The Gears franchise is a massive one for Xbox, and it has really become a staple IP for the company. With Gears of War from Epic Games, players received a new third-person shooter as humanity fought back against a new threat. Emerging from underground came new beasts that sought to eliminate life, prompting a new army force to fight for survival. With the game walking a delicate balance of being action and horror, it seemed like the installments that came after the initial trilogy started to lean more action-based.
One of the creative minds and developers behind the Gears of War franchise was Cliff Bleszinski. He’s often credited for his incredible work with the franchise, and recently he was featured in the XboxEra podcast. During this conversation, the topic of Gears of War and the lack of horror in the latter installments came up. According to Cliff, when Microsoft acquired the Gears of War franchise in 2014, Phil Spencer wanted to see the horror element make a return to the franchise. Of course, you can argue that this wasn’t the case when Gears of War 4 and Gears 5 launched into the marketplace in the years that followed.
We might not know precisely why we didn’t see more horror incorporated. But Cliff Bleszinksi did note that the initial plan when first developing Gears of War was close combat. There were plenty of games where the goal was to fire out an enemy miles away, but with Gears of War, they brought players close to an enemy. That alone could make for some scary situations when facing the locust. Meanwhile, before he departed from the franchise, Cliff also noted his pitch for the sequels. Essentially, it was a story move that focused on locust evolving.
Right now, we don’t have any indication of when we will see a new mainline Gears installment. But it should be interesting to see just what direction the developers end up taking Gears 6 when it does get an official announcement. With the power of Microsoft’s next-generation hardware, we can’t wait to see just how the studio ends up surpassing their previously released, Gears 5 installment that came out back in 2019. That particular installment is available on PC and Xbox One, while the Xbox Series X/S platforms received a port of the game in 2020.
