Gears of War 4’s Map Creation Process Explained

Gears of War 4 looks pretty good- the fourth entry in Microsoft’s Xbox exclusive franchise seems like it will make the ghost of the disappointing 2013 game Gears of War Judgement a thing of the past, and instead return to the glory days of the original trilogy.

A lot of that will rely on the game having actual good game design, in single player and in the multiplayer modes. And during a Question and Answer session held at the Season 1 finals of the Gears of War ESL league, Gears of War 4 Lead Multiplayer Designer Ryan Cleven talked about the process behind the creation of the multiplayer maps for the game- and it sounds like they really know what they are doing this time.

The studio is constantly playing versus matches, to try and figure out how the maps actually are during real time gameplay, and they keep heat maps, which demonstrate the most common areas players go to during games on classic maps. Since the team at The Coalition is new at making Gears on the whole, they had to do their homework, breaking down what makes Gears of War so uniquely Gears, and then making new maps of their own in incremental steps, fro basic sketches to rudimentary 3D models, to extensive internal testing.

On the whole, the team is looking at Gears of War Judgement a lot, said Cleven, to try and understand what players didn’t like about the game, and to ensure they don’t make the same mistakes again. At the same time, they will also be considering the things players did like about the Gears games, all of them, and try to hit those same notes with the new title.

Let’s hope Gears of War 4 is great, then. It launches later this year exclusively on the Xbox One.