CliffyB Not Burned Out on Gears, But Loves New IP

Even after what he calls “only” two Gears of War games, Epic Games’ Cliff Bleszinski says he still sees plenty of opportunity to build on the franchise, though he hasn’t forgotten the thrill and value of entirely original IPs.

Judging from the amount of people there are on Xbox Live who are still handing me my sorry ass in Gears of War 2 multiplayer on a weekly basis, I’d say it’s safe to say that the kids aren’t tired of their Gears. Which is a good thing, because the man behind the games isn’t even close to tired of making them. “There have only been two Gears games,” Cliff “yB” Bleszinksi told Official Xbox Magazine. “There are still plenty of opportunities for things you can do in a cover-based shooter and there are still a lot of stories to tell in the Gears universe.”

Only two? I guess these days if you don’t got a trilogy you don’t got nothin’. Bleszinski does have his points, though. After Gears 2 expanded the scope of the franchise storywise, there’s plenty more tales to tell, and cover-based shooting is still plenty fun, if at least in Gears and not always in every other game that features it these days.

Although Bleszinski says that he’s “not burned out with the franchise at all,” he admits that working with an established property like Gears does have its drawbacks. “With an established IP, you’re not saying, ‘are we going to do cover?’ and ‘who is this Cole Train guy?’ It’s all there – the writer writes and it’s a known entity,” he explained. “But with a new IP, it’s raw and wide open. It’s like solving a giant puzzle in your head, and it’s great.”

Bleszinski has nothing but love and encouragement for people working on new IPs. They’re the lifeblood of the industry because they “generally don’t have to adhere to rules or limitations.” And while he’s not working on a new IP at the moment, he’d hate to be forced to take on a readymade property he wasn’t interested in (not that he’d ever have to). “If tomorrow someone came to Epic and forced me to do a licensed IP – ‘You have to make the new videogame for the new Mummy movie’- I would go out back and put a shotgun in my mouth,” Bleszinski said.

[Via CVG]