00:05I'm Katarina, and I'm here at the Coalition Studio.
00:08Today I'll be talking with Studio Head Rod Ferguson
00:11and Multiplayer Design Director Ryan Pliven
00:14about the upcoming Gears 5 Word Mode.
00:16Just being here at the Studio, you can really feel the excitement
00:19and the passion that went into this game and this mode.
00:22So let's go check it out.
00:24We always talk about co-op as cake and not icing,
00:27that co-op is central to what it is to be Gears.
00:29And so I feel like Horde is sort of a really large expression of that
00:33with five-player co-op.
00:42Everything started with Gears 2 Horde.
00:45It was lightning in a bottle.
00:47It was, you know, what people look back on
00:50as the defining defensive game mode through all games.
00:53It was the idea that you were going to be doing this as an endurance run,
00:57as a three-hour epic experience and a mode,
01:02like, without any cutscenes, without any, you know, character development,
01:06without any story, had to hold people's attention for three hours.
01:16And with Gears 5, what we feel that we've done really is
01:21almost the complete realization of what Gears 2 set out to be.
01:25The big thing for us now is this idea of ultimates.
01:29Basically, characters used to be just defined by the weapons they carried,
01:32and you were all the same, you just looked kind of different,
01:35and, you know, because you all could carry the same weapons.
01:36But now, every character has its own ultimate ability,
01:39its own special ability you can bring to the game
01:42that changes how you play.
01:43You can look over and see Kate trying to gather power,
01:46and you know that she has an ability to turn herself invisible,
01:49so you don't need to worry if she gets in a tough fight.
01:51There's also a really big thing called taps now,
01:54which are these energy geysers that show up around the map,
01:57because, generally, once you find an board, you would, like, lock in on a particular place,
02:01and you would defend from that place for the entire 50 waves.
02:04Now, in order to get as much power as possible, to get as strong as possible,
02:07you actually have to, like, move and expand your base
02:10to go and capture those energy taps.
02:11And every 10 waves, once you beat that boss,
02:13a new energy tap appears, and you have to go and capture it.
02:16So, it's really changed the dynamic where now,
02:18it's much more aggressive than it was in the past.
02:22For the first time, your character will start
02:24with all the cards that they've already equipped,
02:27but they will then increase the power of those cards
02:31and increase the power of their core abilities
02:33over the course of the game.
02:35And that progression is then reset,
02:36and you can do it again the next game.
02:38And this means that every game feels fresh
02:41if you can try a different combination of perks
02:43that work with your cards in a specific way.
02:45Seeing people make a certain build, like,
02:47here's a Kate build, I use these cards with these perks,
02:50and here's a Dell build,
02:51and I think it would be really exciting to see them mix and match
02:53and see these different play styles come together.
02:56One of the things that we've done that is subtle,
02:59but super important,
03:00is that whenever you pick up power,
03:02which is the currency in Horde,
03:04that power gets equally distributed amongst everyone.
03:07And that means that if you see some power on the ground,
03:10everyone will want you to pick it up.
03:13And then we've added stuff to give more information to the players,
03:16and things like health bars over bosses and mini-bosses,
03:19and so there's little feedback mechanisms,
03:21and it allows you to play differently,
03:22because now I can see that the mini-boss is on pretty little health,
03:26so I know, like, I'm going to get aggressive,
03:27because I know I can do it,
03:28or I can see, oh, they still have a lot,
03:30so I'm going to hold back.
03:31To take characters and push them even further,
03:35we've added Jackbot as a playable character inside Horde.
03:38It's one of the most pivotal roles on the battlefield.
03:42Jack can fly anywhere on the map,
03:45he moves really quickly, faster than anybody else,
03:47he can heal people, repair things, really, he's the jack-of-all-trades,
03:52and you really want him to be your best buddy.
03:55Over time, we're going to add new characters,
03:57and with each character we add, the meta will change.
03:59We will have different combinations of strengths,
04:02we'll have different team compositions
04:03that will be beneficial to certain kinds of players.
04:07Every time we add a new character,
04:08and every time we add a new map,
04:11what we hope to see is the Horde community come together
04:13to explore this space and show us
04:16what the best combination of characters is.
04:23And so that idea of finding five people
04:25who know how to balance the classes,
04:27know how to balance the characters,
04:28and know what the objective is and what you're trying to do,
04:31and everybody's playing together in lockstep with each other,
04:33there's nothing more special than having that alignment
04:35and succeeding on that goal.
04:37So it's really, by far, from our point of view,
04:41the most intense, engaging, action-oriented,
04:46fierce, epic, defensive mode there is in video games.
04:50I really like that Horde creates a dependency
04:52where you work together as a team,
04:55and you can be successful kind of, you know, lone-wolfing it,
04:58but not as successful as coming together.
05:01And that's sort of our motto for the studio.
05:03We always say, if you want to go fast, go alone,
05:05but if you want to go far, go together.
05:06And that's true for Horde as well.
Commenti