20 Years of Gears: A Tribute to Gears of War and a Look at What's Ahead

It's hard to believe, but Gears of War came out a whopping two decades ago.

It seems like just yesterday that the original's somber trailer, set to the tune of Gary Jules' rendition of "Mad World", captivated audiences the world over on our old television sets and the unveiling of the iconic Lancer's chainsaw bayonet set the gaming world on fire.

If you haven't already seen them on my Instagram or X pages, I've put out a series of videos celebrating the franchise's anniversary, which can all be viewed in this playlist on my YouTube channel.

Included are reimagined versions of classic Gears trailers using footage from Gears of War: E-Day, such as the afforementioned Mad World trailer (and an extended cut version), the Rendezvous with Death trailer from Gears of War 2, and Dust to Dust from Gears of War 3; a Vraahk the Impaler promo set to Johnny Cash's "Hurt"; a VHS found-footage style trailer for E-Day's Halloween update; a tribute to Marcus and Dom's journey from the original trilogy; and a tribute to all of the main games in the franchise.

As one can no doubt surmise, I'm a big fan of Gears of War and have been since it came out way back in November of 2006.

From the time it was first previewed in gaming magazines to excitedly watching the Mad World trailer every time it played on TV, it was clear to me and many gamers around the world that Gears of War would be something special.

While I didn't have the money to buy it (I was just 12 at the time), I did convince my parents to rent it for me from Blockbuster when it came out, and like so many gamers of that era, once I popped that disc into my Xbox 360, there was no going back.

While games like Call of Duty 2 and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter had excellent graphics and were a clear upgrade from the last generation of consoles, for most gamers it was Gears of War that was the first game to truly feel like it was the "next generation" of gaming.

Like its previous shooters in Unreal and Unreal Tournament, Epic Games' new blockbuster was meant not only to sell copies, but to showcase their in-house developed Unreal Engine, which would later become one of the most powerful and widely used game engines in the industry.

In fact, Gears of War originally began life as a first-person shooter named Unreal Warfare before they changed the game's perspective, mechanics, and ultimately its name.

Gears of War would be a showcase for the third iteration of Epic's tools even if it lacked the "Unreal" branding in its title, which would not coincidentally be the iteration of their engine that spread like wildfire across the industry and led UE3 to becoming the most prominent engine used by major developers during that era.

Not only was Gears of War's visuals superb, but its presentation was next-level, with a cinematic feel videogames simply hadn't achieved before.

Its cover-based gameplay mechanics were revolutionary and would become the foundation for countless third-person action games going forward.

The unique blend of high-octane action and strategic, squad-focused cover shooting was a revelation, and its focus on single-life modes for its multiplayer offering truly stood out from the crowd and made it an instant classic.

Its sound design was similarly top-notch, from the roar of a chainsaw as it cut through a foe to the ultra-satisfying pop of a headshot to the gravelly shouts of the game's main character, Marcus Fenix.

While its over-the-top gore and testosterone-soaked action stole the limelight when it came to outside observers, its world building and surprisingly deep story crafted a tale of desperation, survival, and camaraderie pulling people through even the bleakest of times that resonated with players and built the foundation for one of the greatest trilogies in gaming history.

The lengthy campaign could also be experienced in its entirety with a buddy over Xbox Live, with the joining player taking over control of Dominic Santiago and cementing the bond between the game's two main characters.

Gears of War boldly demanded attention from the first time the world saw its now-iconic Lancer assault rifle, which featured a fucking chainsaw bayonet attached to it, yet it proved to be far more than a game with a cool gimmick, instead becoming one of the biggest franchises of the Xbox 360/PS3 era.

Even the fact that the game lacked a matchmaking system for its multiplayer component, something that had become the standard thanks to Halo 2's revolutionary party-based system back in 2004, seemed to just make it even more memorable.

Playing with a squad of buddies became a game within a game as you coordinated finding or hosting a match with enough slots open so you could get on the same team as your friends in the old lobby system, something that is now considered a relic of the past thanks to matchmaking.

