Heavy Gear Design Work

Heavy Gear is the result of nearly two years of collective development. The foundations for the world of Heavy Gear were laid down in September 1993, when we sat down over coffee to jot down some notes and scribble sketches about a world that was waiting to come out. In the months that followed, the game designers worked on the Silhouette game engine while the writers and various creators brainstormed to merge everyone's ideas into one harmonious whole. Not much later, inspired by various excellent British TV series (Dr. Who, Blake's 7, Red Dwarf) and Babylon 5, we came up with the concept of the over-arcing storyline and developed ways to adapt it to a game universe in a consistent, believable manner.

The universe evolved rapidly. We knew we wanted "giant robots," but we wanted them to make sense. They had to be smaller than traditional Japanese mecha, more functional and built to last. We needed something closer to human proportions, something which would not dominate the battlefield but would turn an ordinary soldier into a sort of super-infantry. Something that would be closer to super-equipment, super-gear. From there, we were a step away from the name of those vehicles: Gears...

We wanted the Gears to be very cool, so we got started on them even before we knew exactly just how they would work. After viewing a tape on the real-world V-engine, we snapped our fingers and said, "THAT'S the perfect engine for a Gear! It's simple, it's reliable, it's easy to maintain and it runs on any combustible fluid." And so, the Gears came to have the V-engine in their backpacks. Sketch after sketch, the machines took shape. As the world evolved around them, we decided that hard, gritty science fiction would be the norm. The overall technology would be patchy and imperfect, but cool-looking. The Gears themselves are a perfect example of this: a super-advanced computer (actually, a neural net) in an old-tech body with nuts and bolts everywhere.

In order to create a consistent universe, a lot of material has to be developed, but customers only get to see the tip of the iceberg. This book contains selected sketches and never-before seen illustrations from our files, so that you may get a glimpse at the other material that was developed for Heavy Gear.