Epic likely not Natal-izing shooters - Bleszinski

Gears of War design director Cliff Bleszinski says his company will "likely" stick with "classic control interface," but thinks hybrid controller/motion-capture schemes have potential.

One of the centerpieces of last month's Microsoft E3 press event was Project Natal, the long-rumored motion sensing peripheral for the Xbox 360. Speaking with GameSpot, Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft Games Studios, revealed that two major shooter developers, Bungie Studios and Epic Games, were already playing around with Natal technology--which requires no controller to use.

Bleszinski won't be air-chainsawing any Locust anytime soon...

The prospect of playing a 360 shooter without any buttons, pads, or thumbsticks--all of which are heavily used in the genre--was greeted with more than a little skepticism. This sentiment is apparently shared by Epic design director Cliff Bleszinski, who told British magazine Develop that his studio will probably not be jumping on the motion-sensing bandwagon anytime soon.

"Y'know, we'll take a look at Natal--no promises--but it's likely that the classic control interface is what Epic will be working on in the foreseeable future," promised Bleszinski. He then added, "But I think there's ways that you could merge the two interfaces and supplement a classic game with Natal controls to make something compelling."

Bleszinski went on to express his feeling that he thinks the shooter genre should evolve by adopting elements from role-playing games. "I had a conversation with Harvey Smith--one of the lead designers on [the action RPG] Deus Ex--and said to him the future of shooters is RPGs," the designer told Develop. "He said he completely agreed."

Bleszinski went on to praise another recent action-shooter hybrid, BioShock, and to call out another one coming out this year. "Randy Pitchford at Gearbox is an absolutely brilliant designer and business man, and I think Borderlands is not getting as much hype as it should because it really looks like a more accessible, shootery version of Fallout," he declared.

280 Comments

  • xtremeflem2day

    Posted Oct 9, 2009 2:50 pm PT

    Using a "real" fake lancer to chainsaw a locust would be a dream come true.

  • johnryandaplin

    Posted Aug 29, 2009 3:25 am PT

    @advanracer


    you certainly are an idiot arent you?
    youre complaining cause your tactics dont work anymore?
    ahahah what a n00b, and just as facistinabag said
    adapt or die, its been going around for thousands of years fish needs to glide around freely in the water and they adapt by having fins, you sir are pathetic for even posting that kind of comment

  • facistinabag

    Posted Jul 31, 2009 8:36 pm PT

    @advanracer
    You ever heard of the term "Adapt or Die"? They change something to make easier on new players, simple concept, works in the end, however, every old player seems to rage because his same crappy tactics don't work anymore.

    The majority of GOW's multiplayer is running to the nearest sniper rifle/motor/boomshot with your shotgun out, it's nice to have matches that actually vary slighly from time to time.

    Rather than whining and accusing Epic of ruining games, why not back up your saves, deleted the content updates from your harddrive, cancel your gold account and just use an Xbox Tunneling program to play against people still running the retail version of GOW.

    or you could just adapt.

  • advanracer

    Posted Jul 24, 2009 4:16 pm PT

    The thing that sux about this game is..when players get really good at their skills and most of all have fun playing, then the company decides to mess it all up with their so called "UPDATES" and in the end...it changes and makes it more unenjoyable because you have to start all over and adjust to the new slower settings. THANKS EPIC GAMES. REAL QUALITY SERVICE FOR YOUR CONSUMERS. The Original Gears of War was more fun to play..even in co op compared to this game. A downtuned shotgun, a Useless COG pistol, Lowered ammo count from 660 to 550, a TU4 Less Lethal/Mortar reload delay, my favorite Slow moving characters, and now a paid for expansion pack. Sure Epic..you're already ruining the game with useless updates and now you want more money. Pure Greed for JUNK gameplay

  • JOEPEACH

    Posted Jul 13, 2009 12:28 am PT

    CliffyB must stop speaking now. He sounds like a mosquito that buzzes in your ear when you are trying to get some sleep.

  • ldonyo

    Posted Jul 9, 2009 9:17 pm PT

    Epic isn't likely to do much of anything new or inventive until someone else does it first. Even then Epic will still not manage to get it right. Cliffy ought to talk less and work more.

  • batmanboy11

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 11:15 pm PT

    That might be for the best, but I'll wait to see if Natal is good/bad before I say that using Natal in shooters would suck.

