An upcoming Gears of War game is now in development at Black Tusk Studios. Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, said he wants the game to recapture the essence of the older game releases, which would mean going back to the year 2006.
When Microsoft acquired the franchise from Epic Games earlier this year, the game's future developments were handed over to Black Tusk Studios. Despite the transition and the underwhelming reception to Judgment, the game managed to keep its throngs of dedicated fans. For these reasons, Spencer believes that the game has no need to be rebooted.
"I wouldn't call it a reboot because I don't think the franchise necessarily needs that," said Spencer. "I think we can make sure that we're investing in this thing for the next decade, which is how I want to think about it."
Rod Fergusson was the executive producer at Epic Games and was responsible for creating the original Gears of War trilogy. In January, he joined Black Tusk as the company's studio manager. He was followed later on by Stephen Toulouse, Microsoft's old Xbox Live enforcement boss and Jonathan Taylor, former Epic Games test lead.
Gears of War: Judgment in 2013 was the franchise's most recent release. The game, which was developed by People Can Fly, received a lukewarm welcome.
"I know Judgment didn't hit everybody's needs and desires in terms of what they wanted," said Spencer.
The Gears of War game is based on using cover and strategic fire in order for the player to move on to the next scenarios. It allows a second player to play cooperatively to give some assistance through the game's main campaign. It also features a number of online multiplayer game modes, which can be a maximum of eight players.
While it is true that the Gears of War series had a strong and confident start and seemed to be going where it aimed to go, Spencer thought that the subsequent titles were like parodies of the earlier versions.
"The thing that was great about the early Gears of War games, to me, was just the epic scale of the settings that I was in," said Spencer. "The story, the setting was a lot more what I would call soulful and maybe even a little dark.
The new Gears of War game is now in the very early stages of development. It is getting ready for the Xbox One and bears no concrete title yet.
