“Diplomacy” was part of our earlier concepts as a HUB-style level where players would travel to and from, in order to gain new information and restock on supplies before selecting a new destination. As the overall design of the game had further developed, the HUB idea was scrapped - However, due to narrative and gameplay implications, it was refactored into a smaller campaign level as a part of the main act structure.

The intent for this level was to facilitate a narrative focused cinematic experience, introduce key main-story characters, and introduce “Jackbot” as both a character and sequence of gameplay mechanics along with its’ tutorialization.

The space was meant to represent the last government and military foot-hold in the war against the Locust Horde, so both the exterior and interior were meant to indicate a sense of structure, security, and prestige. Large rooms, hallways, and halls were meant to indicate sense of scale and superiority, whilst also providing enough space for all the staff and personnel.

Given that this building was also meant to contain a strong military presence and technological research facilities, the design of its’ lower floors replace marble floors and finished walls with more of an military-like industrial theme, heavy use of metal and cement floors and paneling, along with storage and supply.

I needed to present areas for cinematics to take place, whilst also provide a playable space for players to interact with main story characters, and an introduction to “Jackbot” with a tutorial.

One of my biggest challenges was to create a busy atmosphere, loaded with wandering people, whilst maintaining a limited performance-budget with NPC’s. To overcome this, I hand-crafted intimate player accessible spaces to accommodate a handful of player-interactable character NPC’s, whilst utilizing inaccessible-yet-visible spaces to fill the “busy” feeling with animated character particle systems. In order to fill the seems a bit more, I worked closely with my animators to create low-cost skeletal mesh animations of personnel doing their thing.

Another challenge was to provide an introduction of the “Jackbot” mechanics, and provide a test bed for players to get acquainted. For this, I themed a space around a research-testing range, for which I could restrict the player’s access, whilst provide a safe space to heavily script the events of the tutorial through blueprint. Given that the player would feel disappointed being on a military range without some extra hardware to sample, I provided the player with a bit of a shopping moment to gear up with some firepower and neutral-enemies to shoot at.

”Recruitment Drive” was the very first main campaign levels I had the pleasure of creating. Previously concepted as “Riftworm Village,” this village was a settlement and sanctuary for survivors, built from whatever they could salvage within a valley dug out by the movement of a massive subterranean “Riftworm” creature.

The intent of this space was to provide players with the sense of a living world that didn’t come across as fabricated simply for players to shoot through. The village was meant to feel like an active settlement, busy with locals, merchants, and defenses.

Players would reunite with an old friend, and experience his loss during a final battle - So, I aimed to establish a sense of compassion and relationship between the player and the villagers, to create both an emotional connection and a drive to protect it with everything they have. As for the fight towards the final battle, I aimed to create a sense of power-growth for the player - starting off with nothing, and ending in an explosive victorious finish… before discovering what they had lost.

I knew I first had to create a “working” village and living world, so I focused my efforts on logically creating a functional town: Access to food and water, ways to harness energy and natural resource, essential services (transportation, medical, workshops, eateries, security, and agriculture), markets for locals and travelers, and residencies. Split into three key districts: I designed the first to accommodate businesses and essential services, the second to be residential, and the third to be natural resource and agriculture. Given that the village would operate on geothermal power, I wanted the residential area to be closest to the warmth, and identified a progression of warm to cold from the farthest district, towards the main gate. Then, I wanted to make the village represent the Riftworm theme even more, so I actually wrapped it in its’ skeletal remains to standout far from the distance and act as landmark to help players navigate directionality.

Once the village was built, my plan was set: Create an emotional connection by providing a semi-explorable space for players to interact with the village and it’s locals, choreograph animated moments of villagers and their children doing typical and sometimes goofy actions, provide NPC narratives for players to overhear, and have them experience the entire village from one end to the other. Then, after reuniting with Oscar, the village would come under attack - explosions, destruction, and witness the loss of those the player had met - forcing a call to action, and motivation to defend the village. Players would then fight back through known areas, back towards the gate, increasing in power and fill them with a sense of victory, before ripping it all away.

Given my limited performance-budget, I had to design a way to create a bustling village with a lot of smoke and mirrors. I took a similar approach to “Diplomacy” by limiting a handful of Character-NPC’s to accessible areas and having them travel around areas of the village, utilized animated character particle systems to simulate swathes of people moving around inaccessible areas, then backfilled areas in between with animated skeletal mesh actors.

The next challenge was to create power-growth from low to climactic. I went back to the start of the level, and narratively stripped away their weapons, to then be able to make the very first encounter feel survival and starvation by limiting weapons to kill-gained. I then provided a small downbeat, where players were given a few more options and ammunition, leading into the second section containing easy-to-kill enemies along with a few heavy-hitters to gain access to larger firepower. Before entering the final area, I provided players with a fully stocked armory to load up on whatever their combat playstyle desired. With a nice cherry on top, I then gave the player access to a weaponized “Silverback” war suit. As the fight went on, I felt it needed more - working with my narrative team, I managed to include a climactic experience in the tail end of the fight, where players would be thrusted into possession of the enemies themselves to fight fire with fire.

