Shack: What were some of the major goals when you were initially approaching Gears 2?

Cliff Bleszinski: Having a better narrative this time around, and also just continuing with tremendously cool setpieces, you know, just something new and interesting around every single corner, and kind of maintain that cool pace right from the get-go.

I'm not a fan of games, where I've talked to other players--it's like, "Oh I couldn't get into this game," and they're like, "Oh, after the first three hours it's great." And I'm like, "Really?" I don't have three hours to spare on something that's not fun. There's people on Madison Avenue that would kill to have your attention for 15-30 seconds, and you can't grab me in the first three hours?"

Shack: It's interesting that games so often miss that part of the formula, because it seems that with other forms of entertainment, the opening hook is always very important.

Cliff Bleszinski: Well in games, [it's] because you're learning. So sometimes you have to have the kid gloves on to just kind of tease in a new game mechanic. But we're big fans of empowering the player with stuff like that. You want to skip the tutorial? Fine. You don't even have to do it. You want to skip all the narrative? Cool. That's not your thing, you just want to get in and kill some stuff...

But we're hoping that players will want to see the little bits of dialogue with Carmine, and learn some of the new things they can do, as well as stick around for some of the cutscenes. Because you know, if you do a good job with the first couple of 'em, just watch em.

It's funny when you look at a game like Uncharted, that had very, very well acted, very well edited, very brief, cool cutscenes--you forget you're watching a game, you just enjoy it. And then all of a sudden you're playing, and then you're back in this cutscene, and it juts flows perfectly. And hopefully we did an even better job with that element this time around.

Shack: The volume of cutscenes has gone up from Gears 1.

Cliff Bleszinski: But they're also still three to five minutes. Never longer.

Shack: It seems like cutscene design has been split into the in-game and cinematic approaches, with developers like Valve mastering the former. Are you ever concerned about cinematic cutscenes interrupting the pacing of your games?

Cliff Bleszinski: That works extremely well for Valve, and I have a huge amount of respect for what they do, but that's kind of their thing. And you know, on the other end you have [Metal Gear Solid director] Kojima-san, they're masters of machinima with their very long, dramatic cutscenes.

We think there's a lot of wiggle room between point A and point B, and it's just simply a matter of what your studio and designer's philosophy is on how you tell narrative. And you'll notice Gears has plenty of stuff that goes on around the player. There's plenty of things where he has a little communication with the squad, and things like that. Cutscenes are one way that we advance the story. Collectibles are another way, dialogue in the levels, voiceovers on the PA system sometimes, or reading the little newspaper that's in the display case--things like that.

Shack: What is the scripting process like for one of these games?

Cliff Bleszinski: Well for this project in particular, I wrote a two-pager which was then torn to shreds by the leads. We cycled on that, and had some knock-down, drag-em-out meetings until we came up with something that we felt was pretty compelling. Then we brought in Josh Ortega, the writer, and he proceeded to start writing to what we were building for the levels. And we knew the major plot-points, the bullet points for what would happen with this character and that scenario at this moment.

And just between Dave Nash, Rod Ferguson, Josh and myself, we cycled on the scripts--there was like eight to ten iterations on each one. There was a while there where Josh would send us a script and he'd get it back with so many comments that it'd look like somebody got chainsawed on the thing. Thankfully he's an incredibly talented writer who's very persistence and very tenacious, and he was able to really pull it together and ultimately I think the results really do speak for themselves.

Shack: Do you find it challenging, or even risky to attempt a fleshed-out story in a videogame?

Cliff Bleszinski: I think it's the wild, wild west in the game industry right now. And I think we can get away with a few things that you might not see in a Hollywood movie in regards to some dark story elements and things like that. I think ultimately what we do in Gears 2--it's dark, but it's compelling, and I think it's the kind of thing that will keep people talking for a while.