I was absolutely enthralled with the game from the opening chapter, "14 Years After E-Day", equally lost in the campaign's theme of destroyed beauty and the Gnasher-fests that were its versus mode.

So much so that I convinced my dad to let me keep renting the game long after its initial 5-day period was up (thanks to Blockbuster's $1 a day extension policy, good ol' Blockbuster).

When I finally had to return the game, it became an agonizing wait to get my own copy for Christmas, but as always Santa came through so I could slaughter grubs en masse over the holiday break and well into the new year.

Back then, during that golden age of gaming, sequels tended to come out a lot quicker than nowadays, with Gears of War 2 arriving just two years later.

As the then-face of Epic Games, Cliff "Cliffy B" Bleszinski, boasted, their mantra for the sequel was to make it "bigger, better, and more badass", and boy did they deliver.

Its expanded 5-on-5 multiplayer made bigger battlegrounds the norm and additions like chainsaw duels and picking up downed enemies to use as "meat shields" indeed brought more badassery into the mix, yet its story was even more heavy and engaging than ever.

One may not expect a title that features hulking, muscle-bound soldiers with massive armour that wield guns with chainsaws attached to them to have one of the deepest and most emotionally engaging stories in gaming, yet that was Gears of War 2 - its campaign brilliantly explored tragedy, the horrors of war, and even suicide in a shockingly dark story.

I won't spoil it in case there are still people who haven't played it (if you haven't played through the original trilogy before, you owe it to yourself to do so), but Gears 2 features one of the most heart-wrenching story arcs you'll find in any medium.

Despite at times having such a deep and dark tone, it still manages to impart a feeling of hope and brotherhood, and that bond between soldiers (or your friends over Xbox Live) was highlighted even further thanks to the addition of its brilliant Horde mode.

Taking a 5-player squad and dropping them into one of its multiplayer maps, in Horde mode players fought together to survive against increasingly difficult waves of Locust enemies comprised of all the various enemy units from the campaign (it even included boss fights).

As your squad made it to higher waves (there was a total of 50 to fight through on each map), teamwork and communication became vital as mere survival became the main focus rather than racking up kills or padding your stats.

It was a brilliant addition that has spawned countless similar modes in games of all genres ever since, and part of what cemented Gears of War 2 as the best game in the franchise in the eyes of many gamers.

With Halo 3 coming out in the fall of 2007 followed by Gears of War 2 in 2008, the pair of blockbusters cemented the Xbox 360 as the undisputed king of multiplayer gaming back then, and combined with other classics of that generation, have made its era arguably the most beloved of any in gaming history.

I for one will never forget jumping for joy on more than one morning thanks to getting a snow day from school (where I lived, we had a particularly snowy winter in '08), and spending all day playing versus (which now had matchmaking) or fending off countless waves of grubs in Horde matches with my buddies, a process which repeated itself throughout winter break and well into the new year.

With Gears of War 2 also came Epic Games' choice to expand the Gears universe with a series of novels from Karen Traviss, who also wrote the excellent Star Wars: Republic Commando books and the Kilo Five trilogy for Halo's extensive book series.

Traviss' books (all five of which are superb by the way; if you're a fan of the games, or just military/sci-fi novels in general, you will not be disappointed) not only expanded the intriguing world that Epic had crafted, but introduced compelling new characters and explored events that are referenced but never experienced in the games, such as the Pendulum Wars which was a lengthy war between human factions that concluded just before the Locust invasion.

Epic Games clearly liked her work too as they brought Traviss in as the lead writer for Gears of War 3, which released in 2011.

Once again, Epic Games delivered in spades, releasing a polished and confident finale to their monumental saga.

