Gears of War feels stereotypical due to copycats, says Epic's Chris Perna

Gears of War has had to endure being called stereotypical, thanks to other copycat franchises nicking its look and ideas. That's the claim of Epic Games art director Chris Perna, the same chap who said the series is a hit with ladies due to its lack of stereotypical, sexy women.

Speaking with OXM, Perna said of these Gears copycats, "I think a lot of that stereotyping was done by copycats.

"When Gears came out it was fresh, it was dark. That's what it's meant to be, right? No apologies there. It was a brutal game - it was meant to be. Then everybody copied us and copied our look, and the market was flooded with Gears clones, which hurts the original."

Anyone who has played or seen the Tecmo-published shooter Quantum Theory will likely agree with Perna on this one. It looks like a blatant attempt to ride the Gears gravy train all the way to nest-egg town, but by comparison if felt stale and unoriginal.

Perna added that Epic had to evolve the series from the first game to avoid further pigeon-holing, "We evolved the colour palette, and the engine and the lighting and the technology and stuff through Gears 2 and then on to Gears 3", which he said, "was so colourful because we upgraded the renderer and global illumination lighting, which just worked better with more colour, brighter lights and things like that."

He said that Epic and People Can Fly are going even further in Gears of War: Judgment, "With Judgment we've evolved even further. We've enhanced the bloom in the renderer so fires will bloom better and won't be a blown out, ghostly type of thing where it looks like Vaseline is smeared on the lens. I think it's really, really soft looking.

"We've evolved the colour palette even more, to make a lot more colour yet still keep a more sombre tone. We've done things with post-processing to really enhance the visuals and our cinematics, too. I think visually, it's the best looking Gears so far."

Does Gears of War: Judgment look lovely? You be the judge by watching Epic's latest multiplayer trailer.