Gears of War 4 is set for release on October 11. Unlike the games before it, it will be available for both Xbox One and PC making the mouse and keyboard capable of being the controller. Balancing the controls on any method of controlling the game is key to making a good game, so making the controls simple may make or break a game. However, the controls were not balance at the same time. The Coalition balanced the controller before they balanced the mouse and keyboard, according to Lead Multiplayer Designer Ryan Cleven in an interview with IGN.
We definitely work from the controller out,” he said. “We do play [with] mouse and keyboard, but the core of the game is around a controller.
The balancing isn’t between the PC and the Xbox One, but rather PC player versus PC player. That way Xbox One users aren’t playing against PC users, says Cleven.
We don’t really balance the PC versus the Xbox, right, so they’re each kind of balanced independently. They’re all using the same core tuning; so, when we look at the PC players versus PC players, they can choose to use a mouse and keyboard or they can use a controller. That’s up to the PC players. On the Xbox, we tune the game internally with a controller, so everything is tuned to be balanced that way, and then we make sure that the two groups, when they’re playing competitively online, they aren’t actually playing with each other.
Cleven reiterated that even though Xbox One users and PC users will not be able to play together competitively, they will be able to use the co-op versus mode together thanks to the Xbox Play Anywhere program. The Xbox Play Anywhere program allows for players to play certain games on both Xbox One and Windows 10. The players will be playing with the same achievements, making the game the same on both platforms.
Gears of War 4 is set for release on October 11 for both Xbox One and PC.