The studio pushed the now-aging Xbox 360 hardware to its limits with its visuals and expanded environments, and while the third game didn't innovate in the same way its predecessors did in terms of gameplay, it delivered a lengthy, epic campaign filled with blockbuster set pieces and excellent storytelling alongside a confident and feature-rich multiplayer suite, and of course an expanded Horde mode which now featured base-building elements to keep things fresh.

Its legendary campaign featured one of the most devastating character deaths in gaming history, introduced characters from the novels in a manner that made them just as compelling to gamers who never read the books as they were to avid fans of the novels, and provided a brilliant conclusion to the trilogy that many still regard as the greatest game in a series with incredibly stiff competition.

After the wildly successful release, Epic Games clearly felt it had concluded the story it wanted to tell in the Gears universe, but Microsoft understandably wanted more; when you have a franchise that's selling over six million copies for each game despite only being available on a single console, no publisher is going to want that gravy train to come to a stop.

It was a situation eerily similar to the one Bungie had found itself in with Halo, which had begun to play out just a few years prior as Bungie delivered a final few games for Microsoft in order to leave Microsoft's ownership and become an independent studio.

In this case however, Epic Games was already independent and owned the IP themselves so they were in the driver's seat - while they wanted to work on other projects, they couldn't say no to more Microsoft money, so they chose instead to farm out production of the next Gears title to a talented Polish studio in People Can Fly.

This would of course work out swimmingly for Epic Games as they went on to release Fortnite just a few years later, which I'm sure anyone reading this knows is one of the biggest money-makers in gaming history.

It wasn't quite as smooth-sailing for the Gears of War franchise however.

The Polish developers who had previously put out 2004 cult classic Painkiller, ported the original Gears of War to PC in 2007, and developed the surprise 2011 FPS hit BulletStorm crafted their fully-featured entry in the Gears universe in well under two years' time, which is an impressive feat in itself.

Rather than a direct continuation, their game, dubbed Gears of War: Judgement, was a prequel which focused on Damon Baird of Delta Squad fame as its main character, with the beloved "Cole Train" Augustus Cole at his side, along with two new characters to round out "Kilo Squad".

Judgement took place shortly after the universe's "Emergence Day" and while it didn't reach the heights of Epic's trilogy, it was an admirable first effort especially given its truncated development cycle.

People Can Fly tried adding some new twists to the Gears formula, some which didn't work, but some that did (like their version of Horde which turned it into a PvPvE mode where one side played the traditional COG squad of survivors, while the other side could take control of various different Locust characters as they fought alongside AI to try and take out the Gears), though its adjustments to gameplay, particularly in its versus mode, drew the ire of much of the fanbase.

Though many players were particularly harsh and unforgiving, Judgement wasn't a bad game at all, it just didn't live up to its predecessors and its developers weren't given the time they needed to fully flesh out their ideas.

Combined with a rather weak marketing push, especially when compared to the epic ad campaigns that accompanied the previous Gears games, Judgement didn't come close to the prior titles in sales and was considered a disappointment, although it eventually managed to sell two million copies (which sounds impressive but is less than a third than either of the previous two games).

This led to Epic Games deciding to simply sell the rights to the Gears of War IP outright to Microsoft in 2014, allowing them to focus entirely on other projects while Microsoft could steer the series in any direction they saw fit.

With their prized IP now in hand, Microsoft tasked Black Tusk Studios, a recently formed first party development house in Vancouver, BC, with spearheading the Gears of War franchise from then on.

Given their new reins over the Gears universe, Black Tusk was appropriately renamed The Coalition and set to work right away, with their first release coming in 2015 in the form of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, an excellent remaster of the original game which brought its nearly decade-old graphics up to par with the best-looking games of 2015 on the Xbox One (and on PC), and also added matchmaking to its multiplayer suite.

A year later saw their first proper entry into the franchise in Gears of War 4, a sequel that came with a drastic 25-year time jump from the conclusion of Gears of War 3.

