The maker of Gears Of War returns for new video game, LawBreakers

THE man behind Gears Of War and Infinity Blade has come out of retirement for the gravity-defying arena shooter, LawBreakers

Culturally diverse: Bleszinski wanted characters from all walks of life for LawBreakers. Picture: Supplied

Four years ago, after twenty years of working for Epic Games, Cliff Bleszinski retired from video games at the top of his career. He was one of the main developers behind the Unreal series of games (including the legendary Unreal Tournament, and the Unreal engine it spawned that still drives many games today), the Gears Of War franchise and even the original Infinity Blade iOS game that was THE app to have for a long time.

He sold his stock in the company, made a doubtlessly impressive amount of money, and suddenly realised that he wanted a break.

“I just got so burnt out by jaded developers,” Bleszinski says, “And when I looked at the fact I’d sold all this stock, I was like ‘I have all this money and I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager, time to hang out at the pool.’ So that’s what I did.”

Shifting gears. Cliff Bleszinski is the man behind the hugely successful Gears of War franchise. Picture: Supplied

But then the ideas started coming, keeping him awake at night, and he and his wife, who works from home, started having nothing to talk about at the dinner table. So Bleszinski did the only logical thing — he started his own video game company, Boss Key Productions, to make a PC game that hearkens back to the roots of traditional arena shooters, only without all that pesky gravity getting in the way.

The game is LawBreakers, and it’s coming to a PC near you.

Lawbreaker game designer Cliff Bleszinski. Picture: Supplied

It’s set in the near apocalyptic future, where the US government has managed to accidentally destroy the moon, leading to many disasters. The world has rebuilt but the cost of doing that is many governments having to sell off assets to cashed up, dodgy people. The map we played at the recent preview event at Boss Key’s studios in Raleigh, North Carolina was the Grand Canyon — after it had been purchased by the Yakuza as a base for their drug trafficking operations. But they’re not your typical drugs, because, of course, drugs in the future now give you special powers. “This leads to the rise of gang warfare spilling over the United States, and not just the cartels but the Yakuza and everything in-between, and they all reunite like in the movie The Warriors. They’re known as the Breakers because they’re breaking the law,” Bleszinski explains.

Flying high: there are four different kinds of Gravity in the mind-bending game, LawBreakers. Picture: Supplied

“But then law enforcement has to unify as well so there are DEA agents fighting alongside mercenaries. So you have these two sides, Laws vs. Breakers, and they’re all breaking the law of gravity.”

Gravity in this new world comes in four flavours: Earth, Moon, Mars and Zero, depending on where you are on the map. This really opens up the number of angles from which you can get killed.

For LawBreakers, Bleszinski wanted the characters to be both normal and aspirational, like a cyborg mercenary.

“A lot of games right now have weird characters like they’re challenging these cosplayers to make something really goofy, and I want to make something that has archetypes that we can all identify with,” he says. \

“We have the assassin who’s Japanese Yakuza. We have Maverick and Tosca. Tosca is essentially a big fighter jet, so it’s basically Maverick verses the Russians, so there’s a whole Top Gun theme there. Kronos is the ex-prisoner, he’s survived multiple executions due to the elicit drugs in his body, as well as Hellion who’s a mercenary who lost her legs to an improvised explosive device and now has awesome robo-legs, and she kicks butt. I want to create something that’s tangible, relatable, and kick butt first that also comes from a diverse kind of background.”

Diversity was an important aspect of the game for Bleszinski, making sure there are five playable female characters, and five male ones, for business reasons.

Culturally diverse: Bleszinski wanted characters from all walks of life for LawBreakers. Picture: Supplied

“I’ve been watching the cultural war that’s going on in gaming right now and the point that I like to make is that people are still going to want their silly boobie volleyball game — you’re not going to stop Japan,” he explains.

“But if I’m going to put [publisher] Nexon’s money, where my mouth is and create characters that aren’t sexualised, that are just characters that can kick butt that happen to be female or non-white dudes, I’m going to do that. Because I like diversity, but apart from that I want people to feel represented in this game so they can spend money on the damn thing.”

LawBreakers will be out on PC later this year.

Alice Clarke went to North Carolina as a guest of Boss Key Productions.

Originally published as The maker of Gears Of War returns for new video game, LawBreakers