Xbox developer The Coalition took a pretty big turn earlier this year when it announced Gears of War E-Day rather than 'Gears 6', with the upcoming title serving as a prequel to the original Gears trilogy. However, at one stage, the studio did have plans for Gears 6 - plans that previous lead Rod Fergusson has now discussed on a recent podcast.
Speaking on IGN's Podcast Unlocked, the current Blizzard developer talked about his plans for the future of Gears, before leaving to work on Diablo 4. Rod says that the team was laying the groundwork for humans leaving the series' fictional planet of Sera - as hinted at by some of the Space tech laying around in Gears 5.
Here's a link to this Gears-specific podcast chatter:
Interestingly, Rod also talked about *SPOILER ALERT* that big life-or-death decision in Gears 5, and how the team hadn't fully figured out how that would all play out for the sequel. It sounds like The Coalition had the stats on how many players picked each character, and they were going to go with the fans' choice on whoever would survive.
For now at least, that doesn't need to be figured out, because Gears E-Day is going all the way back to the start of the Locust War - 14 years before the events of Gears of War. Even so, the team did say that it "isn't retreating" from the new Gears saga, so one day we may see how Gears 6's story plays out after all.