Players stepped into the boots of J.D. Fenix, the son of the original trilogy's chief protagonist Marcus, in a brand new adventure that introduced a new main enemy faction called the Swarm, alongside a new squad rounded out by Kait Diaz and Delmont Walker, while also including plenty of characters from the past games (an elder Marcus joins the squad for a good chunk of the story, plus appearances from the likes of Baird and Cole).

It was a good and fully-featured first outing, though not without its qualms - the robotic faction dubbed "DeeBees", while providing something different to fight initially, quickly grew tiresome as they were nowhere near as compelling or interesting to fight compared to the series' organic opposition, and the new characters who were supposed to be the heart and soul of the game simply didn't resonate with fans in the same way the returning legends did, often feeling like generic and stiff placeholders that most fans simply didn't care much about.

While its campaign's lighter tone was a bit underwhelming, its multiplayer and particularly Horde components were strong, with Horde expanded with a class-based system and more tower defense-style fortifications to deepen the beloved mode.

It may not have had a story that was memorable in the same way as earlier entries, but it was a solid first outing from the studio and had strong foundations to build on.

Its sequel, the simply titled Gears 5 that arrived in 2019, did a better job with its campaign, this time focusing on Kait Diaz's journey, and while the writing still wasn't the best, its campaign wove in more dark elements and also integrated semi-open world areas which were a neat addition to break up the typical linear missions.

The Coalition still had a problem with writing compelling characters however - though Kait was better than the rather cookie-cutter JD Fenix, none of the newer characters stood out like so many of the prior characters from both the games and Karen Traviss' excellent novels - from Delta Squad's iconic members to General Hoffman to Tai Kaliso to Dizzy Wallin, the older titles simply had so many great and memorable characters that the new saga seemed to completely lack.

The gameplay however was a strong suit, and despite the franchise no longer being made by Epic Games, The Coalition still provided perhaps the best marketing for the Unreal Engine that one could buy as the game looked and played fantastically in the latest iteration of Epic's ubiquitous engine.

The multiplayer was a strong focus and once again Horde was improved and expanded upon, with those components easily being able to hold their own against the original trilogy even if the story still wasn't able to get there.

In addition to the already meaty core features came a new co-op mode dubbed "Escape" - it was a three-player offering where players could choose one member of Scorpio Squad to embark on missions to infiltrate Swarm hives, plant a toxic venom bomb inside said hive, then stay ahead of the spreading poison in a race to escape impending death.

It was an interesting concept that encouraged chaotic runs for safety and released alongside a map building tool which allowed players to design and share their own layouts for hives.

Despite the map tools, the concept did however grow stale with many players and didn't enjoy the same kind of engagement as its classic Horde or PvP components did.

A short story DLC released a year later, dubbed Hivebusters, which served to flesh out Scorpio Squad, though again its characters remained less compelling than any of the ones from Epic Games' tenure.

The biggest misstep however was in Gears 5's ending, which for some odd reason included a major decision to be made by players, introducing an RPG-like option to save one character that would in turn cause another to perish.

Considering the Gears games have always had a linear narrative, it was an odd inclusion that really complicated a sequel - keeping both options creates a branching narrative that is both more difficult and labour intensive to build and in this case doesn't seem worth the headaches, while proceeding off of just one of those choices as "cannon" makes including the choice in the first place completely useless.

Unfortunately for those that are invested in The Coalition's saga, the continuation of that story has been relegated to the backburner.

After 2020's Hivebusters, The Coalition laid low for years, instead serving as a crucial support studio for various other Microsoft-owned developers during that time, lending their expertise with the Unreal Engine in particular to various other titles as it slowly put together the next entry in its own franchise.

That entry would of course be Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel that begins at the start of it all - the very day the Locust Horde first rose from their underground tunnels to begin their campaign of slaughter against humanity.

The Coalition opted not just to return to the series roots, but to rebuild every asset from the ground up for the prequel, in what insider leaks appear to indicate was a move designed not only to once again push Gears to become one of the most impressive games on the market, but to make developing sequels (and possibly campaign expansions) much quicker and easier for the developers to churn out.

