Gears 5 Will Give Players Something They Have Never Seen Before, Says The Coalition

Gears of War 4 is a fine game, but criticism is often levelled at it for not being ambitious enough, for hewing too closely to the Gears of War formula and not really trying to do anything that fans of the series haven’t seen before. Gears 5 is looking like it’s going to take that criticism to heart.

Recently, while speaking at the X018 panel for Gears 5, Rod Fergusson, head of developers The Coalition, talked about how with Gears of War 4, the studio was really trying to establish itself as a legitimate developer that could deliver an authentic Gears experience, and that now that they’ve done that, they’re going to take a lot more risks and be a lot more ambitious with Gears 5.

“One of the things [with Gears of War 4 was], we were a new studio bringing Gears of War back, and we really felt that we had to prove ourselves, that we could make an authentic Gears of War experience,” said Fergusson, echoing similar statements he’s made in the past as well. “So we didn’t want to go crazy, because then they’d be like ‘these guys don’t know what they’re doing. What’s going on, what happened to our franchise? This isn’t the Gears of War I wanted.’ What we wanted to do for 4 was just re-establish the franchise and establish The Coalition as a legitimate studio. And we’ve been embraced by fans, and they loved Gears 4, and we feel like we’ve accomplished that goal. So now, Gears 5 is about bringing The Coalition’s personality to the game. Now we’re gonna see a bunch of innovation, a bunch of change, a bunch of things things that are really exciting, that are really different, but still feel very Gears of War.”

He then went on to talk about how The Coalition’s main aim with Gears 5 has been to provide an experience that exhibits “dramatic contrast” from anything and everything we’ve seen from the series in the past. “‘Dramatic contrast’ was the word we used,” Fergusson said. “Part of Gears 5 is dramatic contrast- going from very small, cramped spaces to very large, open spaces. Going from this desert to a frozen tundra. We wanted you to have throughout your experience constant contrast, and dramatic change.”

Eugene Byrd,  the voice of Del Walker, was also in attendance during the panel, and he, too, gave a very interesting snippet that went along with Ferguson’s vision for what Gears 5 is going to be like. “What we’re trying to do with 5 is give you something you haven’t seen,” said Byrd. “I’m gonna leave it at that.”

You can view the entire video below (uploaded by YouTube user GOWSeriesVideos). Gears 5 is due out next year for the Xbox One and PC.