Xbox's Rod Fergusson Explains The Team's Original Plan For Gears 6

Leaving the planet could give them the freedom to do more.

I'm looking forward to E-Day but it would have been better to wrap up the current arc before doing something else.

E-Day feels like the sort of project that could have existed along side Gears 6. One of those "we took the last game and used it as a base" things. I think with ballooning budgets and extended dev time that sort of thing could help the wait between main entries.

So that is what they have been fanny about doing for the last 6 years in October 2025 since gears 5.
The luxury some of these teams have.

So who was the players choice? Let's hear the stats they have.

Gears 6 would have appealed to players familiar with the series. This is a fresh story. Perfect for attracting new players. Maybe 60 million of them with PlayStations…

Good they canned it sounds like 💩 would be nothing like gears hopefully a full franchise reboot because the coalition games have just gotten worse and moved more and more away from what the original trilogy was the failed that's why we are getting e day and not gears 6!

Let’s kill someone off in a choice that shouldn’t even be in a Gears game and have no idea how to go forward afterwards.

Great minds at work.

@BacklogBrad I saved JD because Kaits mate was incredibly boring.

I love the idea of a prequel and am very excited for it. So the new direction is great.

I also love the idea of humanity losing sera and being forced out to explore and/or regroup to retake sera. So many possibilities with the narrative side.

In halo earth was attacked and won, and in other games, you often take control in a post apocalyptic world(destiny,etc...) I cant recall a time where we controlled from pre to post within the direct gameplay.

@Secryt only problem with your story is that the game either not coming any time soon to make such a choice or was in production way before xbox started giving games to ps...

@GeorgeKal says who? Clearly they considered 6 and then pivoted. This move to multiplatform has been planned for a long time.

@Secryt says who? Your trust me bro source? Halo and Gears will never go to ps as long as there is an xbox console. If this multiplatform plan in your head was a thing they wouldn't need more than a year to buy Activision.

@GeorgeKal mmm ok. You keep telling yourself that shareholders are chill with them leaving millions in sales on the table just to say they have exclusives that by all numbers are not driving console sales. The only exclusive Xbox will end up with is GamePass.

I just want great games and Gears E-Day looks great so far!

@NeoRatt me too, and agreed.

While moving to another planet would have been interesting the story was very eh for 4 & 5, but the gameplay was fair which is all I really play Gears for anyway. 1-3 are ok but I barely get through 1 before I just shut it off. I haven't played 2 & 3 to end story in years, same with Judgement. Beat Gears 4's story and got what half way or 3/4 through 5 at a boss fight of sorts I think.

E Day even if 'eh another reboot' I do think it's what the series needs right now though. Mechanics better but fair story/tone, etc of 1-3.

I'm kind of annoyed Gears has followed the same as Halo, they get a new studio (which is a fair thing as these series get pushed to continue regardless and the other studios do whatever they want afterwards even if they go either way of if we as audiences care for those next projects) but they also just go oh this and that continuations and the execution in the most eh ways possible. They feel like they are trying but also not that into them and I can understand why. Then a reboot 6th entry like is so stupid. At least Forza Motorsport didn't have that problem but different type of game even though 5-7 are horrendous they still have more charm then 8 does even if not 1-4 excellence of the series of content and region system and other focus, they don't offer ambitious mechanics like other 1 off racersr I've researched and appreciate more but for what they do offer they are great.

Gears Tactics like Halo Wars I think was a good expansion to the universe and gameplay direction to offer, I haven't played it but I like tactics games and I'm yet to still try more of Halo Wars 2. I think it was a good refresh/trying something new for the series.

Gears to me had it not as bad as Halo, to me Halo had it way worse. 4 was ok, 5 was trying different things but just didn't seem right and to me Infinite was so 'trying way too hard to keep up with the industry' the same way 4's loadouts or other aspects or Resistance 2 disappoints me, like do studios even think outside the box or trend focused and just become so boring by the end product and being a mix of ideas they couldn't settle on.

Gears 4 and 5 to me weren't bad, sure the direction was odd and obvious why they went with Kate and the others like this but eh is what it is now I guess.

I thought the level design/ideas in both were fair, the open spaces didn't do much for me in 5 but was a fair idea.

E Day being a reboot depending how it goes about things will be interesting to see (tone, level design, atmosphere, characterisation and more) then more of 4 & 5's continuation that while fair wasn't what people really wanted.

To be honest I have barely replayed 1 to 3, I might replay Judgement just to get that different feel because it's not by Epic and was People Can Fly or Bulletstorm/Outriders and Outriders was...... touch and awkward but for cheap I gave it a go on and off. While Bulletstorm was so much better.

