long did it actually take from day one of you saying that you were going to do it to completion?

Josh: It was about a year. There was a crunch time when I wrote the bulk of the script and that was about three months. We've been joking about making shirts that say, "I survived the Hollow" which is of course where the Locust come from. There are guys who are really in deep now but I had an early crunch. People now are sleeping at the office but that was me way back when.

IGN: How many pages is the final script?

Josh: You know, we have to compile it all. It's one of my goals. But it's gotta be 300 pages or so. So it's a couple movies, you know? That's not including everything, that's just a lot of the core stuff. Not including battle chatter stuff and things of that nature. So it's a lot when you combine it all. Maybe we'll put it out one day

IGN: What kind of research did you do for Gears? Was it just playing the first? Talking to Cliff?

Josh: Game number one, yeah. Talking to Cliff. They were working on the story bible at the time which is mostly set but still kind of a work in progress because of all the new stuff that's coming out. I know I'm personally a big advocate of letting story bibles evolve organically. Not trying to get it all, I mean you want to get the framework, but you don't want all the details right away.

If you're doing multimedia some novelist is gonna introduce some brilliant concept you didn't think of. Some movie guy is going to do something you didn't think of. You want to have a framework and then let it get populated within that framework. You have your story, you know where it ends, but you can flex around a little bit and move with it.

IGN: When you say story bible, explain to people what that is for Gears. Is it a giant overarching thing that's going to span several games or is it a one game at a time type of thing?

Josh: Yeah, you know, most franchises that I've worked on tend to be evolutionary things again but I feel like the best ones have a map just for the general stuff. It could be really light but I think it's so important to know where you're going with it. I think it's good to think big too, to think, "Hey, what if we did do 12 Gears?" Where would you want it go and map out something roughly. Just because you don't know. I think it's better to have a general idea of what you're doing than just be caught blindsided because sometimes beauty can come out of spontaneity but a lot of times disasters can come out of spontaneity.


IGN: It seems like it's more Dom focused though. I haven't heard anything about Marcus's dad or anything or that storyline. Would you say it's more Dom focused?

Josh: I'd say it's ummm... at least through half of the game, yeah. It's pretty split. But there's a lot of Marcus stuff. Undercurrents. Definitely a lot more details that you're going to get about questions you had. We're being real tight-lipped about some of the Marcus stuff, but yeah, I think Dom's quest for Maria is the early anchor. For sure. It's something that runs throughout Gears 2 as well so it's there.


IGN: Have you been involved in any kind of talks about the movie? I know it's starting to get rolling now and you're a part of the Gears universe now.

Josh: Yeah, I've read early draft of it. It's looking good. I'm real excited about it. I think all the people involved with it have been really excited about. It's really looking good. I'm excited where the whole franchise is heading. The novel, we're going to announce very soon who's writing the novel, brilliant novelist. Great comic stuff we're going to announce too. It's all coming together in a nice sort of "web of Gears" and it's being woven very tight. Not so tight that we don't have flexibility but I like that everything's syncing up and informing each other. We've got good people in all places. I actually haven't seen a lot of franchises start out with this much cohesion. I think a lot of times they evolved a lot more organically than this and I think we're doing a good job of cultivating the organic gardens so to speak.

IGN: Is it longer than a feature-length film would you say?

Josh: Totally longer than a feature-length film. I've written a screenplay before and this was a lot more work.

IGN: Very cool. Well thanks for your time, that's all I've got for you.

Josh: Good times, that was fun.

So, what is the deal with 5 player coop? I am sure someone can give me a good short summary. Did they show any footage of it?

Wave goodbye to your free time.

I'll begin with Horde. As I said, it allows for five human players to join up and do battle against fleets of Locust. The only downside is that Horde is the one mode that won't feature the all-new bot support in Gears 2. Luckily this mode is still fun when playing alone. The Locust come in waves that get tougher as you progress. The first was obviously an introduction with fewer than ten enemies challenging my team but that number grew quickly as we progressed. The rounds are numbered so you and your pals can compete for supremacy. The record at Epic's studio currently sits at 26, but true Gears professionals have the ability to progress all the way to 50 if they have the skills to pay the bills.

If I had to choose between 4 player campaign co-op or 5 player co-op Horde, i'd choose Horde. ;)