Gears of War 2: Skorge in multiplayer, no PC version, rumored map remakes

by Ross Miller { Sep 29th 2008 at 7:35PM }

We've got quite a bit of Gears of War 2 information and rumors, so let's begin, shall we?

The Skorge (pictured) -- a towering, 12-foot beast with dual chainsaw staff in campaign -- will be playable in multiplayer, albeit very scaled down, according to an interview with Cliff Bleszinski at AddictGaming (via X3F).
Jumping over to TVG, Bleszinki told the website that there are no plans for a PC version. "Here's the problem right now," he said, "the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software."
Hopping over to less-confirmed territory, a poster on Evil Avatar who allegedly has a copy of the new GamePro says that a redemption code will be in all new copies of GoW2 that will let gamers download five remade maps from the original GoW.

Since the embargo on coverage lifted today, X3F has collated a list of GoW2 previews from across Internetland, as well as new screenshots and artwork.

Gallery: Gears of War 2 - Screenshots (9/29/08)

Gallery: Gears of War 2 - Art/Renders (9/29/08)

Tags: cliff-bleszinski, epic, epic-games, gears-of-war, gears-of-war-2

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)

Obie @ Sep 29th 2008 7:40PM

Dual chainsaw staff?????

In the words of the immortal Ash Williams:

"Groovy!"

Gehodra @ Sep 29th 2008 9:23PM

I'll swallow your soul!

mr nimblewick @ Sep 29th 2008 11:24PM

Why don't they get creative and put a chainsaw on a sword, or a chainsaw on an axe, or a chainsaw on a frying pan, or a chainsaw on a ball-and-cup game, or a chainsaw on some spare change, or a chainsaw on a condom?

Don't they know that, in video games, a chainsaw on anything is uber-cool and original?

mr nimblewick @ Sep 29th 2008 11:24PM

mr nimblewick @ Sep 29th 2008 11:25PM

Or a chainsaw on a broken comment system?

Ihavepants @ Sep 29th 2008 11:45PM

IT'S NOT FUCKING BROKEN IF YOU DON'T POST IT TWICE. Goddamn. Ok, so your comment didn't show up straight away, it is still there. People will get to see your carefully crafted words. Don't fret and don't repost.

tmacairjordan87 @ Sep 30th 2008 1:28AM

I have to semi-agree with Mr nimblewick here. Cliffy B's pretty much the Michael Bay of videogames...all special effects and little to no substance.

Blank-Mage @ Sep 30th 2008 4:15AM

Props go to Gehodra for saying quoting that particular line with a Pichu avatar.

theturtle363 @ Sep 30th 2008 8:56AM

that is true Ihavepants, but I find a lot of times if you accidentally just double click when you post it the first time it will double post. You dont necessarily have to press it again if it shows up for it to fuck up

mr nimblewick @ Sep 30th 2008 10:24AM

I didn't post it again because it didn't show up right away. I know about the delay. I noticed that I had left it at "new readers" instead of "returning" so I switched it mid login and got two comments.

Thanks for being a douche though.

Vegeta (aka Ska Oreo) @ Sep 30th 2008 2:21PM

The difference between Cliffy B. and Michael Bay is that Cliffy B. actually makes his product entertaining.

Obie @ Sep 30th 2008 2:26PM

Michael Bay is hit or miss. For every "The Rock","Bad Boys" and "Transformers". There is a "Pearl Harbor" and "Armageddon".

If Cliffy B is the Michael Bay of games, who is the Uwe Boll of games??

Booxatron @ Sep 30th 2008 4:43PM

Funny thing is, Obie, I can't tell which of those are 'hits' and which are 'misses'.

ExMcCloud @ Sep 29th 2008 7:43PM

That dual chain saw staff may be the most bad ass thing ever..

xFenixKnightx (Mr ESC Resurrection Force) @ Sep 29th 2008 7:50PM

Maybe? IT IS!

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii258/KINGSTEVE_BUCKET/homer.jpg

It's like the first time I heard Gears would have a Chainsaw Gun all over again.

arrrgh @ Sep 30th 2008 10:41AM

exactly!!!!!!@!#!@#!@$!@$!@#$^!#$^!

Mr.Ironic @ Oct 8th 2008 11:50PM

You haven't seen my arse!

Brian @ Sep 29th 2008 7:45PM

Nice! High end PC users are too smart to sell games to. Well that's refreshing.

Temidien @ Sep 29th 2008 11:17PM

They fear their games will inspire us tech-savvy gamers to create a race of AI machines that will hunt one John Conner. Well played, my friend. Well played...

Haggard (steam: haggard_dawn, PSN: HaggyWaggy) @ Sep 30th 2008 2:37AM

"the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software."

I already knew there was no PC version - but don't think that the frankly bizarre reason Cliff gave above is the reason there's no PC port.

