Cliffy B wanted Master Chief in Gears 3
But Microsoft "a little squeamish".
Epic asked Microsoft to allow Halo hero Master Chief to cameo in Gears of War 3, lead designer Cliff Bleszinksi has revealed.
When asked by Complex if there was any chance of seeing Master Chief or Mass Effect's Commander Shepard offered as playable characters via DLC, Bleszinski admitted that he had already looked into it.
"I'll let you in on a secret. I actually approached Microsoft on getting Master Chief into the game, but those guys are kind of squeamish," he explained.
"One of Halo's successes is that it's a soft M [rating]. Gears pushes it further. I'm creatively comfortable with that, though it can limit what you do. If you had to break it down, I'd say that Gears is like Mortal Kombat and Halo is like Street Fighter.
"But if we were to get Master Chief, we'd get his model, put him in a COG suit, make it blow up, and do some test animation work," he continued.
"We'd have to see what his head looks like being blown to smithereens or how his arm would look getting sawed off. Then we'd package up the test footage, put it on YouTube, and let the fans get a kick out of it because everything is meta these days.
"That's why Gears is packed with Easter eggs. That's the kind of metagame we have to think about in a post-Red Dead Redemption world."
A Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta is currently ongoing with the finished game expected to launch on Xbox 360 this September.