Develop Magazine recently sat down with Epic design director Cliff Bleszinski to talk about all things Unreal, Gears and Epic, as well as future projects and current industry goings-on.

There’s also the idea that a game engine is best explained by games from its creators. In that sense, despite their critical and commercial successes, do you ever blame Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War for initiating the current era of space marine action heroes?

Not really, I don’t have regrets. We ultimately set out to make a game we wanted to play, and the tech ultimately winds up being formed around that.

I do know that we’ve set off a certain visual style. Sort of blown out, desaturated, war-torn universes that seem to be all the rage right now. 


Actually if you look at Gears of War 2 we actually tried to get away from it a little bit by doing things like letting the colours breathe and come through a little bit more. 



Stylistically though, I’d love to play in a different field in the near future in regards to what your typical expectation of a Gears of War game actually is.

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Epic Games is getting prepared for a huge E3’09 showing this June. The new Unreal Engine 3 Technology is going to be displayed across all platforms, and it’s very possible we may see a brand new game coming from the guys behind Gears Of War and Unreal Tournament. Something is very strange though, take notice of the possible new character in the next iteration of Gears Of War which should work in conjunction with the new technology that is going to be displayed.

Gears Of War is a great game but even great games need to be updated significantly, and the introduction of a female character will do just that. it’s time for a bad ass chick to take the scene and Gears Of War 3 will be the perfect title for this to happen. Why? Because it will open up the market even more to female gamers showcasing that not only the men can be stars of big games and kick ass, also seeing a woman with a chainsaw gun will easily stand out over the competition and will potentially become a trend setter for more games in the future.

Gameplay elements using a female character will change the entire feel of the series in which Epic Games are masters at enhancing gameplay. Looking at this picture you can see the beautiful hardcore red head with sex appeal on top of a dead brumack, this raises one question how did she kill this monster? This seems to be Epic Games new change in direction for the Gears Of War series and considering the boss at the end of Gears Of War 2 is a woman wouldn’t be great to see this female character lead Marcus and his crew to victory.

Epic Games VP Mark Rein talks about all the cool stuff coming to Unreal Engine licensees in his recent article in Develop Magazine. Some of the new things that he talks about could be really cool. Some of these enhancements could makes it way to Gears of War 3?

Unreal Lightmass, our new global illumination solver, produces high quality lightmaps within the Unreal Engine development environment. Because it requires relatively little filtering of indirect lighting, Unreal Lightmass produces smooth bounced lighting without detracting from indirect shadows. Also, the custom Swarm distribution solution enables the system to scale effectively, which ensures fast performance. Unreal Lightmass provides advanced global illumination that requires no third-party software or integration code.