1-3 aren't bad I just don't find myself getting far into them as some shooters have different pacing of enemies or mechanics or level design/story that just made me care more to beat them not just the 'want to research and buy up the old competition 1 offs' as they were just more exciting to me even if some are pretty blend but still appealing enough. That's having not even gotten to Singularity, Inversion, Fracture or Haze with mechanics I really want to play in those games.

Old employees coming out and talking about what Gears 6 would have been feels like the next nail in the coffin of it ever happening. I was pretty sure there was no chance after the E-Day announcement, but this seals it up for sure.
E-Day launches on PlayStation (and Nintendo?) and if the remastered original trilogy ever happens, that goes too. But everything will just fade away as they go in a new direction.

My god, they have no good reason not to have made Gears 6 next. There are a million ways to easily stitch together a story about the Gears 5 "choice", play levels taking place during an E-Day via flashback, and go to space.

@Secryt mmm ok keep telling yourself they risked a 60+ billion acquisition for no reason...

@InvaderFromSpace “ Old employees coming out and talking about what Gears 6 would have been feels like the next nail in the coffin of it ever happening.”

What other employees have talked about Gears 6? Rod left The Coalition 3 month after Gears 5 in 2020… Any work on Gear 6 he did would been super early. So I wouldn’t use him as a baseline for it not happening.

@GeorgeKal you really truly think they spent that to somehow catchup with Sony? Naw bruh, they bought that to sell software. On every single piece of hardware they can get it on.

@Secryt do you really think they would waist so much time in court if they were going to port everything on ps? They could make a deal from the start if that was their plan and not waist millions and time to win.

@stinkyx a gears of war in space with a dead space aesthetic would be sick ! the one thing i want most from gears is for them to go back to the old look

I have played through Gears 5 multiple times and have killed off both characters several times each, so my stats would be meaningless. If choosing a particular character to be the one that survived or died was too difficult for the future of the franchise, then the choice should never have been given to the gamer.

Making a branching game is always challenging, but if the Coalition were not up to the challenge, then they should not have gone down that route.

I said when E-Day was announced that the likelihood was that it was to be the start of another trilogy, and that meant that there was a strong possibility that 6 would never be made, or if it was made that the game would be so many years off that it would be meaningless.

My honest feelings are that E-Day is being made so as to introduce the franchise to the PlayStation gamer. I think that E-Day will be a launch title for the NeXtBoX in 2026, and that after a year or so of exclusivity, E-Day will go over to the PS5/6. Games simply cost too much to make these days, and leaving an entirely untapped market the size of Sony's is not something that Microsoft is willing to do these days. The bean counters will be weighing up how much money a game draws into the Xbox ecosystem, and then weighing that up against how much it can make by releasing on the PlayStation too, and the truth is that it will make more money by going fully multiplatform than it will by staying as an exclusive. Much more! And that settles the argument as far as Microsoft are concerned. I'd love to be wrong, but don't think I will be...

I get that people want a return to the good ol' days of Gears of War, but I'm not so sure that people are going to get exactly what they want.

If it's just having Marcus as the lead, then sure, he'll be front and centre alongside his buddy Dom, and you'll be happy.

What you won't get though is Baird and Cole, Berserkers or Lambent. Many of the fan favourites that made 1-3 so loved will not be present in the new games, and some of the elements that people don't like in 4 and 5 will be present in E-Day because times have moved on from the period when 1-3 were made. So just as people have picked apart elements of 4 and 5, they will find fault in E-Day.

People have also mentioned the difference in look for 1-3 compared to 4 and 5, but even E-Day will look different because technology has moved on, and it's being made in a new engine, so even E-Day would have looked different to 5 just by virtue of being a newer game. You simply will not go back to a game looking and feeling exactly like the original games, and indeed, if you play 2 and 3, in particular, whilst good games, they do not play as well as 4 and 5.

Ultimately, many of those wanting a return to the fond memories of 1-3, and who disliked 4 and 5 so much, will still likely leave E-Day unfulfilled because that's the nature of gaming (and films) where capturing the essence of what made the originals so good remains elusive...

I've enjoyed all the gears games and I like the old and new characters. The only things I don't like is the semi open world sections in 5 and how OP the shotgun in multiplayer is. 5 turned into roll and blast with the shotgun, very annoying. Also the changes to horde mode suck aswell. I remember horde mode being much better in 2 and 3.

Also Hivebusters was amazing. The showed how you can do a story mode without semi open world sections in Gears 5.

Also hopefully they go back to calling it gears of war. I hate how 5 is called Gears 5. Personally I think it should be called Gears of War 5.

Sad Xbox was so quick to age out Marcus when he’s the face of the franchise which puts everything at risk with its fan base

That choice at the end of 5 was still one of the dumbest freaking things I've seen a dev do. Like the game overall, but that part was stupid and unnecessary.

@Fiendish-Beaver sadly i know this , but i still have hope everytime