Epic explains Gears of War: Judgment setting

With all the details given at E3, we now know that Gears of War: Judgement is a prequel and will take place post-Emergence Day, the event which saw the villainous Locust dig their way to the surface of Sera and attack the human race.

While the premise of Baird and Kilo Squad’s trial and criminalisation is an interesting story, one has to wonder why Epic Games didn’t go with something a bit more pivotal to the Gears story arc, such as the Pendulum Wars or E-Day itself.

The studio’s design director (and all-round cool guy) Cliff Bleszinski addressed the curiosity and why Epic Games went with the setting and timeline of Gears of War: Judgement.

“The time came, we finished Gears 3 and obviously it’s done well for us, and a prequel seemed like the next logical step. So we started looking at the timeframes and what we could do. I looked at E-Day and was like, ‘Yeah, there’s no chainsaw on E-Day.’ It took the COG a little bit to figure out that the Locust have thick skin and their bayonets are breaking, things like that.”

With regards to the Gears of War universe’s kickstarter, the Pendulum Wars, Epic Games weren’t so sold on the straight human-on-human conflict. “Now you have no chainsaw and now you have no monsters,” Bleszinski said. “And now we’re not Gears of War anymore. So we looked at the timeframe, looked at the timeline, and figured that there’s a window there of several months after Emergence Day, where humanity got hit and quickly got their shit back together and figured out, hey, put a chainsaw on the end of the gun – that’ll help. So that’s the timeframe for the game.”

Gears of War: Judgement is being developed by People Can Fly (Bulletstorm) and is set for release in early 2013 on Xbox 360.