Part way through production, not only did certain new additions require me to implement new mechanic introductions and enemies, but the level felt so engaging, a decision was made to rearrange the campaign structure and designate it as first level. Unfortunately, through rigorous attempts at downscaling certain challenges and narrative limitations to which enemies would be allowed that early in the story, it never lived up to its’ original sensation. After a little convincing and compromise, I was able to bring the level back to the second act, and was luckily able to not only reignite the original sensation… but made it even better. Given my planning and preparation to accommodate unexpected alterations, I was able to easily integrate requested introductions and tutorials all of the new additions to the players toolset.

Aside from all the moving around, and unmentioned sleuths of technical limitations, I gained a massive amount of new technical knowledge and experience that has since remained my proudest achievement. Not only was the level selected to be the main announcement trailer for Gears 5, but having had the opportunity to witness both players and streamers cycle through all of my emotional intentions, and break down into tears with the loss at the end - it solidified my passion and drive at creating powerfully engaging and immersive experiences.

“Forest For The Trees” is the players return to the abandoned New Hope Research Facility, disguised as Jameson Depot, for those familiar with the franchise. Given that it was a symbolic location previously established in the franchise, it was important to remain canon as a base layer, before building up the passage of time, weather, scars of war, and more dirty little secrets for players to uncover.

My intentions for the space were to make it immediately recognizable to fans of the franchise, giving them due service, and showing all players an entirely fresh experience. Having been a fan myself, my plan was to highlight a few memorable locations with a torn face, whilst also building upon new areas previously inaccessible in earlier Gears of War titles. Additionally, there were several key introductions I had negotiated to include: A few new enemy variations including “The Flock”, new environmental ice-hazards, and the debut of a new volumetric deadly gas the gameplay team had previously played around with - which later inspired the development of Gears 5: Escape.

Given its’ shady history my goals were to make players feel curiosity mixed with unease, investigative yet cautious, and build the tension up as close to a thriller-experience as I could: suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation, and anxiety towards the climax. We intended this to be (potentially) the final visit to this location, so I had the creative freedom to blow it all up if I wanted to…

Starting with an exact facsimile of the original New Hope Facility, I began blocking off and tearing up sections until all that remained were key recognizable locations, and identified areas of interest not previously available, to then build upon the new experience. I then created a suspenseful entirely new entrance path to the facility, bread crumbing subtle yet recognizable pieces as rubble along the path for fans to freak out about.

Splitting the main experience into two halves, the first would provide nostalgia and deepen narrative explorations of the facility with suspense and anticipation, followed by the second which would raise anxiety levels to max by initiating a purge protocol to force players out at the risk of safety… completely obliterating the facility.

The first challenge was ensuring canon with the facility’s rich history. For this, I first created an entire facsimile of the original to use as both a starting point, and as a metric I would continuously compare against whilst developing the new experience. Utilizing fan-content, blogs, and whatever media I could find, I ensured to pick the most vital locations to retain for fans.

The next challenge was to throttle the initial levels of suspense, excitement, surprise, and anticipation, whilst also introducing vital mechanics which would later be experienced in a challenging manner. For this, I established clean gameplay beats spread across the first halve, and filled the paths and spaces in-between with dark, grim, earie atmospherics and environment which would create a level of unease along with deeper environmental narratives.

The biggest challenge of all was creating a high-anxiety and explosive escape which aligned with Gears control perspectives, player motivations, and performance. This took immense planning and iteration, as rear-facing pressure had never been explored. For this, I worked closely with our VFX department and gameplay designers to ensure the purge Gas could “feel” like it was nearing behind the player if they didn’t keep up. Then, implemented a network of both haptics and explosions ahead of the player, to almost pull them forward with an overwhelming sense of pressure. As a finishing touch, I choreographed low-cost destructions to both block and expose paths along the way. The most difficult of which was a collapsing roof, which was done in triggerable stages, custom collision mesh, and enemies spawning only out of post-destroyed areas.

“The Source Of It All” was initially concepted as one whole level, later through narrative implications it was determined the level would be separated into three-separate locations, spread across the ice-overworld. Each location, providing clues to the whereabouts of the others.

The intention was that each location contained a piece the player needed to reveal in order to progress through the remaining act. Each location was to introduce a new mechanic, feature, or enemy variation, and provide an entirely different gameplay behaviour.

Initially building the three-separate sections as one combined experience, my approach had to pivot once the decision to separate was made. For this, I identified areas of separation, converted each to their own level, and worked on creating smaller well-crafted experiences in each.

