Diablo 4 Boss’ Original Plan For Gears 6 Was Space Travel
It’s been five years since the last Gears games, and while Gears of War: E-Day was announced at Microsoft’s last big Xbox Showcase, there’s no word on if and when The Coalition will be continuing work on the story left behind in Gears 5. That game’s executive producer, Rod Ferguson, recently shared what his plan was for the sequel at the time, and it’s not at all what I was expecting.
One of the final open-world exploration sections of Gears 5 revolves around exploring an old space program that belonged to the UIR in order to re-launch a Hammer of Dawn that can be used to fight off the resurgent Locust. It’s one of the most beautiful sections of the game, complete with impressive sandstorms, striking industrial ruins, and Mars-like red sandscapes. Ferguson said on the latest episode of IGN’s Podcast Unlocked that this was The Coalition tipping its hand to what he had in mind for Gears 6.
“At the highest level, I was just getting us off [the planet of Sera],” he said regarding early planning docs for the sequel. “So Gears 6 was to leave Sera, and so that was something we were building to. If you watch the story, if you pay attention to the story in Gears 5, you kind of come across that UIR rocket technology and that kind of stuff we were laying the seeds and the groundwork that by taking over this UIR territory, we’ve also kind of inherited their space program. So what I wanted to do with Gears 6 was to get you off Sera to encounter what that could mean for the rest of the galaxy or at least the rest of the solar system.”
Ferguson, who left The Coalition in 2020 shortly after Gears 5 launched and is currently leading Diablo IV at Blizzard, said that space exploration would have been less like Mass Effect than the Sputnik era of the 1950s space race. Presumably, travel would be slow, costly, and strategic. It no doubt would have introduced new alien enemy types as well, potentially introducing some interesting sci-fi mysteries about the origins of human and Locust life on Sera.
The industry veteran suggested those ideas, which didn’t sound like anything more than a pitch document at the time, were scrapped as The Coalition works instead on mining Gears’ past with a prequel centered around Emergence Day, the franchise’s version of the Invasion of Normandy when millions of Locust came out of holes in the ground to attack humanity, eventually leading to the use of weapons of mass destruction that ended up crippling Sera’s surface-dwelling nations.
Gears 5 also ended with a cliffhanger related to a choice about which main character to rescue, the consequences of which would seemingly get hashed out in Gears 6. It sounded like the plan was for the most popular choice among players to become the canonical one. Though, at the rate the franchise is going, it could be years before fans get to see that play out in a game.
Black Ops 6, As Told By Steam Reviews
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is, understandably, a pretty big deal. The franchise has been in a bit of a lull lately, despite routinely setting new sales records, and this game especially needed to be a slam dunk given its unique position. As the first Call of Duty game to release on Game Pass following Microsoft’s purchase of Activision—which itself has been followed by numerous disastrous layoffs—Black Ops 6 has been touted as a return to form for the series, as well as for its embattled publisher. The status of its probable release on Game Pass was debated for months until it was finally confirmed, and now it’s Microsoft’s single greatest chance to bolster the stagnant subscription service and make good on promises.
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Recent installments in the franchise like Modern Warfare III, Vanguard, and Black Ops Cold War have been met with a decidedly more tepid reception than, say, 2019’s Modern Warfare or even the battle royale game Warzone. It almost seems like with every new entry of late the series has strayed from the desires of its outsized and fairly casual audience. Call of Duty is, after all, one of those games that most people pick up once a year and play till the next one comes along, much like a sports game. Folks who play those games tend to want refinements of core principles rather than drastic or convoluted reinventions.
All of which is to say, Black Ops 6’s return-to-basics approach was a welcome bit of news among the cacophony of showcases, directs, and overbearing blog posts about why this game would be the best Call of Duty ever. After MWIII’s flop of an open-ended campaign, Black Ops 6 doubled down on having a cinematic, blockbuster story mode like the best in the series have offered. Its iteration on Zombies feels like a healthy mixture of new and classic features and mechanics. Even the multiplayer feels sensibly pared back, and it restores tenets that fans have missed, like the prestige system. Treyarch and Xbox clearly want us to think that Call of Duty is “back,” but is it really?
According to the reviews that Black Ops 6 is accruing on Steam, the answer’s a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no. Fans seem to generally agree that the campaign here is better than average, and some are even calling it the best story mode in a COD game in years. And of course there are players who have cherished the simplified renditions of both the competitive multiplayer suite and the cooperative Zombies mode, myself included. As is always going to be the case with a series this big and this polarizing, though, the more you look, the more people you’ll find who are disappointed in some of the game’s features.
One of the biggest problems many seem to have with Black Ops 6 actually has little to do with the game itself and more to do with the packaging, specifically the launcher, Call of Duty HQ. While the tool has been reworked since its initial release, it isn’t significantly better, and it seems to be even worse on PC, where fans of the series seem to hate it more than I do! One review joked that Black Ops 6 is actually a “game is updating simulator.”
Elsewhere, Black Ops 6’s various modes are causing division. Some are appreciating their time with the competitive multiplayer suite, but there are also repeated mentions of terrible maps and spawns throughout the reviews. Having played the beta extensively, as well as jumping in after launch, I can kind of agree that there don’t seem to be any unilateral winners among the crop of multiplayer arenas available right now. Zombies has enjoyed a more positive reception than multiplayer, but still there are players who are unhappy with the settings and crying out for more ambient (spookier) maps in the future.
Overall, Black Ops 6 seems to be earning its “Mixed” reception on Steam. It isn’t the greatest game, but it’s a perfectly fine and fun middling title, and that’s about all I need from it to have a great time. The divisiveness surrounding the game is at least producing some good material in the Steam reviews page, though, so read it and weep.
