Vote for songs, bicker like bandmates, hopefully you don't fail out.Many would agree that Rock Band 2 was the peak of Rock Bandâs campaign design. Rock Band 4 aims to outperform the 2008 gameâs limited story elements and band interaction with a simple, strong new feature: Gigs.
âA gig is a new structure that weâve put into Rock Band 4 to sort of capture the feeling of a live performance,â Lead Designer Chris Foster told IGN. Itâs also an incredible way to have an extra layer of fun, or cause tension with, the people youâre playing with.
Hereâs hoping Rock Band 4 doesnât cause any band breakups.
Foster explained that the act of performing live music isnât represented completely accurately in previous Rock Band games. You donât hop on stage, play a song, and leave. âItâs sort of the ebb and flow of the arc of a performance over successive songs. So, like, the crowd coming with you, or potentially you needing to win them overâŚitâs a sense of momentum and pacing. So what we wanted to do with this is capture the sense of a gig and use it for narrative means, for new gameplay and emotional experiences within the Rock Band framework.â
Essentially, Gigs operate similar to older gamesâ Setlists, or Rock Band 3âs Challenges. âItâs a series of songs subdivided into a series of sets with set breaks,â said Foster. A Gig we played involved four songs in two sets of two. A set break between each duo had stuff weâve never seen in Rock Band before.
âIf youâre the vocalist, youâre able to perform a sort of stage patterâŚitâs sort of like adding some LARPing to your Rock Band experience,â Foster said. âYouâre sort of role-playing a different event that is sort of happening offstage, or got you to the show in the first place inside the campaign, weâre using them to deliver the narrative experience.â
So what does that mean, gameplay-wise?
âThey need to be really fun to play,â Foster said. âParticularly as the crowd is reacting. So, youâll do your crowd work as a vocalist, the band will play a couple of songs, and then youâll take another break. And in those breaks, youâll be able to do a lot of voting. In some cases, thereâll be a set list that is predefined, like in previous Rock Bands. But in other cases, youâll â as a band â be able to vote on a setlist.â
Choices appear between sets, drawn from your music library and the gigâs theme/genre. Bandmates have a limited time to choose the song they all wish to play -- which could lead to interesting, awkward interactions with you band. Your guitarist may decide on a spectacular, fun song the vocalist doesnât know, or canât sing to properly. An exhausted drummer can vote for something laid-back, while the rest of his bandmates troll her with a gnarly drum solo track.
âIt becomes a really interesting collaborative and competitive experience, as youâll have people say what they want and what they absolutely donât want,â Foster said. âItâs fun, because when youâre beat-matching, itâs tunnel vision; youâre focused on your instrument, youâre barely aware of other people if theyâre falling out or if you can save them. But the moments between songs, weâre able to come up with these other game experiences, and they can be really fun.â
Fighting or messing with your band isnât necessarily to your advantage of course. You can carry over your multipliers and Overdrive power between songs during gigs, adding a small but interesting extra layer of strategy that can affect your bandâs score.
Gigs can be played for kicks in a party setting, for sure, but theyâre also core to Rock Band 4âs campaign -- which involves an interesting branching narrative similar to an RPG. Weâll have more on that for you later this month.