  • bl33kda58

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 7:19 pm PT

    @nukku actually people who play wii fit actually lose weight thats why they keep track of how much weight you lose in the game and it actually works trust me it worked for my mom and I dont remember wii sports being advertised to make people lose weight its just a tech demo and is it nintendo's fault that they are successful and sony and microsoft want to be successful as nintendo. and p.s nintendo cant kill hardcore gaming since it created it

  • GeigerdolylWodd

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 7:08 pm PT

    Bleszinski went on to express his feeling that he thinks the shooter genre should evolve by adopting elements from role-playing games. "I had a conversation with Harvey Smith--one of the lead designers on [the action RPG] Deus Ex--and said to him the future of shooters is RPGs," the designer told Develop. "He said he completely agreed."

    Bleszinski went on to praise another recent action-shooter hybrid, BioShock, and to call out another one coming out this year. "Randy Pitchford at Gearbox is an absolutely brilliant designer and business man, and I think Borderlands is not getting as much hype as it should because it really looks like a more accessible, shootery version of Fallout," he declared.

    Yep I agree whole heartedly.

  • dogpigfish

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 4:10 pm PT

    If you are good at something it is easier to acknowledge others, like Cliff is doing. I was impressed with Natal, but I don't buy that it is going to be the next wave of gaming. I think it is just another peripheral like the guitar controller. The advantage that the wiimote has is that it appeals to traditional and new gamers, it is both motion and a controller. Developers can support one, the other, or both. When you back up and look at Natal after being impressed you realize that the demographic is teenage to young men (not saying that this is solely who will play this). What we need to see now is something that uses the controls successfully and is truly a fun and addictive experience.

  • andrew_ribbons

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 3:11 pm PT

    "Wii > Natal because it is a combination of the buttons and motion tracking, the metroid prime games are excellent examples of shooters that use the Wii hardware to make a great game.

    Most interesting to me was Sony's new controller, although there isn't much information on it it seems like an overpowered Wii using two Wiimotes instead of a wiimote+nunchuk."

    I don't often rain on people's parades, but there is just so much wrong with this i had to rebut.

    First off, you cannot claim "Wii > Natal" based on you having used the Wii for years, but are instantly dismissing a technology that they've not even finished developing yet and have certainly never used yourself. Nice.

    Second, after claiming "factually" the situation with the Wii vs. Natal, haha nice one there, you claim that the Sony motion controller is more interesting. Despite it clearly being a cheap Wiimote spin-off with LEDs at the top. Oh wow, innovation there. At least Microsoft are trying something new AND refreshing, not just copying Ninty to make the 360 have the same exact features. Natal has serious potential. No promises yet of course, but simply slating it off just seems silly.

  • valuum

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 2:59 pm PT

    How can anyone here make any assumptions about the quality of the Natal tech without actually having used it? Stop huffing about it's "lack" of precision when you really have noclue_27.

  • noclue_27

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 1:25 pm PT

    Natal does not have the precision to track a finger pulling a trigger, don't expect any triple A shooters to use Natal anytime soon.

    Wii > Natal because it is a combination of the buttons and motion tracking, the metroid prime games are excellent examples of shooters that use the Wii hardware to make a great game.

    Most interesting to me was Sony's new controller, although there isn't much information on it it seems like an overpowered Wii using two Wiimotes instead of a wiimote+nunchuk.

  • Rudorlf

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 8:29 am PT

    I guess technologies does have it's limit, but Microsoft does gives us something original. I love Sony more than Microsoft (Sorry for going offtopic and please remember that I'm no Sony fanboy as I agree that both game companies and Nintendo's consoles are great at their own terms), but come on, I'm sure they have better ideas than plagiarizing Wii.

  • StegrShmil

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 8:19 am PT

    Project Natal is pretty cool and looks fun, but im a hardcore gamer that loves first person shooters, and project natal is not anything that i want interfering with the new shooters coming out. How are you suppose to shoot or move or anything without a controller. Besides, a controller is one of the main reasons why shooters are either good, or bad, and if their good, than the experience that the game makes cannot be improved by making me do the actions that my character does in the game.

  • NuKkU

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 8:17 am PT

    @bl33kda58: because all this wii sports and especially wii fit people think they are losing weight but they are not Nintendo is really destroying the hardcore gamer market and now M$ and Sony are doing motion controllers too and its all because of Nintendo

  • dzimm

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 6:43 am PT

    Natal sucks. That is all.

  • gapinglotus9

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 6:14 am PT

    I'm not a cliff fan but ill agree with him here. shooters need to advance and stealing rpg elements is the way to go. mass effect and fallout are rpgs first and shooters second what we need is a shooter first and rpg second similar to bioshock. its about character development both story wise as well as gameplay. think excellent shooter controls like modern warefare or gears plus the ability to upgrade your main characters armor or speed or reload speed or evasiveness or turning speed or jump height or hand steadiness. allow you to mold your character into a sniper or a tank like bullet absorber or a stealth knife killing machine. right now its just talk and i'm not confident cliff "more badess" bleszinski will deliver on this

  • StarlightHunter

    Posted Jul 8, 2009 4:55 am PT

    NATAL will probally cost the same as a wireless controller, Since all future 360's will come with NATAL as standard, I can't see it being to expensive. Its good that Epic are keeping shooter on a controller system they belong on but it would'nt hurt to experement.

