One of the first things that people noticed at the E3 reveal of Gears of War 4 was that there wasn’t a ton of spectacular action in the trailer. This was apparently by design, according to a recent interview with The Coalition’s Rod Fergusson. Fergusson recently talked to IGN about the teaser trailer and said the development team wants to make this game grittier and more personal than some of the other games in the series have been.
“We always thought of it as a tease. People expected a flash of logo and a Marcus poem, and we wanted to overshoot that. Why not do a tease that speaks to the mood and the tone of the game?” Fergusson said. In order to make it darker and more personal, The Coalition is going to try and go back to the series’ roots. When the first game came out, it was about being afraid of these monsters attacking the human race. By the third game, it was based on fighting a war.
Fergusson wants the characters to be scared of the “boogeyman” again and he said that by focusing the story on JD and Kait, soldiers who aren’t battled hardened like Marcus Fenix the team can do that. The developer says working on Gears of War Ultimate Edition at the same time as Gears of War 4 helped the group that hadn’t already been working on the previous games get a feel for what this third iteration needed in order to go in a slightly different direction. As you can tell by the recently released artwork, it will still be Gears at its core, but the current gen consoles and the tweaked storyline seem like it could also be a good standalone.
Gears of War 4 is expected to launch on the Xbox One sometime next year.
