Gears of War 2 Preview at New York Comic Con

In a continuation of Gears of War 2's Epic roll towards release, the game will be showcased at New York Comic Con (NYCC).

GOW 2 will lead a special gamer summit on Sunday, April 20th. Reed Exhibitions, the show's organiser, tells us, “The gamer summit will begin with a presentation by Michael Capps, president of Epic Games, and Joshua Ortega, the scriptwriter behind Gears of War 2, discussing the origin of the Gears of War saga, its unprecedented success, and offering a glimpse into this year's upcoming Gears of War 2.”

We can count Ortega as nailed on, then. He was previously only rumoured to be attached to Gears of War 2 in comics gossip column Lying in the Gutters (which appears on the website ComicResources.com. He has a substantial comics portfolio behind him and is best known for his novel <<Frequencies>>.

Ortega also has fingers in many gaming pies. While Reed Exhibitions tells us he works for Microsoft Games Studios, his website credits him as having worked on Blue Dragon and Too Human. Both games were developed independently by Mistwalker and Silicon Knights respectively.

Ortega's website also lists the first Gears of War under his writing credits. In an interview Eric Nylund, story consultant on the first Gears, said, “The actual line-level writing is being done by the very talented and experienced game writer Susan O’Connor, with additional contributions from the Epic leads—notably Rod Fergusson [producer], Cliff Bleszinski, Jerry O'Flaherty [art lead], and Lee Perry [lead level designer].” ^†

No mention of Ortega, you'll notice. We're going to assume for now that the original Gears' appearance on Ortega's website (along with the original's pack) is some kind of mistake for now and not some indication of covert meddling by Microsoft...

Anyway, of the gamers' summit we're told, “NYCC's gamer summit was created with the guidance of TenTonHammer.com and Themis Media, publishers of cutting-edge sites like The Escapist Magazine and WarCry Network. The summit will showcase games including Age of Conan, EvE Online, Iron Man, Warhammer Online, and studios including CCP, FunCom, Turbine, and 38 Studios. The summit will also feature round table discussions and topics ranging from video game journalism and writing for video games, to starting a career in the video game industry.”

On main show floor we're told to expect Konami, Namco Bandai, Square-Enix, and Ubisoft.

NYCC is held from April 18th-20th, at the Jacob K. Javits Center in... New York City.

You can find out more about Gears of War 2 on SPOnG's dedicated game page.

^{†Source: Gearsofwar.com}