  • ZippyDSMLee

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 9:43 pm PT

    Of cores not all their creativity dead with Gears...or Unreal 2....or Unreal tournament 3.... really their nothing but pompous cash ins who whine about porting games to the PC.....

    As for the WII comments ,it lacks precision and nintendo handicapped themselves going for the casuals like that. If they put a bit more into the WII and took more of a loss on the profit per unit made by putting in a better sensor unit and one built on wifi/blue tooth and not bloody INFRA RED, the wii would be that much better for all games..... Nin is lost in casual land where zombies roam, MS/Sony are trying to lure in the brain dead techno freaks who'll buy anything because its cool.

    Forget having better gameplay that pipe dream died with the continuation of graphics > everything else....I just hope by the 8th generation of gaming we have real button mapping option standards and perhaps automated AI driven playing since they are going to fck over play control with all their poorly thought out gadgets trying to one up each other........

  • Bringerofpwnage

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 7:46 pm PT

    I really can't imagine myself putting my arms together and pretending that i have a chainsaw, while performing a roady run and crouching to take cover...or can I?

  • Vegeta-sama

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 7:36 pm PT

    3D head tracking ftw!

  • brittoss

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 7:32 pm PT

    "I had a conversation with Harvey Smith--one of the lead designers on [the action RPG] Deus Ex--and said to him the future of shooters is RPGs," the designer told Develop. "He said he completely agreed." I think someone had a similar conversation at Rare a long time ago after Donkey Kong 64 came out. Except the conversation was about monkeys with guns in FPS being the future. Then Free Radical came about and we get Timesplitters. Good times, good times.

  • InfectX

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 6:15 pm PT

    EXACTLY. That's exactly what I had been hoping the Wii was going to do...use a regular controller along with sensing the movement in space OF the controller.

  • SDFan18

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 5:33 pm PT

    That's cool if they went and did some motion controls for the game, but then kept the traditional controller as well. I don't wanna be forced to use the motion control on a game, I wanna make the decision depending on how I feel like playing. If they could do something like that, I think it would be pretty cool.

  • willie699

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 5:24 pm PT

    Good, i dont want my 360 experience marred due to MS trying to take the Wii route and ruining fantastic developers.

  • oldschoolKEN

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 4:58 pm PT

    Yes. It feels as if this IS too far ahead. As in incompatible with today's technology effectively. While this is tantalizingly cool to think about. You can't help but be skeptical, but hopefully they shut me up eh!

  • ShadowOfKratos

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 4:55 pm PT

    Oh, btw, when I said ahead of it's time, I meant in terms of the gaming industry, both for BluRay and Natal.

  • ShadowOfKratos

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 4:48 pm PT

    These two "melty3219" and "zoomer30" need to get a life. Prick fanboys...

    On the matter at hand, I think Natal has potential (I really love the idea) but like the PS3's BluRay, I think it's a bit ahead of its time (even though the general idea has been around since the PS2's eyetoy). Example: The reason why PS3 versions of multiplatform games cost slightly more than 360 versions is coz of the BR discs. And they're used at 1/7 of it's storage capacity coz multiplatform games need to fit into 360's HD-DVD discs. Meaning that's a 6/7 wasted production by Sony (almost 100% production waste for every multiplatform game disc).

    So same thing could be said about Natal, devs aren't going to push themselves if they don't feel the need to do so.

    Anyway, that's just a PC gamer's opinion, mine.

  • phil-_-meh

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 4:40 pm PT

    lol not likely now, but u nv know when they will

  • jack00

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 4:24 pm PT

    Why is this in the PS3 section ?

  • melty3219

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 3:37 pm PT

    haha this guy broke the combo of devs saying that they hate the PS3 but who can blame them its a pile of rotting crap as it is with its extinct gaming libary.

  • W3En

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 3:33 pm PT

    I completely disagree with the RPG shooter thing, i didnt like mass effect or fallout 3. Epic should stick with the controller and give me gears 3.

  • Nephilim83

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 3:05 pm PT

    Its pretty bad for MS when one of their best developers don't even want to fool with their new peripheral. Its like I've said all along: You just need buttons. Also, if he thinks shooters need to be more like RPGs then he should try putting an actual story in Gears of War 3.

  • Mickleohb

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 2:14 pm PT

    How is Gears1 better than Gears2? I suppose the match finding issue was pretty big but I think that Gears2 was better in every way (...except for the lack of a real final boss...)

