Junior Level Designer

When I joined the level design team on Gears of War 4, the campaign was already in production. Blockouts were completed for the majority of the game, with some early scripting and combat implementation. I took over ownership for a couple of levels in particular, and helped out on others.

There was a lot of iteration on these levels, with some parts radically changing under my care. I was responsible for creative aspects such as combat scripting, geo changes (particularly cover placement), weapon/pickup placement, player gating and working with the animation team to plan and implement various scripted moments. I was also responsible for things like setting up player collision, level streaming, performance and AI pathing.

Act I Chapter 1 – “The Raid”

This is the first level in the game featuring the new Gears of War 4 cast of characters (the game also has a prologue, a series of flashbacks). There is quite a lot of story to be delivered here, as well as a large number of custom animated moments and new enemies to be introduced It was also important to make the level fun of course, and in the end I think it was tightly paced with some memorable and fun encounters.

Act III Chapter 6 – “Origins” /
Act IV Chapter 1 – “Get Out”

This massive level ended up being broken up into two different chapters in the shipped game. Throughout development, this level’s performance needed to be monitored closely. In addition to challenges around streaming/performance (and handling re-traversal, the only level in the game to feature it), this was also the level in which both the Scion and Snatcher enemy types were introduced, and the only level in the game to feature the Loader vehicle. The Snatcher in particular is a large enemy with unique behaviour. This level introduces the creature and features it heavily, so it was part of my job to work with game design, gameplay programming, animation and others to ensure it was functional and fun to fight.

Act V Chapter 3 – “Gate Crashers”

I was on this level for only a couple of months, but during that time a few things I worked on ended up staying in the level that shipped. In particular, the latter half of the level was mostly empty traversal when I took over. The layout of the cover and the composition of the enemies in the shipped game stayed fairly close to what I set up during my time with it. I also had the idea for the two mechs pulling the giant wheel apart and roughed in an early implementation.