It's in fact due to Microsoft's desire to dominate the console market, so they're trying to recruit 360 gamers from any source possible - namely, european PC gamers. This has actually been stated by Microsoft before, but it's still pretty hypocritical from a company fronting a 'Games for Windows' brand.

Sean @ Sep 29th 2008 7:48PM

So by wanting to upgrade my PC I'm now a software pirate? Well it's his loss he can clearly tell a pirate when he sees one. Hopefully Microsoft pays him in monopoly money cuz he clearly hates that to

Bluebrake @ Sep 29th 2008 7:46PM

"the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software."

So the solution to piracy is to stop making games?

Genius. Hold on while I go tell Walmart they can stop shoplifting simply by closing all their stores!

Wubbytoes @ Sep 29th 2008 7:48PM

I know, that was probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Seriously Cliff, WTF?

wicko @ Sep 29th 2008 7:56PM

LOL, nice comment.

Yep, I'm sure Gears PC being a buggy port (2fps ingame cinematics anyone?), being released among much more critically acclaimed games (bioshock, cod4, crysis), or the fact that it came out a year or so after the 360 release... nah, piracy was the big sale killer.

Obie @ Sep 29th 2008 7:59PM

So basically everyone with a nice rig is also a software pirate? How is that for stupid generalization.

ThornedVenom (Harley Quinn Defense Force) @ Sep 29th 2008 8:31PM

I bet you anything that CliffyB has a big rig. Does it mean he's also a pirate?

JeepersCreepers @ Sep 29th 2008 8:34PM

Eh, I kind of agree with him. Go check the torrent count on Spore, the DRM filled horror child of security. Now imagine any other game, without obnoxious DRM crap.

Unless you have a subscription based game (Warcraft), a game with a rabid loyal fanbase (Warcraft), or a game with really low reqs (Warcraft), your game will not sell amazingly (Warcraft). If you're not falling into one or both of the first three areas, expect to be pirated.

WiiFTW @ Sep 29th 2008 8:43PM

How about Sins of a Solar Empire? But guess what, games have to earn rabid fanbases...Blizzard has been doing that by continually making solid, balanced and fun games: the Warcraft RTS series, Starcraft, Diablo, etc. They're all quality because Blizzard apparently cares to do go the extra mile.

cranium @ Sep 29th 2008 8:50PM

please then, in your omniscience, tell us a smarter solution to the problem.
They lose millions if they make a pc version because people will just steal it. what would you do; construct some complex method of preventing the piracy of your game? why bother? someones gonna crack that too and theyll still have wasted their time and money in the end.

but its not the pirates' fault.. it's the developer's...? :-\

Chin-Poh @ Sep 29th 2008 8:53PM

I haven't played Gears at all but have watched my brother play it on the PC with no stuttering or technical problems. He says that patches have fixed all the technical issues that came out of the box.

wicko @ Sep 29th 2008 9:10PM

They haven't fixed the stuttering. I have every patch installed, tried it on XP and Vista, tried all sort of config modifications i read about on the forums, even tried commands from UT2004 to see if that would fix it.. it still stutters. The patch logs also don't mention that it was fixed.

Also, they never lost millions, in fact they made money, just that the return wasn't to scale with the 360 release, so they got greedy. The solution would be to release the game simultaneously, not a year later.

Kael @ Sep 29th 2008 9:11PM

Gears for PC could have been a huge success if Cliffy & co. decided to release it day and date with the 360 version (I imagine reducing its piracy by around half, as I estimate the piracy numbers were hugely inflated by existing Gears 360 owners), and more importantly, selling it at a price people can't refuse. If you're getting huge torrent numbers, you're asking for too much money. Pricey = Piracy.

It may be too late for Gears 2 PC already, because they probably couldn't get it to stores soon enough. The first game's PC port was well done; it was great using a mouse to aim, the extra level added vital narrative missing from the first game (to explain the whole train situation) and it looked fantastic on my PC. It's too bad they don't understand how to make a PC version of Gears 2 work financially, because that's the version I'd buy, given the choice.

Though I also understand Microsoft finds themselves in the uniquely stupid situation of having to support two competing platforms. It's not an unpopular opinion to believe they're choosing to, despite their claims, pour all their attention to one even at the expense of the other. They have got to find a way out of this mess they're in sometime soon; they can't keep competing with themselves, because they just might win.

Which would be bad for all of us.

zuburi @ Sep 29th 2008 9:14PM

"...they lose millions if they make a pc version..."

No, not really. That's faulty logic akin to me saying "I'm losing millions of dollars by not being a pro football player."

You can't lose what you never would have gotten. Do you think that every person that pirates a game would have bought it if it weren't available for free download?

Ridgecity @ Sep 29th 2008 9:18PM

That's gottabe the most "I'm an asshole" comment I've seen in a long time.

