‘Gears 5’ Boss Says The Game Is An Opportunity To Do Something New

Last-generation, Gears of War, now simply called Gears, was one of the most beloved series not just exclusive to Xbox 360, but across all systems.

That said, when the series continued with a soft-reboot in the form of Gears 4 with a new developer, The Coalition, there were many skeptical if the studio could recreate the same highs and capture the same magic Epic Games did with the original trilogy.

Then Gears 4 released, and it didn’t exactly squash the skepticism that the series could live on with a new trilogy. The game was far from bad, but it didn’t exactly light the world on fire like the previous three mainline releases. Further, it critically dipped a bit, coming in at 84 on Metacritic, 10 points lower than the original game.

However, the somewhat middling response to Gears 4 wasn’t enough to stop the series from moving forward and Gears 5 being revealed during E3 2018 earlier this year.

Details on the project are still a little scarce, but recently, the boss of The Coalition, Rod Ferguson, spoke to Nerdbunker about the game, revealing that while Gears 4 was the studio proving it could do the series justice, Gears 5 will be the opportunity to do something new, and show where it wants to take the series.

“Basically, it was a reaction to what we want to do with the franchise,” said Ferguson speaking about Gears 4. “We were a new team, a new studio, Gears was coming back after being on the shelf for a while, and we didn’t want to mess with the formula, we didn’t want to change it too much because we wanted to prove that we can build an authentic Gears of War experience. Now that we have done that and people have accepted Gears 4 now it is an opportunity with Gears 5 to bring in the new.”

Ferguson continued:

“We really want to show what we want to do with the franchise and where we want to take it; whether it is changing core mechanics, the way we do storytelling, or the way to make certain aspects around controls and gameplay, or whether it is reaching with new types mobile gameplay and tactics on PC.”

Gears 5 is poised to release sometime next year via the PC and Xbox One.