Level Designer
My time on Gears 5 was divided between two stints at The Coalition. I rolled directly onto Gears 5 after shipping Gears of War 4, and from October 2016 to July 2017 worked on prototypes, level blockouts and early scripting passes. I returned in November 2018 and worked on shipping the game, focused on iteration, polish and bug fixing.
October 2016 to July 2017
Act II Chapter 1 – “Recruitment Drive”
This level was originally assigned to me with the concept of a horde-style combat arena. However, there was tech being developed around that time for friendly NPC behaviour and an unarmed locomotion set, but they were only planned to be used a couple of times throughout the entire game and I thought this would be a good spot to use these features in Act II. I also knew players would be coming off an intense conclusion to Act I, so I wanted to have a more low key beginning to this level. The idea for a village inside a Riftworm skeleton was already chosen as the theme for this area, so I pitched that the player would traverse deeper into the creature’s body first before fighting their way back out to the entrance at the creature’s head. The end result is fairly close to my original blockout, with a series of distinct traversal spaces that become combat arenas when the player fights back out.
Act II Chapter 3 – “Forest For the Trees”
This level is a return to the New Hope facility from Gears of War 2, so when I began working on it the task was to figure out how to re-use that environment in an interesting way. I wanted to make sure players got to see some distinct landmarks they may remember Gears 2, while not retreading the same path and introducing some new areas. This level was also a showcase for some of the new enemies in this game, in particular the robotic zombie Rejects and the Flock, so it was an early testing ground for creating interesting encounters with them. A highlight for me is the escape sequence at the end.
Act II Chapter 4 – “The Source of It All”
This chapter takes place in the first open world portion of Gears 5. Although I did not work on the open world level itself, I was involved in planning the flow of objectives the player would need to complete in this area. There are also three short levels to be found within this chapter. Two of them are built off of blockouts I had created for a different snow and ice themed level I had been working on that was cut. In particular, the areas that feature frozen bodies of water with shootable ice.
Here are a couple of timestamped links to portions of this chapter featuring finished versions of my block outs and prototypes:
November 2018 to August 2019
Act I Chapter 4 – “The Tide Turns”
This level was fairly far along when I took over, but still needed a lot of iteration and polish. Most combat encounters needed to be drastically overhauled, quite a few big moments weren’t in yet or needed to be revised, and the end boss encounter was still early on in development. It was fun to jump in and just figure out what needed to happen with this level so it could ship at high quality, and I have seen many reviewers and fans call it one of the highlights of the campaign. The fight against the flock in the street and the fight inside the theatre stand out in particular, and both needed a lot of work when I took over.
Act II Chapter 4 – “The Source of it All”
Back to the ice overworld, I took over for one of the standalone levels found within this chapter. This happens to be the one level in this chapter that was not built off any of my old blockouts. This level is all about spectacle, with the player fighting through an intense ice storm to reach a communications tower. There was quite a lot of maintenance required to handle the ice and wind here, and all of the combat saw big changes under my care.
Footage can be found here (6:53 to 15:45)
Act IV Chapter 1 – “Homefront”
I took over this level in the last couple months of production. The level was playable start to finish, but still needed a lot of iteration and polish work. I’m particularly happy with some of the changes I was able to make to the combat encounters near the end, as well as some scripting and pacing changes to make some of the big moments that happen during gameplay present in a more impactful and readable way.
Adam McDonald 