The series’ return was heralded by a Tears for Fears song – an unexpected tone for its chainsaw-guns and gore. We revisit how a splintering marriage gave birth to gaming’s saddest shooter
t the Xbox Games Showcase this June, Microsoft debuted a trailer for the eighth game in the violent, grandiose and unexpectedly maudlin Gears of War series: a prequel. The sight of series heroes Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago as younger men is “an emotional homecoming like no other”, as. But the real tug at the heartstrings comes with the first notes of a slow, instrumental rendition of Tears for Fears’ Mad World.
“ contention about the saw is that it’s a little over-the-top gory,” a Microsoft executive said in the MTV film. Gears’ producer replied: “That’s exactly the kind of branding we were going for, I thought.” and dreamed of virtual bloodshed, he languished in the death throes of a failing marriage. At night he tooled around North Carolina in his sports car, with Mad World and Evanescence’s My Immortal on a mix CD. Once, a friend in the passenger seat –– jabbed at the dashboard until it spat the disc out. “This is sad shit,” he said. “We need to get you help.”
The second thing was that Microsoft opened its pocketbook. For the sake of the Xbox 360’s future, Gears needed to be a hit – and would it have been, had the marketing rested solely on gore? We will never know. ““We knew that to become a true system seller, which was the reason for investing in Gears of War at the scale we did, we needed to showcase the beauty and richness of the story universe as well as featuring the combat,” says Peter Kingsley, then a manager in Xbox’s product marketing team.
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