Gamasutra recently caught up with Epic Games vice president Mark Rein to discuss a number of topics, including the sate of the company and its popular Unreal Engine 3 technology.

When asked whether he feels an engine can influence a design -- specifically, whether he feels developers who have licensed UE3 are using Gears of War's exact cover system -- Rein doesn't "think that's an engine thing. We've seen games that don't use our engine use a very similar cover system to us. I think it's something that we luckily stumbled upon that I'm sure we stole from somebody else, and it turns out to be something people really like and it caught on."

Rein believes that games will always build on trends established by predecessors, and that's just fine with him. "That's just a natural evolution of this industry, and many industries. Pretty much any industry, for that matter. That's okay."

Head over to Gamasutra to read the full interview.