Case Study
Tom Batty

Gears of War 4
• The game was released on October 11th 2016. Gears of War is a reasonably big franchise
and has been around for a while. The companies who have been mainly designing and
making the game over the years are The Coalition, Microsoft studios and Microsoft
windows. The game has always been a third person shooter, with the same mechanics
and characters throughout the franchise. Gears of war 4 is a single, co op and multiplayer
game. This game is set 25 years after the previous game Gears of War 3, the game is set
in a earth style planet called Sera. The humans share the Planet with a species called
Locust. They live underground and have strong beliefs that its their planet not the
humans. When the Humans believe that they have truly wiped out the Locust population
another new adapted spices arises called swarm.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_of_War_4
•

Game world• Terrain- the terrain that you play through is always on the ground in an earth like
environment set in the future with different styles of animals that you can easily link to
what they're in our world. You explore multiple environment's and terrains when playing
the single player story. The places you go through are places such as country sides
mountains and mines.
• Architecture- there are a lot of non interactive things when playing in the single player
and multiplayer. These non interactive things are stuff such as buildings, cars, trees,
rocks and anything that’s just there to be aesthetically pleasing when playing.
• Objects- the main interactive objects in the game are obviously weapons that you can ick
up from fallen enemies or found in a room along the way of your journey. You can pick
up ammo packs from enemies or again at different objectives so you can restock for your
next battle. Throughout the story there is ladders you can climb and go and drive
vehicles. But the main mechanic for the game is taking cover behind walls and corners of
some building, which you can aim round or over shooting at enemies.

Characters
• When playing single player you only play as a character called J.D. . J.D. is the son of Marcus Fenix a
well known main character in the Gears of War franchise. Throughout the campaign you're
accompanied by two other characters called Del and Kait. If playing co op then you can chose which
one of these characters you would like to play as.
• When it comes to non player-able characters, again throughout the campaign the gears fans are
took down memory lane when the return of Marcus Fenix, Augustus Cole, Damon Baird and
Samantha Byrne. They all come back and join the story line. When it comes down to enemies, in this
game there had been a new introduction to a species called Swarm. These are an evolution of the
previous enemies you played against in the previous games. There are many different types of these
swarm and you face each one of them throughout the course of the campaign. Finally there are
some environmental characters you run into are just the animals around depending on your
environments, such as birds and other wild animals.
• But when playing multiplayer you have a chance to play all characters but no bosses or larger bigger
characters only the equivalent of each other characters.

Feedback Interface and perspective
• I have already mentioned how Gears of War 4 is a 3D third person shooter and has a
few feedback interfaces when using the Xbox controller. When playing the game the
controller will vibrate when you shoot, get a perfect reload, take cover behind walls
and finally when you die from a headshot or an explosion. The controller will only
vibrate if selected in the settings. This game is also the first in the franchise that you an
actually play on PC and when it comes down to feedback interfaces for PC I'm not sure
there actually is any.

Cut scenes
• Just like any good campaign within a video game it will have cut scenes showing more
story and helps speed up the story more. For companies cut scenes just help tell the
story a little better and could give better context to what is going on during the
campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzWltoa
wJ8
A few exsamples
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pThfGno
tZ8
Multiplayer gameplay

Narrative
• The narrative in this game is- The leader of the reformed Coalition of Ordered Governments, First Minister Jinn,
commemorates the 25th anniversary of humanity's victory over the Locust. Meanwhile, an elderly Hoffman who is present
at the ceremony recounts past battles at Aspho Fields, Emergence Day, and Anvil Gate.
• Meanwhile, J.D. and Del have recently deserted the COG after disagreeing with Jinn's hardline policies and join a group of
Outsiders led by Reyna. In order to help their village, J.D. and Del decide to raid a nearby COG settlement under
construction to steal a special. They are accompanied by Kait, Reyna's daughter, and her uncle Oscar, a former Gear and
Locust War veteran. Though they are forced to battle the COG's new robotic DeeBee soldiers, J.D. and his group manage to
successfully steal the fabricator and escape back to their village. They are then confronted by Jinn (broadcasting via a
DeeBee), who accuses them of kidnapping her people, much to their confusion, before launching an all out assault on the
village. J.D. and his friends manage to repel Jinn's forces and get to work repairing the village's power generator. However,
in the midst of repairs, unknown creatures raid the village, capturing everybody including Reyna and Oscar. As her last act,
Reyna locks J.D., Del, and Kait inside the power station to protect them.
• Dubbing the unknown attackers the "Swarm", J.D. reluctantly asks his father Marcus Fenix for help. Marcus, who is still
angry at J.D. for joining the authoritarian COG and then endangering himself by abandoning it, is reluctant to help J.D. until
he shows him that the Swarm is not human. Suspicious, Marcus decides to lead the group to Fort Reval, where thousands
of Locust corpses were buried to dispose of them. After escaping another attack by Jinn's forces, the group reaches Fort
Reval, where they are ambushed by a Snatcher that captures Marcus. As J.D. and his friends pursue the Snatcher, they find
evidence of the Swarm being responsible for the abduction of COG citizens, whose bodies are being harvested to create
more Swarm creatures. They also hypothesize that when the Locust were hit by the Imulsion Countermeasure, they did
not die. Instead, their bodies underwent a long term metamorphosis over the last 25 years until the Locust evolved into
the Swarm. J.D. eventually manages to track down Marcus and free him. Marcus reveals that the Swarm operates on a hive
mind and that he was briefly connected to it. Reyna is still alive and being kept at another Locust burial site, but none of
the other villagers survived.
• Determined to save her mother, Kait demands that Marcus lead them to her. He takes the group to Tollen Dam, where
they discover that the burial site has been converted into a Swarm hive. Realizing that the hive's defenses are too
formidable for them to breach on their own, the group fights their way to a radio antenna, where Marcus calls for the
assistance of Augustus Cole, Damon Baird and Samantha Byrne, with the latter two now being lovers. Baird, now a famed
industrialist and the creator of the DeeBees, brings a pair of mech suits that J.D. and Kait use to fight their way into the
hive. Inside, they find Reyna has been forcefully integrated into the hive's network, and removing her would result in her
death. Despite this, Reyna requests that Kait end her life, which she tearfully does. She then inherits her mother's amulet,
which had belonged to Kait's grandmother. However, upon closer inspection, it bears a resemblance to the symbol of the
Locust Queen Myrrah - implying that Reyna was her daughter and Kait is her granddaughter.
• In a post credits scene, it is revealed that Oscar managed to survive his abduction by the Swarm by cutting himself out of
the Snatcher that had captured him.