For a more thorough dive into E-Day, you can check out my mostly glowing review of the latest Gears game here.

They certainly delivered an impressive campaign that is easily the best they've put out, and E-Day is the best Gears game since Gears of War 3 came out 15 years ago.

When it comes to the campaigns in The Coalition's entries in the series, their biggest problem has been in creating compelling characters that resonate with players, and that problem has unfortunately come to a head in E-Day.

With a prequel that focuses on the well-established Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, The Coalition mostly sidestepped this issue, yet in doing so risked an even bigger problem if they had in some way ruined one of those iconic characters - luckily, not only are Marcus and Dom well-written and true to their prior characterizations, but others like the returning Tai Kaliso and Gill Gettner, who makes her videogame debut after being featured prominently in multiple novels, are all respected and true to form.

Ironically, The Coalition did improve in many ways thanks to the introduction of a few great new characters, particularly with the Kemara twins Mako and Manu, who are hilarious and ooze charisma.

Other supporting characters, like Commander Zander "Zee" Carmine, are also solid additions, yet The Coalition shot themselves in the foot with some out of place DEI-infused writing which is forced into a universe where it certainly doesn't belong and came at possibly the worst time given the current community sentiment in gaming.

It's hard not to notice that nearly every leadership position is filled with women or "minorities" (or both) that are portrayed as morally righteous, competent and brave, from Mayor Isabel Shaw to Captain Akila Grey to "Auntie" Joyce; the clearly "evil" human characters, such as the extremely one-note caricature Colonel Elias Trench, are played by old white men of course.

They even retcon who invented the iconic Lancer in the Gears universe; though it's understandable they needed to massage the cannon a bit in order to include the iconic chainsaw in a prequel, instead of having Marcus' father Adam Fenix design the famous Lancer after Marcus complains about the original Lancer's flimsy bayonet, they have a new black character, Sergeant Major Hank Rustin, create the weapon in a rather ham-fisted fashion.

Rustin's character is barely in the game outside of his creation of the new Lancer, but The Coalition (minor spoiler alert) sees fit to dedicate an entire scene to his off-screen death as if it carries any emotional weight, when the player has no reason whatsoever to care for the character and sees him for a total of maybe 30 seconds before his demise.

More importantly, Bravo Squad, which is of course led by Marcus with Dom by his side, is rounded out by two other Gears - Lucas Reyes, who is technically not a "new" character as he and his brothers are referred to multiple times in the old games and books, and Mags Carter.

Reyes is a fine addition and effectively takes the role of the squad's noobie who is learning on the job, but also proves useful with his comms engineering experience.

Carter however, is a poorly shoehorned-in DEI addition that has, and I'm not exaggerating here, single-handedly cost Microsoft millions of dollars.

Mags is a butch black woman who was medically discharged for developing rustlung (kind of like severe asthma and is the Gears equivalent to old coal miners getting sick from working in the mines), is missing one eye that was taken in battle, and is forced back into service when the Locust attack.

Streamers and the like quickly showcased the poorly written character and some laughably bad scenes (most of which are early in the game, which certainly doesn't help with first impressions) involving her that spread online like wildfire and turned many gamers off of the game entirely.

Combined with The Coalition including twenty different "LGBTQ+" flags to customize player profiles with that include flags that supposedly represent genders and sexualities no sane person has ever even heard of, it was no wonder that the game was quickly labelled as woke and thus turned off a large portion of their core player base in order to "include" a minuscule fraction of it.

It was clear the writers were bending over backward to portray Mags as a badass "girl boss", even making her the one who cannonically discovered throwing frag grenades into e-holes causes them to collapse in another cringe-worthy section.

Given the current state of gaming, it was a tone-deaf decision to include and one has to wonder if the fact the head writer for E-Day was laid off a week before launch was related to this kind of not-so-subtle "inclusion".

