Cliff Bleszinksi, the outspoken game designer most famous for the genre and console defining Gears of War series on the Xbox 360, left Epic and the games industry in general a while back. And while he has continued to be in the limelight since then thanks to his Twitter and the rather, er, controversial remarks he makes on there, his game output has been zero since Gears of War 3 in 2011.

Well, now he has announced he will be coming out of retirement to develop games again, and we will be getting more information on this game in the coming seven days.

We don’t quite know what kind of game his new project will be yet, although he has previously professed a desire to revive the classic arena shooter like Unreal Tournament on PC. So it might be an indie project along those lines (if not him outright joining Epic again, who are working on an Unreal revival); on the other hand, he might just have cozied up to Black Tusk Studios, who are working on another Gears of War game.

It is also possible he is working on something else entirely. Whatever it is, we’ll know in seven days. Stay tuned.

Cliff Bleszinski may not be taken as seriously as he deserves to be, simply because of how outspoken he can be, but the man is a veritable genius of a game developer. He was behind the Unreal and Gears of War series, and now, after departing from Epic Games, he is working on a new game- a new PC exclusive shooter in the vein of Quake.

Talking on the latest Pointless podcast, he described his newest project:

“I have a pitch, I have concept art, I know pretty much what I wanna do.  It will be a PC experience that will harken back to a certain type of game that we cut our teeth on, if you know what I’m saying.

“[I want to do] a first-person shooter. It’s in my DNA. It’s one of those things – a lot of these kids playing Call of Duty, I don’t think they’d know what a proper arena shooter is if it’d hit them across the fucking head.

“I want to get funding, I don’t want to do a Kickstarter. With the speed and style of the title, it would not be a good fit for the [Oculus] Rift. I can confirm that,” he added, when questioned about supporting two of the newest trends in PC gaming.

“I’ve shown [the project] to various parties, and there are nibbles. I wanna do something. It’s just I’m not gonna do it if the time is not right and if the funding’s not right.”

Can Cliffy B usher in the return of the age of the arena shooter? One can only hope.

“Sony forced Microsoft’s hand, not the internet whining. At the end of the day many hardcore dislike what was attempted. You can’t do well in that space with many of your core unhappy. Especially when users have a choice. The nature of capitalism encourages competition and Sony played into that.

He also states that we’ll be feeling the repercussions of these actions. “Brace yourselves. More tacked on multiplayer and DLC are coming. You’re also about to see available microtransactions skyrocket. HATS FOR EVERYONE. You’re going to see digital versions of your favourite games with added features and content to lure you to digital over disc based.

“I have seen the number of unique gamer tags vs actual sales numbers and it ain’t pretty. More studios WILL close and you’ll see more PC and mobile games. I want developers who worked their asses off to see money on every copy of their game that is sold instead of Gamestop. F**k me, right?”

“We look at the target audience for your average console game and it’s often a cocky young male who doesn’t want to be scared, unfortunately, he’s the guy who wants to get in and ‘f*** shit up.'”

He outlines that doing horror is hard, especially a solo experience, but “now it’s evolving into much more than that. You can either fight it or embrace it.”

Also, in reference to Dead Space 3 specifically, Bleszinski writes, “In the $60 disc based market horror doesn’t fly – it’s the ultimate ‘Campaign Rental’ that’s played for 2 days and traded in and I’m sure EA knows this. When we’re fully digital we’ll see more true horror games coming back (Look at Amnesia and Slenderman on PC.)”

Sorurce: GIBiz

How they could ignore that boyish smile is beyond us.

For those unaware, Cliff Bleszinski, the man behind classic Epic Games like Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Gears of War, recently departed from the company in a pretty shocking fashion. Capcom, on the other hand, did it’s own fair share of shocking when fans and reviewers finally got their hands on Resident Evil 6, which is – to put it lightly – a POS.

Of course, this hasn’t escaped Bleszinski, who at one point cited Resident Evil 4 as a strong influence for the development of Gears of War. He recently tweeted the following:

“Hey, Capcom. Call me. We can fix Resident Evil. Together. :-)”

Would Capcom be dumb enough to not do so? It is Capcom we’re talking about after all – the same company who felt that copying third person cover mechanics like Gears of War’s, when that franchise was so inspired by RE4, or introducing a million other crappy things to make their game more “commercial” was vital to the series’ success.

Source: N4G