By now you've surely heard the news. Gears of War 2 is coming out this November as an Xbox 360 exclusive. The official announcement came at the end of Microsoft's GDC 2008 keynote address, complete with Cliffy B chainsawing his way through some paper at the back of the stage. A stylish trailer was shown, but we didn't get to see any gameplay or hints at how the story would continue. However, earlier in the conference representatives from Epic posed the question, "Imagine what Gears of War would look like if we launched it today?" It was an innocent question that was used as a launching point to discuss new features in the Unereal Engine 3. Or was it?

Nobody knows Unreal Engine 3 as well as Epic does. They created it after all. You can be sure all of the latest UE3 tools are used to their utmost ability in Gears of War 2, which means we can use what was shown prior to the Gears of War 2 announcement to speculate.



Tim Sweeney took the stage to show off a few new improvements to the Unreal Engine 3. First he spoke about ambient occlusion technology. This allows the geometry of an object and its surroundings be taken into account for shadows. The result is a truer representation of light reflections. We saw this with both environments and characters (using Marcus Fenix no less) and the improvement is drastic to say the least.

The next thing we saw was perhaps more telling -- a Gears of War tech demo with hundreds of locust enemies rushing down a street. New Unreal Engine 3 technology makes it possible. This leaves open the possibility for massive battles in Gears of War 2. The first game featured a small group of humans against a few enemies at each encounter, though that hardly seems to be an upper limit with the sequel. There can now be hundreds of enemies storming the screen. Why wouldn't it be included in the game?

The water, particularly the rain, in Gears of War was pretty spectacular but it still wasn't as good as what we saw in the tech demo. Specular and environmental reflections on the water and more realistic splashes and waves were shown to highlight dynamic fluid surfaces. One place we'll likely see this is in the underground immulsion. It wouldn't be a stretch to see some other cavernous levels with puddles or underground lakes. The demo we saw was at a dock. Perhaps a battle on a beach or a D-Day type invasion is on the way.



Interacting with and destroying the environment seems like a sure bet in Gears of War 2. Epic spent some time showing the updated ability to realistically destroy just about anything on screen. A fence was shown splintered by an explosive bow shot and a steel reinforced concrete floor was destroyed while the steel bars remained -- you can destroy the face of a level while the structure beneath holds true. Leaping behind cover looks like a temporary safe point in Gears of War 2.

Last but not least, there were the soft body physics and fluid bodies. A huge chunk of meat and a ball of liquid metal were shown as examples, both reacting realistically to gunfire and touch. The jiggling meat was very unnerving, but also leaves open the possibilities for some cool things in Gears of War 2. Soft environments would be a start. Some crazy enemies could also be created with these tools. It might not be in the initial interaction that you notice these things. Imagine blowing a limb off of a creature and watching it flop down next to you with a lifelike splatter.

Je sais pas... je suis un gros amateur de shooter mais je comprends pas trop pourquoi je n'ai jamais accroché sur GoW. Peut être le hip exagéré ( quoique selon les ventes c pas si exagéré ), même chose pour WoW, j'adore les mmo et j'ai n'ai jamais embarqué, pas détesté mais sans plus.

GoW pour moi est un "penche toi et tire".. con à dire Army of Two est pas mal ca aussi et j'ai trippé et pour avoir jouer a GoW à moitier, y'a des truc de Ao2 où je disais coudonc pourquoi pas pouvoir faire ca.. (referant a Gears).