When you have a game with a dedicated core audience that is very clearly against such activism, trying to force it on them anyway is about as stupid a business decision as one can make and unfortunately has blown up in The Coalition's face, overshadowing the fact that it's still an amazing game in spite of this major misstep and easily the best Gears campaign since Gears of War 3 released 15 years ago.

So what's next?

Despite the PR blunder that The Coalition put themselves in, the franchise is really in a great place for its future.

While Gears 5's ending and its story being left on the backburner for 7 years and counting may seem to have stalled the series, E-Day's excellent campaign has positioned itself perfectly to turn the prequel into its own sub-series.

There is a 14-year time gap between the end of E-Day and the start of the original Gears of War, meaning they can rather easily turn E-Day into a trilogy and continue with Marcus and Dom's journey without requiring any retconning.

Rectifying the "woke" label is as easy as removing Mags from a potential sequel (which is simple since they can just reassign a different Gear to join the squad) and not throwing in any silly virtue-signaling flags.

Given The Coalition's efforts to build the game not just as a standalone title but as a foundation for future games that will be much quicker to develop, the door is also open for major story expansions which should be a priority for Microsoft's AAA titles.

While people have spoken ad nauseum about how Game Pass' Day One releases for first-party games are "killing" Xbox, they ignore that Game Pass is raking in billions of revenue each year and if they removed Day One releases entirely, they'd lose a ton of Ultimate-level subscribers which drive that revenue.

Instead, Microsoft simply has to adjust their monetization scheme (or more aptly, lack of one, as new CEO Asha Sharma has already pointed out) for their flagship titles, something they've already been doing for quite some time with Forza Horizon yet have failed to do with any other franchise.

Ironically, Halo Infinite, which ended up effectively destroying a studio, had the right original plans, but 343 Studios was so inefficient and poorly managed that it completely failed to implement said plans.

That is - develop a core game with great foundations and a strong sandbox, then release substantial campaign expansions while keeping the multiplayer/PvE components alive with regular updates.

Multiplayer cosmetics are all well and good and if done well can make multiplayer updates profitable, but it's major expansions that Microsoft should be focusing on for its AAA titles, leveraging the assets that these major games have already built to release a substantial campaign at a fraction of the cost that a sequel generally takes to develop and market.

Throw in some related cosmetics for the multiplayer component and you can easily release it at a $40-50 price point. Add in a small discount or some additional goodies for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers who purchase the expansion, and you can easily convert many of those Game Pass players who didn't shell out anything extra before to play the game on the service.

E-Day is perfect to implement this kind of strategy - a story expansion following Theta Squad during the events of E-Day is practically begging to be made.

With the bickering islanders Mako and Manu stealing the show in E-Day whenever they're on screen, a campaign with the two led by the beloved vet Tai Kaliso would be perfect and if rumours are to be believed, may already be in development.

The campaign can feature the squad and their run-ins with Bravo Squad throughout E-Day's story, and culminate with the important event that occurs off-screen at the end of E-Day which I won't spoil here.

There's also a ton of potential for expansions to explore the Pendulum Wars (or perhaps include such settings as flashback sections in a sequel), or even put players in the Locust's shoes during their war against the Lambent.

For a franchise like Gears, it can support yearly content releases if done properly - a new campaign expansion every year, replaced by a sequel in years where one is ready for launch.

To solve their issue with writing, which I'm sure Microsoft is going to want to see addressed given the PR hit the game took, I'd also suggest hiring Karen Traviss to lead the writing team.

She has proven to know how to write for the Gears universe better than anyone else, is already acutely familiar with the franchise, and unlike The Coalition can write women characters that don't draw the ire of nearly the entire fanbase in the process.

The Coalition and Microsoft was given a pretty clear message by the gaming community, yet they really don't need to do much to rectify things - if they're paying any attention, they should already have a clear blueprint to a winning formula for the series going forward, but only time will tell if The Coalition will take the ball and run with it, or ignore said community and fumble it like certain other studios (*cough* 343 *cough*) have done in recent times.