It looks like The Coalition is getting ready to start pre-production on the next instalment in the Gears of War franchise. According to two job listings posted on the Microsoft Careers website, Gears 6 could be in the works very soon.
According to the postings, The Coalition is looking to hire both a Story Director and a Live Design Director for Gears of War. The Story Director role was posted back in early March, while the Live Design Director role has been advertised since mid-December. Both advertisements state that the studio’s main objective is to “forge the future of the IP” and give some insight into what players may be able to expect from the potential Gears 6 game.
Back in May last year, The Coalition shared a blog post explaining that the studio would be moving to use Unreal Engine 5 as they “look to future games”. However, they also made it clear that players shouldn’t be expecting an update on Gears 6 at that point. “Shifting to a new engine is a big undertaking, so we want to be clear that we will not be announcing any new projects or titles for some time,” they stated, whilst ending their post by teasing that they were “eager to get to work and show you what we’re working on when the time is right”.
Almost a year on from that update, and it looks like things are clearly moving steadily forward with the development of Gears 6. According to the Live Design Director job listing, fans can still expect to see multiplayer playing a big part in the next Gears game, as the selected candidate will be needed to “work with your design team and cross discipline groups to guide engaging PVE and PVP experiences from concept to completion.”
In terms of the game’s narrative, the Story Director will be expected to oversee the overall story building of the game. Additionally, the listing puts an emphasis on “building character driven stories”, which means we should hopefully get to stick with Kait Diaz and Marcus Fenix for the continuation of the cliffhanger players were left on at the end of Gears 5.
As for any further details, we’ll just have to wait and see.