Sadly Microsoft could use this game to promote Vista a lot more than Seinfeld did...

Einhanderkiller @ Sep 29th 2008 10:08PM

@cranium

If Epic put Gears of War 2 out on PC the same day the 360 version hits and, at launch, put out a stable game with good performance and have a worthwhile multiplayer mode, I'm sure it'd sell plenty.

There seems to be this thought that most PC games don't sell well. This is not true. They may not sell as well as consoles, but they do sell well. PC games don't typically sell a whole lot on launch, but as the times passes by, sales will go up. For example, look at Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis. They sold pretty poorly relative to other big-name games at launch, but after a couple months, they went on to sell over a million copies.

Puffles @ Sep 29th 2008 10:27PM

Bluebrake, even though your comment already has three hearts, I still think the rating should be higher.

Bouille @ Sep 30th 2008 12:10AM

"Here's the problem right now,the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software."

So everytime somebody buys a video card a PC game has been pirated?

What developpers don't seem to understand is that the games that are pirated are the games that aren't worth paying for. I'm not paying 60$ for a single player campaign. Might as well just let a friend buy it then burrow it. When you beat the campaing it's done there's no reason to come back to the game. Now if there's a working and active online play you've got yourself a deal!

My opinion is that developers who are afraid to get pirated know that the deal they're giving to PC gamers isn't worth the retail price. Counter-Strike (1.6 or Source) is still running strong and people buy it due to Valve's VAC system, same with Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4. Heck! Let's move away from the FPS genre because the biggest money printing game out there is on PC it's called World of Warcraft! Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft 3 still have VERY active communities.

Now listen here Cliff Bleszinski. All of the above games are working strong in the PC environement because the team behind it worked their asses off to give a top notch game that gave enough incentive to it's targeted audience to have them buy it. If you are afraid that Gears of War 2 is going to be pirated then you have openely admited that GoW2 does NOT have enough content to interest a PC gamer.

Exo @ Sep 30th 2008 3:00AM

@zuburi

wow you missed the point. it costs money to make a game and port it, and then more to release it on shelfs. when they say they lose money, they mean they arnt making enough back to cover their costs.

DUH

Slim Pickinz96 @ Sep 30th 2008 9:24AM

Yeah, a pretty generalized statement comming from Clifford, what ever. Either way this isnt a first person shooter so, IMO its no biggy that it stays on consoles (yes even "you" who own a decent game pad on your Rig). Now if this was your standard FPS fare.Keeping it 360 only wouldnt be logical.

KEELr @ Sep 30th 2008 10:05AM

So would you open your store In a high criminal neighborhood, or would you open It in a low criminal neighborhood?
You could open In both, but the people who live In the nice neighborhood will travel to the bad part and steal It, as Its much less likely to get caught.

Im just asking

Haggard (steam: haggard_dawn, PSN: HaggyWaggy) @ Sep 30th 2008 10:55AM

@Exo

Gears 1 made a profit on PC. If they made a good port of Gears 2, they'd turn a profit on that too.

Easo @ Sep 30th 2008 9:31PM

Not closing all of their stores, just closing their stores in areas where shoplifting is so widespread and unchecked that the stores rarely make a profit. Its called good business.

Vanillacide @ Sep 29th 2008 7:52PM

Not doing a PC version because of piracy?

I know people with Xbox 360s who have not bought a single game as they pirate everything, they even have games like 'Star Wars: The Force Unleashed' a week before its available at retail in USA.

So it's not really a good reason why we can't have a PC version. I paid for GoW PC version, and would happily pay for GoW2 on PC too.

AlterEgo @ Sep 29th 2008 8:02PM

Even with that piracy...Xbox 360 still does outrageous numbers with games like this.

SoCoolCurt (PSN: KillaKornbread) @ Sep 29th 2008 11:11PM

well one can make the argument that consoles are still less pirated than PC's since they are more difficult to do so on (well, barring the PSP).

and also, im sure that most people that know how to build a top of the line gaming rig DO know how to pirate games, but that doesnt mean they all do so.

aristokrat @ Sep 29th 2008 11:13PM

In all fairness, PC piracy is MUCH easier. No hardware mods necessary. Even Wii piracy, which is probably the highest for any console, isn't that big because you still have to know how to take apart the case and actually do some soldering. On the PC you just have to find the right torrent.

Mr Khan @ Sep 29th 2008 7:58PM

I won't believe "no PC version" until about 2010

Then i'll give it some credence

ToRo @ Sep 29th 2008 8:02PM

It's funny hearing Cliff saying that about PC users. I mean he does work for a company that wouldn't be where it is today without PC gamers.

I'm no PC fan but I know Irony (Or is it hypocrisy?) when I see it!

I'm more excited about the fact that they took out host advantage. And the fact that it'll have a halo type matchmaking and party system, something that should have been in the first gears. In my opinion, all games should have a halo esque party system.