Even before anyone had a chance to play Gears of War: Judgment, Epic Games Design Director Cliff Bleszinski was already playing with fans' expectations for the game. When the company first revealed the game's existence a few weeks ago, through a shaded Game Informer cover featuring the silhouette of a muscle-bound man in chains, most fans assumed they were seeing Gears franchise hero Marcus Fenix finally being carted off to jail. It turns out that the chained soldier was actually Damon Baird, the mechanically inclined, wise-talking member of Fenix's Delta Squad.

While fan interest in Baird was definitely a major motivator for the switcheroo decision, Bleszinski said he also thought it would make for a cool reveal. "I like to operate [thinking about] what would make fans happy and what's also cool news." said Bleszinski. "So with the reveal of the cover from Game Informer you see someone in chains and everyone immediately assumes it's Marcus. 'It's Marcus's story of how he went to prison!' And it's like 'Ha! It's the downfall of Baird,' right?"

All about the challenge

Judgment is a partnership between Epic Games and Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly. According to People Can Fly Creative Director Adrian Chmielarz, Judgment is a combination of some ideas that Epic Games left on the table during the Gears trilogy, the imagination of People Can Fly, and what they could do with the Gears IP.

"Rod [Fergusson, Director of Production at Epic Games] mentioned, for example, you guys wanted to do Beast vs. Horde mode a long time ago. It didn't work for Gears 3. It was a tough nut to crack, but now we have the time to actually approach this and do this," Chmielarz said to Bleszinski. "As a designer, whenever I play somebody else's game, there are things that I'm envious of and there are things that I would change. I was very mouthy about this, talking to Epic...and then one day there was a phone call. 'Hey, remember these couple of ideas for Gears?' It's a mix of both. There's a lot of stuff that Epic guys initiate, there's a lot of stuff that [People Can Fly] initiates."

People Can Fly already has a reputation for designing challenging first-person shooter gameplay, as exemplified by Bulletstorm's skillshot system. The major change Chmielarz has brought to the Gears franchise is upping the ante on the challenge level. "The big idea behind the campaign was that we want people to fear the Locust again, like the first time you played Gears," Chmielarz told Ars Technica. "This game is all about challenge... we believe that the fun comes from being challenged and overcoming that challenge."

Chmielarz thinks that some of Bulletstorm’s spirit can be found in the next Gears of War. "What I liked about Bulletstorm, and I think some of that DNA is over here [in Judgment], is a couple of systems that in theory are independent but put together provide for a unique experience that is just yours," he said. "That part I think translates, and hopefully the intensity of combat, more enemies and crazy, crazy battles."

Chmielarz said that Judgment will feature more Locust simultaneously on screen than in any previous Gears game. Their behavior will be determined in part by the smart spawn system (S3), a new AI setup that analyzes player performance and location and uses that information to decide where enemies will spawn and what tactics they'll use. Thanks to S3, the developers said that players won't be able to learn and exploit patterns in the levels and that no two playthroughs of a level will be the same.

New story, new controls

Judgment's story, setting, and presentation mess with the established Gears formula as well. The game tells the story of Baird, fellow franchise star Augustus Cole, and the rest of Kilo Squad fifteen years before the first Gears of War. Kilo Squad is on trial for treason and various other court-martial offenses, and each level of Judgment follows Baird's testimony during the trial.

This overarching story has a direct effect on the way gameplay will evolve through multiple playthroughs. Playing through a level once will give players the "classified" version that Baird first recounts in court. After that, players will have access to an unclassified version, which better reflects Baird's unvarnished recollection of the battle. Chmielarz said the "unclassified" playthrough will add crucial narrative details, different enemy types, and additional challenges like weapon set limitations or time limits. For example, Baird's "classified" recollection may have neglected to include the fact that a mech had been available to Kilo Squad during an engagement, but the mech will be there in the second, "unclassified" playthrough.

The developers said this story will be better integrated with the action in Judgment and that the game won't be plagued by so many sequences where a character holds a finger in their ear while they radio HQ. The storyline won't dominate the action, either; cut scenes in Judgment are meant to serve as a quick break from the action to dry your hands off and take a breath before the next engagement. "Our statement for the game is 'fear the Locust,' but sometimes [we say] a simpler version which is 'sweaty palms.' That's really what we're going after here," Chmielarz said.

And Chmielarz said that Judgment wasn't going to emulate the worst excesses of Bulletstorm's over-the-top story presentation. "We don't go 'Dicktits!' in this one," he said. "The story is way more disciplined. It doesn't mean there is no humor at all, but the humor exists to emphasize the darker side of these events."

People Can Fly has also revamped the control scheme in Judgment to reflect the game's faster, more lethal nature. Weapons can now be swapped with a single button tap, or a press-and-hold move to switch to pistols. Players can still use the traditional, arc-based aiming system for precision grenade tosses, but now they can just tap a button to throw out explosive munitions without that preparatory step.

"We had three [Gears] games using a certain control scheme and it seemed to be working pretty well, considering the sales," said Chmielarz, "but once we put [the new control scheme] in the game and experimented with it, it took us like five minutes to realize this was the way to go."

Overrun mode

Multiplayer is also seeing a bit of an overhaul in Judgment through a new team-based multiplayer mode called Overrun, which pits human COG players protecting a generator against Locust players trying to destroy it. Overrun is Gears' first class-based multiplayer mode, featuring new character types, each with its own unique weapon sets and abilities: medics that can heal companions, engineers that can put down protective turrets, and so on. While COG players work to repair and maintain pre-placed barbed wire fortifications around the generator, Locust players will earn points through damage, unlocking the use of familiar Locust creatures including Tickers, Wretches, Grenadiers, the Kantus, Bloodmounts, Corpsers, Serapedes, and Maulers during the match.

"The beautiful thing about Overrun is the synergy effect of combining the classes," Chmielarz noted. "We have the Ticker and the Ticker has this ability to eat a grenade. Somebody from COG throws a grenade, the Ticker quickly eats it, the team is saved, but then when [the Ticker] explodes, obviously that explosion is so much more powerful. So I was playing against our guys at [People Can Fly] and I saw the strategy of the opposite team was that they started with a Grenadier throwing their own grenade, had the Ticker eat it, had the Grenadier kick the Ticker in the butt so it actually goes over the fortifications…and then you have this rocket charging towards your generator with a grenade in its belly."

Dennis Scimeca is a freelance writer from Boston, Massachusetts. You can enjoy his random excitations on Twitter: @DennisScimeca.