The first section would focus on anticipation and anxiety. This space would first push cautious exploration, followed by a main sequence of evading large tumbling destroyed pieces of ice and other environmental hazards.

The second section would focus on typical forward facing combat tactics, battlefield awareness, and highlight new destructible ice flooring as risk/reward to players and enemies alike.

The third section would drive suspense and excitement. Players would first attack a defensible position, then defend the position themselves, followed by an infiltration / escort-extraction of a phosphorous cell. Here, players would come face to face with a devastating “Snatcher” enemy, briefly introduced at the tail-end of “Recruitment Drive”

It was a unique challenge to coordinate the creation and development of each individual location, whilst also providing unique gameplay experiences in each. To improve the likelihood of each location feeling unique, the later developments of two sections were passed over to two other design pods to add in their own “spice” before returning to me for a final visit.

The biggest challenge for me was working around budgets. The level was originally budgeted as one level, and remained so throughout the development of the separated sections. I had to ensure each section was given its’ due justice, without negatively impacting their remaining experiences due to cost. For this, it was essential to plan ahead of time accordingly, while finding creative solutions and balancing budget compromises to areas needing a little extra along the way. Removing lower priority elements from one, for the betterment of another.

“Fighting Chance” was a level located at Vasgar airfield. Previously established as a UIR outpost against the COG during the Pendulum Wars, in Gears of War lore.

The level was intended to be a smaller starting location in the 3rd Act’s sand open-world. Here, players would be introduced to new narrative motivations, presented with cinematic opportunities, gain access to an expanded arsenal, and introduced to new “Jackbot” mechanics.

My approach was to recreate elements of what was once UIR-controlled Vasgar airfield, degraded by time, weather and war - and make it feel like a currently occupied sparse settlement. Once the airfield was destroyed, it was time to fill it up with evidence of war and supply through environmental storytelling.

NPC interactions and vendors would introduce players to a new arsenal, whilst a tutorial space was designed to introduce the use and experience of a new “Jackbot” ability against captured enemies.

The biggest challenge was to ensure the place felt “explorable”, whilst presenting players with new mechanics in a linear Gears fashion, without bloating the level’s limited budget.

“Cosmonaut Training Facility” was a location which was under the control of the UIR in neighboring Vasgar. As the name suggests, this facility once operated as training facility for Cosmonauts.

My intention was to recreate a believable and massively scaled training facility, destroyed by war, time, and climate. Researching typical media related to training astronauts, my goals were to recreate training areas that the average person could immediately recognize, without needing to do much research. These areas would include a recognizable centrifuge and a dried out zero gravity training pool.

Aside from the theme, I wanted to create a uniquely engaging experience where certain parts of the facility would still be functional, to create unique gameplay opportunities. My gameplay focus was to incorporate unique environmental interactions, centered around attack/wave-defend scenarios.

Taking inspiration from soviet-era military installations, cosmonaut training facilities, and historical UIR lore, I started with the areas of interest I had originally prioritized (centrifuge, zero G training pool, etc) then proceeded to build paths and arenas between them.

The centrifuge area would be the first I wanted to tackle. Building a massive arena in which to create a defensive position, the centrifuge would be its’ core component, and I wanted players to see this thing cause some chaos. Once the player restored power and activated the centrifuge, waves of enemies would advance towards the player, with the idea that players could utilize battlefield awareness to suppress advancing enemies at just the right moment to see them get annihilated. Given the poor state the facility was in I wanted this thing to break apart from the sheer force it was producing - heaving a massive component on its’ final rotation in order to expose a new path through destruction.

Next I would create an interaction sequence within the dried out and collapsed Zero G training pool, where players would have to navigate through sections of the pool blocked by training fuselages. Here, I wanted players to coordinate with one-another, and “Jackbot”, to control cranes and expose paths throughout an almost maze-like space.

A huge factor in this level was budget. The facility needed to be large in scale, contain many unique art assets, interactions, and offer remarkable vista shots of what was once a large militarized space training facility. It was a balance of focusing major gameplay areas around those bigger investments, whilst finding clever ways to reduce scale and scope in areas of connective-tissue.

By far, the most challenging experience was the technical hurdles of the centrifuge, and getting the enemy AI to play nicely with it. It presented such a technical risk, it teetered on the chopping block throughout development, but I was committed to finding an effective solution to keep such an iconic piece of training equipment. One of the issues present in Gears 5, was the lack of dynamic navigation systems - we had to bake navigation mesh. Given that the centrifuge needed to expose and block paths for allies with every rotation, while allowing enemies to travel to their demise, I undertook a fair bit of research and gathering limitations from our AI engineers and gameplay systems teams. Once I fully understood the constraints I had to work within, and gained the required confidence with my scripting ability, I was able to successfully create a nav-link system which worked with our ally/enemy system. The success of this kept the level off the chopping block, and well-within budget.