You’re bored of bald guys running around grey environments. I’m bored of bald guys running around grey environments. We’re all bored of… you get the point.

According to Cliff “Giant Banana” Bleszinski, the reason for this over-used design aesthetic is Epic’s seemingly ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3. Speaking to Develop (via Joystiq), the man behind the king of bald, grey games - Gears of War - explained that the visual style simply plays to the engine’s strengths. “The technology of this generation just happens to be very good at rendering metals and stones and dramatic lighting,” said Bleszinski, continuing, “The tech is good at showing off armor and it’s not that good at doing hair… that’s why we have bald space marines.”

Bleszinski also reveals that Epic currently have “like five projects going on right now.” We know about Shadow Complex and we can presume Gears of War 3 is hiding behind cover, but the others? We don’t know. Just don’t go expecting anything with rainbow unicorns and fairy-dust… Unless, y’know, it’s metal unicorns and crumbled concrete fairy-dust.