Weird to find a Gears argument thread instead of an anniversary thread.
Amazing amazing ad.
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lmfaooooo . I thought it was an anniversary thread at first and got confused by the first few comments 
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Goes to show how people really feel about it.
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I think Gears should continue, but I am more excited for The Coalition pushing the envelope not just with storytelling, but by legit proving to everyone that they can create the best narrative games around. Not just with Gears, but hopefully a new IP where Crump, Rayner, Penty and friends can show off their stuff.
Coaltion needs a new IP. And hopefully, Coalition can go beyond UE too, eventually
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A good wait is not needed, the Coalition isnāt 343.
If I had to add anything to this thread then its just that not every game MS makes is gonna be for everyone. The people who like Gears will continue to play and the ones who donāt might find something else.
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I do believe Gears should continue to exist, but they need a radical new direction for it.
The gameplay needs new meaningful mechanics, the cover system needs to be overhauled to be more natural, giving more freedom to the level design (taking out those well placed cover boxes).
The Gears universe has an absurd potential, sadly the games arenāt using it in their favor anymore.
Some new genre ideas.
Survival horror with dark souls like interconnected map.
Looter shooter with RPG elements.
Open world with mechs and tons of vehicles.
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Gears 6 just needs to come out and be pretty. Gamepass will do the rest.
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UE is pretty much already THIER engine, as some of them were litterally from Epic, and they have close relationships with Epic still, AND they customize the engine to go above and beyond for their needs.
Both Coalition and Ninja Theory get āspecial treatmentā type of stuff from Epicās Unreal Engine team.
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Agree. Unreal mastery is very much a part of their identity as a studio. If anyone is going to really push UE5 and show what it can do, itās the Coalition, and I want to see that.
It is an engine choice based on the legacy of Epic. I understand the close relationship with Epic. But that is only on the dev side. Xbox being the major customers of Epic is not recognized by Epic as much. --as shown by the Epic v Apple case. In fact, they try to associate Sony with Epic a lot more, despite most of them not using UE4.x or even UE5.
But my emphasis is that Colin and team are too talented to be restricted by a general purpose game engine.
But why? A first party studio has to be more than an engire like UE. That is such an artificial barrier introduced for a first party studio. I agree with you that they will push UE5 to the limit, and Iāve seen The Coalitionās dev talks at Epic events in GDC that can attest to it. But they can do even better and innovate faster with their own stuff.
I can understand UE5 being used for Gears 6 - due to the Epic legacy, but I hope they can fork a version of their own engine for a different IP-- to go the distance.
They are the go-to experts for UE5 and UE4.x in Xbox, but even that does not do justice to their talents. A separate tech ninja team can take those responsibilities over.
I just hope they either go all out with the open world concept or drop it altogether. Iād love to see the open world stuff get explored a lot more. I think itād be cool to see something like a massive open world with all kinds of different biomes and stuff, the group having to settle at an abandoned base which you have to build and grow for the duration of the campaign.
Would also love to see some of the weapon and armor customizing that Gears Tactics introduced. Schematics for different armors, weapon mods and base upgrades could be hidden throughout the open world, and used as rewards for side & main missions. I mean imagine random world events happening, out of nowhere you see in the distance a massive monster randomly spawning in, acting as a mini boss fight. While main missions could still be structured in a more linear way.
Those are some things I think they could add into an open world Gears campaign that would make things feel different without having to change the actual gameplay mechanics. Also like I said though I wouldnāt mind if they just dropped the open world stuff altogether.
Either way Iām excited for Gears 6, I think The Coalition is a great studio and I really enjoyed Gears 5 + Hivebusters, also something that a lot of people over looked is they developed Gears 5 in under 3 years. Honestly thats really impressive with all the content that game launched with.
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Resident Gears
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āBarrierā suggests that itās being forced on them from above, and I donāt get that sense. I also donāt get your presentation of Unreal being a limiting factor in game development. I donāt think it would be as widely used if it was a detriment to development.
Using a licenced engine like Unreal also has advantages when hiring, as new hires donāt need to learn a whole new engine, and can be hired for existing expertise.
Developing your own engine can have benefits, it can also have risks. You might end up with something industry leading like idtech, or Forzatech, or the Insomniac engine ā¦ or you might end up with a millstone around your neck.
I canāt be alone in suspecting that Slipspace is simply not up to scratch. It seems to me like 343i are breaking their backs to try and get Infinite look as good as they can but are held back by what the engine they are working with can actually deliver.
Thatās politics and business, both Sony and Microsoft benefit from Epic and benefit Epic at the same time. Donāt pay much attention to that.
Itās not like they use the engine vanilla. Itās part of their technical expertise.
They already do as I said. They fork and customize the engine to their needs. Will continue to do with every game.
Now that Unreal is addressing most of the developerās needs and a lot of them are in love with what Epicās showcased. I donāt see why the need to go and make your own engine, costing you so much time, money and manpower, and with unknown returns.
Iām willing to bet sometime later into the gen, weāll see studios that were known for their in-house engine actually start switching to UE5.
This is crucial as well. UE becoming more a universal knowledge in the industry means it will only get bigger and bigger as more games get made and more UE knowledge is required. At this rate, you canāt really make sense for making your own engine if you want to hire more talent and teams, because that just introduces new barriers and more time wasted on learning new engines.
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Gears will be associated with UE. The ābarrierā is by our opinions that they need to be associated with the engine ā that is why I said it is rather āartificialā.
From a dependency perspective, they are bound by whatever Epic designs and then work their way around it. It is an excelent engine no doubt, but a first party studio has a wealth of resources to have an engine direction and vision to be in lock-step with the architecture development. This particular generation, a UE5 release is so far behind the console releases, it is quite āunrealā, whereas idTech is already has a lot of the latest architectures almost implemented (not SFS or Parallel Mesh Renders, yet).
There is always some amount of feature bloat with such a good engine designed to be more general purpose than necessary. Whereas with a custom one, you can choose the direction of advancement and invention.
The millstone argument is actually valid, but game engine design has always been a part of some of the most decorated studios skill set, and with a good reason too ā they can show off the elements that they are able to accomplish using their own engine, without waiting for someone elseās release schedules.
(Versions of Craig not being available for different LOD distances can bring about doubts about Slipspace, but that is a different story, and tells me that the game artifacts were not implemented rather than Slipspace not being ready. )
Anyway, I think - we have veered too far off the main topic. 
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Cancel Gears 6 and get them to work as a support studio on other Xbox games.
I particularly would like to see more Gears of War, I think it is a franchise that already shown a great potential and it does have a loyal fanbase, but is suffering from a fadigue and bad choices to try to accommodate more ppl to it. Putting it in the refrigerator would be a mistake, instead of trying to reboot it, imo.
I honestly think Gear 4 and 5 are good games with good single player campaign and decent multiplayer variety. However, I think they should expand the open world component of the game for the campaign, go much deeper on what they did on Gear 5, which was like baby steps in that direction.
Another interesting thing could be investing more in pve component, creating a new modes mixing horde with elements of loot shooter, like a more expansive horde mode.
I feel like they tried to focused too much on pvp and esportes component, but gears mp component honestly is a love or hate relationship and very uninviting for new players at its current form.
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