  • Blu-Fan-Boy

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 1:03 pm PT

    hmm i love RPG's but i did not like Fallout Cliffy B should stick to the classic shooter or tactical shooter set up changing the game around can heavly relfect on the sales upon its release i just hope they don't screw up Gears of War 3 the second one was cool but a bit crap compared to the first one which was simply amazing and still is to this day!

  • Zoomer30 posted Jul 7, 2009 12:59 pm PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    Zoomer30

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 12:59 pm PT (hide)

    Oh anyone who is excited about Project Natal needs to remember...its from Microsoft. Hard to get excited about something from the people who broght us Project Broken (aka the 360)

  • Zoomer30

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 12:56 pm PT

    Let my chime in and ALSO say that I thought it said ""Epic likely not Nazi-izing shooters". I had to read it again. The 2nd time I read it it said "Epic likely not Nadal-izing shooters" I had to ask myself what tennis had to do with shooters. Then I rememred they were refering to that assinine "watchamacallit thingy thats gonna kinda beat the Wii but not work at that well in the end ".....thing.

    Wow......talk about everyone reading something wrong (me more than once.)

  • Meises

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 12:54 pm PT

    @AnObsecureName

    I totally thought it was that too

  • Beetroot502

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 12:46 pm PT

    @AnObscureName at first glance I swore it said that too.

  • AnObscureName

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 12:19 pm PT

    I really can't be the only one who glanced at the title and saw "Epic likely not Nazi-izing shooters". Made me stop for a moment.

  • Yokuz1166

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 12:13 pm PT

    @D3A7HJ0K3R Microsoft's innovation is three-dimensional motion sensing, whereas all modern motion-sensing is in two dimensions. I agree that FPS needs a familiar hand-held controller. The motion-sensing gun devices for consoles from the past 10+ years have always been unique, but they've never caught on. But I do think that a little infusion of this new technology to this classic format of FPS games would do the genre well, you just can't overdo it. I also agree that the future of shooters should include some sort of RPG element. Up until this point, the only major difference between FPS games are the weapons and settings. Fallout 3 and BioShock are incredible successes that follow this ideal of splicing genres, but doing it conservatively, and that's the keyword. It's one of the reasons we love the FPS genre. It's managing to keep the fundamentals throughout the changes from game to game and from console generation to console generation.

  • kvan33

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 12:12 pm PT

    Ok, the grenade thing was just an example. All I'm saying is that I don't ever see there being a pure Natal interface with FPS games. ...only a hybrid of controller and motion sensing at best. Personally I think this whole obsession with motion sensing technology for gaming is ridiculous.

  • D3A7HJ0K3R

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 11:45 am PT

    @dynomitemasta, actually, the ps2 was the first to come out with motion sensing, then the PS3 with the PS3 eye, so what kind of innovation is microsoft pushing out.

  • jmace1

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 11:45 am PT

    I notice most of the comments are concerned with wanting to "slouch on the couch" or not be bothered to wave your arms around. For me, that's NOT the problem with motion sensing controls. It's the extremely limited amount of accuracy motion sensing controls currently offer. It seems like it would be an absolute chore to line up a head shot, because motion sensing controls just can't seem to pick up small/intricate movements. I mean did anyone see that video on the Jimmy Falon show with the people trying to play Burnout Paradise. It looked like a pain in the butt.

  • Senor_Kami

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 11:32 am PT

    Shooter-RPG ftw. Actually, anything-RPG for the win. There's no reason why you can tell a good story in any genre.

  • Altiar25

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 11:29 am PT

    I hate motion sensor stuff. CONTROLLER 4 LIFE.... until Virtual reality helmets come along

  • ShimmerMan

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 11:28 am PT

    the problem is hardcore gamers dont want to fart around waving their arms and stuff at tv screens. They just want to slouch out with a joypad and play a game with minimal effort. Even the sixasis idea was bad for the ps3 because when your playing a game you don't want to have to randomly have to start tilting the controller around. It just didn't seem right. For the Wii this might be good, because the type of games on offer on the wii don't really take much gaming skill. And for certain sports games it might work (such as tennis). But for FPS, I don't think so.. Tbh I don't want to do the arm motion for a grenade whilst playing a game of Gears. And I don't want to have to crouch down in real life when I want to go behind cover. But RPG + FPS seems like a good idea.

  • mickcivic

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 11:22 am PT

    [sarcasm] Gee, the fact that a designer with credentials as amazing and storied as HARVEY SMITH agrees with you makes you SO much more credible! [/sarcasm]

  • iamamanami

    Posted Jul 7, 2009 11:17 am PT

    It's time to plug GOW series to PS3.

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