Player goals
• The player goals throughout the campaign of Gears of War 4 are you would run into a
problem and then you have to battle through that problem then defeat a boss and its
pretty much rinse and repeat. But when it comes to multiplayer you play games to earn
credits to then open up packages to earn new character and skins for your weapons.
Also there are bounties to complete which gives you extra credits or XP towards your
level. Also the ranked competitive is very popular in gears of war where players will grind
to wins loads of games to then get a higher rank.

Comparison of other games
• Comparisons of this game compared to the rest of the franchise I would say is that
compared to the other games the graphics are way better and the movement of the
characters feel a lot cleaner then the other games. I the reason the graphics are better
is because this game has gone up onto two better platforms which are the Xbox one
and PC.
• As you can see the graphics have been made a lot more cleaner and the photo realism
and the 3D isometric pixels are way better.
Xbox oneGears of War 2- Xbox 360

Representative
I think game is a good representative for the genre because its one of the only games that
do the the genre any justice. This game shares a lot of characteristics as other games but the
one game that stands out to me the most would be Rainbow six the division. When it comes
to weapons and movement they are similar where you only get three weapon's and
grenades. The movement to shoot is the same and to take cover behind walls and barriers is
the same. You can pick up guns from the ground but the only difference with the two games
is that there is only a certain amount of weapons you can obtain and use but with ’the
division’ you can get different levelled weapons and edit what attachments you have. But as
a game and a story line that game needed to go down that route.

The games audio
• The games use of audio is very good, the music I feel fits the game perfectly and really
does set the tone for each mission, scene, loss or win. Which is matched with some very
good powerful dialogue that all fits in perfectly with the game. That’s all mainly involved
in the campaign. But when it comes down to the sounds effects of weapons, I would say
that they all have a very distinct sounds and you would’t even have to see them to know
what someone else is using which I really love about a video game. The music used in
the game does help set the mood very well and the music goes along side with the
graphics of each scene very well.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5isCXvNKSJM
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG6IzGG2COI
•

Box art The background of the box art
really sums up in one the pure
carnage that happen in the game.
The three main characters are
clearly shown on the front
cover, which is an obvious
clue to who the story of the
game will involve.
I already knew this but the
came is clearly labelled that
its an Xbox one exclusive
game.
Down at the bottom its
labeled clearly again the age
is clearly labelled letting
people know if the game is
suitable to buy and play the
game.
Above the age rating it
shows off what awards it
has won to help maybe
persuade a person the
purchase the game.
For this copy you can
actually get the four
previous games which
had been made
backwards compatible.

Gaming addiction
• Video game addiction is an hypothetical behavioral addiction, categorized by
an excessive use of computer or video games. This interferes with a person
everyday life which involves compulsive gaming, social isolation, mood swings,
diminished imagination and a hyper focus on in game achievements. This will
make exclusion from other life events as well.
• .. (.). Video Gaming Addiction . Available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction. Last accessed 23rd
February 2018.
• Dr Richard Graham, lead technology addiction specialist at the Nightingale
Hospital in London, welcomed the decision to recognise the condition. "It is
significant because it creates the opportunity for more specialised services. It
puts it on the map as something to take seriously.”
• But he added that he would have sympathy for those who do not think the
condition should be medicalised. "It could lead to confused parents whose
children are just enthusiastic gamers.”
• Jane Wakefield . (2018). Gaming addiction classified as disorder by
WHO. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42541404. Last
accessed 23rd February 2018.