Gears of War lead Cliff Bleszinski teases a new project with a very good dog

Gears of War lead Cliff Bleszinski has finally given us a brief glimpse at his new project, and it could hardly be more different from Gears of War.

Bleszinski recently posted a snippet of art for the mystery project on his personal Twitter. With no caption to go off of, we can only pore over the art for details, and there's a lot going on here. May I first direct your attention to the very good dog in the corner, seen here chilling on a porch with a pigeon and wistfully overlooking a futuristic, some might say cyberpunk city. Bleszinski joked that "the signs were there that I was working on something dog-related" and even shared a photo of the dog that inspired this art. 

Ever the voice of reason, Dave Oshry, known money hater and the big boss at retro shooter specialist New Blood, spoke for everyone in his reply asking: "What da dog doin?" Bleszinski responded with a cryptic "You'll see…" and the trail goes cold from there. Whatever the dog's doing, I want to find out, and I'd like to see more of that city, too. 

To my knowledge, Bleszinski has never actually confirmed that this mystery project is a game, and I will admit that my first impression of this art was Oliver & Company by way of Cyberpunk 2077, but that's just a gut feeling based on equal parts nostalgia and recency bias. He's definitely actively working on new stuff, though; we've known that for several months now.

While this project could easily be some other form of media given Bleszinski's history, there's no doubt that he's best known for his work on games. He's also previously hinted at a return to the games industry after taking a break following the closure of his studio Boss Key and later being inspired by the likes of Fall Guys and Among Us, which Bleszinski said reinforced "that not everything needs to be insane AAA that requires crazy crunch that ruins families and mental health on a [$]100m budget." Whatever he's working on, a very good dog is a solid hook to start with. 

Gears of War developer The Coalition is ticking along and recently showed an impressive new-gen demo focusing on the power of Unreal Engine 5.