Chris Wynn, Lead Producer of Gears of War 3, Talks Story, Boss Fights, and Console Exclusivity

Gears of War 3 is easily one of the most anticipated titles of the year. Even though it’s still six months from release, it’s still generating nearly as much heat as any other title set for release this year. From a wildly desired beta testing phase that starts in about a month, to some of the longest waits at PAX East, there is no denying the sheer buzz that exists around the title.

Expectations are high among the fanbase, but Chris Wynn, Lead Producer for Gears of War 3, claims that they combat that by setting some incredibly high expectations of their own. “You set high expectations and you make sure you live up to them,” Wynn said. “We’ve set a hugely high quality bar for every single thing we do; art assets, the quality of the game, the polish, and if something’s not up to [those expectations], it’s gone, or we go back and work on it to make sure it lives up to it. It’s just a relentless amount of focus from everyone on the team to make sure we live up to it.”

Those lofty expectations have allowed the Gear of War franchise to enjoy plenty of success, but Wynn claims that doesn’t mean we’ll start seeing more and more Gears of War titles. “[The hardest part about carrying on a series like Gears of War is] making sure you don’t get fatigued,” Wynn claims. “You see a lot of brands go out, not just video games [...], and they try to capitalize on success too hard and you end up fatiguing the brand. We don’t want to be so in everyone’s face that you just get tired of it, we don’t want to be so in our own face that we get tired of it. It’s really about challenging each other and challenging what we’re going to do and how we’re going to present it and just kind of keeping fresh about it.”

Keeping the series fresh is one thing, but expanding on an already elaborate set of mythology is another. Wynn has a lot of confidence in where the campaign mode of Gears of War 3 will take fans. “Luckily we had a lot of time to work on the story mode,” said Wynn. “We brought in Karen Traviss, who is just an awesome writer. She just jumped into the universe and became just crazy obsessed with all the details of the story. Really, from there, it just evolved with the voice actors and how we tell the story. Really really solid. I can guarantee it’s the best campaign yet in the series. It’s longer; it plays out to be about 10 – 12 hours long, so it’s quite a bit longer than 1 or 2. There’s a lot of great moments and really cool storylines. You’re going to love it.”

One issue that fans have always seemed to have with the Gears of War series has been the final boss battles. Whether you hate General RAAM in the original Gears of War for being too tough, or loathe the end of Gears of War 2 for being anticlimactic, Wynn feels as though you’re going to like the various boss battles in Gears 3. “We always do a lot of testing to determine for ourselves what’s good and what’s not good,” Wynn said. “We’ve taken [the final boss criticisms] to heart with Gears 3 and we’re doing a lot of focus testing on the boss battles. We’ve brought in users that have played Gears, maybe haven’t played Gears, sit them down in front of the game and we go through the various boss battles in 3 and see how those rate out. Are they too easy? Too hard? Just right? Was it fun? Do you get it? We just keep tweaking from there. Some of the boss fights have just gone through dozens of iterations to fight that right mechanic and the right balance to make sure it’s fun and engaging. I think we got there; I think it’s really good. Obviously we’re still working on it… it’s not done yet, but the boss fights that you get to are different than some of the ones we’ve had before and they’re a lot of fun and I think they’re going to be good.”

Looking past launch, Chris Wynn claims that the Gears team is plotting something huge for post-launch support by way of downloadable content. “We’re looking at launching September 20th and we’re thinking ‘what do we do after that?’ and we have big plans,” said Wynn. “Much bigger than what we did for Gears 2.”

*Continued on PAGE 2, Wynn Discusses Console Exclusivity

Written by Brian Shea  (410 Posts)

Obsessed with music and video games, associate editor Brian Shea has worked for several different rock music and gaming sites over the course his writing career. He contributes such regular features to VGW as “Shea’s Say” and “Essential Gaming." He also co-hosts VGW's "Unlimited Ammo" podcast. Follow him on Twitter for opinions, rants, and an occasional awful joke.

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