Interview: “Gears of War” Writer Josh Ortega
Gears of War is one of the bona fide hits of this generation of high-end videogames. When you want to show your friends (or justify the cost to your significant other) the difference between your Xbox 360 and your last game system, this is the disc you pop in.
Taking place on the planet Sera, Gears of War tells the story of how the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COGs) had just ended a world war when subterranean monsters emerged from the ground. Called the Locusts, the monsters have guns and weapons that rival the COG’s arsenal. The plot centers on the experiences of Marcus Fenix, a military prisoner released to join a war that is not going well.
Veteran comic writer Josh Ortega (Necromancer, Frequencies) was brought onboard by developer Epic Games to work on the story and deepen the Gears universe. He’s become an integral part of the Gears of War 2 team and DC Comics has announced that he’ll be writing the Gears of War comic for their WildStorm imprint. He took a few moments to let us know how the war effort was going.
COMICMIX: For our readers who are not up on all things COG and Locust, can you tell us in your own words whom you are and your involvement in building up the Gears of War universe?
JOSH ORTEGA: I’m the lead writer for Gears of War 2, I write the comic book for DC/WildStorm, and I also consult on the Gears of War franchise. I work closely with Mike Capps (Epic President), Cliff Bleszinski (Design Director), Rod Fergusson (Senior Producer), and the crew at Epic Games to make sure everything that I write fits in with what’s going on in the rest of the Gears universe, and vice-versa.
CMix: Why is the story set on the planet Sera? Why not Earth? Is this some sort of past, future, or just an unrelated world with humans on it?
JO: Setting it on a different planet allows for a lot of storytelling freedom. If it was set on Earth, many people would draw parallels where there weren’t any, and by the same token, certain parallels that we do want to draw might feel a bit forced or obvious if we set the story on our own planet.
It also allows us to have freaky creatures like the Locust, which, to the best of my knowledge, do not actually exist on Earth.
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