The Gears of War panel at Comic-Con 2008 has produced some really juicy tidbits. Most of the information presented was old-news from E3. Although, there were some major new announcements.

First off, Bleszinski announced ‘linked achievements.’ If you have certain achievements from the original GoW, you get bonuses in the sequel. Translation: if you haven’t yet played through GoW, you should get off your rump and do so.

Examples of how the system may work included:

• Complete ‘Act One’ in Gears Of War, unlock a playable Anthony Carmine in Gears of War 2
• Find 10 COG tags in Gears Of War, unlock Minh Young Kim in Gears of War 2
• Kill Raam in Gears Of War, unlock a playable Raam in Gears of War 2

(It was never made clear whether these were for campaign, multiplayer, or both)

Second, Steve Jablonksy is the composer for GoW2 and is nearly done. An impressive resume includes Transformers, The Island, and the recent Command and Conquer games. Even with that experience, I seriously hope he doesn’t ruin the GoW atmosphere I have come to love and enjoy. The music was one of the high points of the original, let’s hope they don’t break it.

Third and last, Bleszinski told us all that the GoW movie wasn’t going to suck. And no, he’s not living a delusion where video game movies are good. He realizes they are horrid and hopes that GoW can do for video game movies what Marvel/DC did for comic book movies.

Even more interesting is who/how is making the film - Hollywood folks in their low-mid 30’s who grew up on video games.

By far the most shocking - the movie is not going to feature a platoon of meathead, steroid junkies. As shocking as that may be, think about it - it’s a movie, you are stuck there for two hours, would you rather watch rippling muscles walk and fail at acting or an actor actually act. (Pardon my extreme stereotyping, there)

Straight from Bleszinki’s mouth,

“I know people have ideas where they want to see some wrestler, some huge buff guy. The thing we care most about is charisma, someone you’d want to watch for two hours.”

There ya have it folks. Plenty of juicy scuttlebutt for GoW junkies.

[From: Kotaku]