Gears of War creator who is best known as ‘Cliffy B(full name Cliff Bleszinski), recently took to X/formerly known as Twitter to rant a bit about the accusations that Gears of War has gone ‘woke.'
Cliff Bleszinski was the lead designer for the first three entries in the Gears of War franchise and expresses his frustrations “These culture wars are out of control. If Gears 3 came out today they’d say the same thing about it – the cast was diverse AF and we had strong, non-sexualized female soldiers.”
Gears of War is one of the most generation-defining titles for the Xbox consoles and the state of the criticisms and discussion surrounding it in the present day compared to the past gives us perspective on how the discourse has changed culturally. It seems there is more focus on the perceived agenda behind games rather than the quality and content.
When asked what prompted him to make this statement he replied “Dude I get tweets about it every single day”. This likely refers to fans who ping and message him to ask what he feels about the new supposedly 'woke' direction that the newer entries in the Gears of War franchise have taken.
Clearly, Bleszinski does not see the issue and is baffled by how persistent people are in enquiring about this problem. In the eyes of many gamers, companies now focus on promoting diversity and political agendas rather than focusing on making quality games. However, it's also possible to get too tunnel-visioned on these issues and ignore the actual game itself.
We're curious to see if this phenomenon is something exclusive to the Xbox players who feel attached to the previous Gears of War. Once Gears of War goes over to the PS5 we can see if similar sentiments continue to pop up about the diversity and quality of the new entries to the franchise. In the meantime, the original creator has also shared a desire to see a God of War style remake for Gears of War, but it seems Microsoft has ignored his pleas.