Gears of War and Unreal designer Cliff Bleszinski recently announced his return to video games with a new studio and a competitive shooter tentatively called Project BlueStreak. In a recent Reddit AMA, Bleszinski shared some of the first juicy details about his new project to go with the first piece of concept art he tweeted (above).
BlueStreak is going to be a science fiction first-person shooter. Channeling his earlier career with the Unreal games, the developers are “targeting 5 on 5, with FFA initially.” When asked what room he felt there was for innovation in the heavily-iterated FPS space, he answered that, “there’s still PLENTY that can be done in regards to environmental manipulation, weaponry, and player movement.” In particular he praised TitanFall for showing how much design space remains to be explored in the genre.
This is a game coming from the man who brought us the chainsaw bayonet, so of course innovative weapons are on his mind, but grounded in a coherent, sci-fi universe: “For this game I don’t want to go full on Serious Sam, or make the weapons too crazy like Ratchet and Clank. Think District 9 weaponry.”
He also took time to allay fears that BlueStreak would be filled with characters from the testosterone-heavy milieu of Gears of War. Instead he is, “targeting having characters for all sorts of different tastes, not just BroZone.”
Regarding storytelling, Bleszinzki admitted that the mainstream industry soured him on scripted, linear game narratives for, “all the time and effort that goes into yielding only one Youtube video.” The game will in fact emphasize story, but not in a traditional sense:
“Weapons will have manufacturing corporations, players will have lore/history, and the world will feel there and lived in. We also want to make live action shorts quarterly to help tell more about the universe outside of the game. If you’re doing a Sci Fi IP you need as much of the fiction to come through in other mediums (and with lore) so people care about Plasma Rifle 3 or Player X.”
You can read the whole AMA session here, wherein he also addresses (among other things) the free to play model, why they’re targeting only PC first, and how he got over his skepticism about working with MapleStory publisher Nexon.
