Act 1 - Aldair City

The beginning of the game takes place in the city of Aldair, which had the traditional Gears of War style fans are familiar with. I worked on various parts including the opening tutorial, procedural level pieces, and the finale, all of which involved working closely with Level Design, Environment Art, Lighting and VFX teams.

For the first time we could see a classic Gears city fairly untouched by conflict, and full of impressive architecture and beauty, before showing how it would all get destroyed. We explored how this destruction would play out, from many angles since this would happen in the gameplay and during cinematics. After creating some initial concepts I worked closely will all disciplines to provide many iterations of feedback and overpaints. The intro level was a huge team effort with everyone coming together and and the team did an amazing job.

Act 2 - Vasgar

These are concepts for Act 2 of the game where the player will travel to the region of Vasgar. It was planned from the beginning as a tie in with Gears 5, in which players will visit Vasgar, after many years of cataclysmic events that changed it from a once beautiful coastal region to a red desert wasteland.
One of the biggest challenges for this tie in came from the difference in gameplay and camera position between the two game. Initially we wanted to show large imposing buildings, but quickly realized that this was less than ideal for top down gameplay. As a result we opted to show the more rural side of Vasgar - villages build into steep coastal cliffs that provided depth and motion for visual interest and more clarity for gameplay.

Act 3 - Warzone

Ultimately we wanted this biome the shows an former warzone from the Pendulum Wars filled with abandoned UIR fortifications, rusting tanks and wreckage. The UIR lost, moved out and now the Locust are scavenging what weapons and technology is left. We also wanted to show more nature to make this place feel more remote and different to the other two biomes, which are more urban. This provided us with the challenge of making boxy and angular cover look believable and natural.
Early explorations for the Warzone biome placed it in a snow-covered mountain range, that hides secret UIR installations from the Pendulum Wars, which are now swarming with Locust, but after some consideration and conversations with the designers we ended up changing the biome to a dry, war-torn desert with canyons since this worked better with the top-down camera and gameplay.

Procedural Levels

One of the biggest visual challenges of Gears Tactics was to maintain the Gears aesthetic within a genre that requires an entirely different camera angle, level design and gameplay. Most missions in Gears Tactics use a semi-procedural tile system, that can remix elements within the level. This together with the top-down gameplay mean that we were fairly limited when it came to monumental structures, thick walls and clear landmarks in the environment - all key elements of a Gears environment.
We used Unreal Engine a lot early on to visualize possible level compositions using buildings with different sizes, to see what could work. After that the concept team was working closely with the level designers and environment artists, giving feedback and working on solutions to maintain a strong Gears look, that could also benefit gameplay.

Another part of this challenge was maintaining a balance between readability and visual storytelling. Our narrative called for most of the first act to be played out in the ruins of a city that has just been destroyed by the Hammer of Dawn strikes. As a result we went through numerous iterations of destruction, with a heavy focus on floors, that needed to be detailed, broken, dirty and readable.