Studio Manager Rod Fergusson recently revealed that the next Gears of War title is still well into the ‘concept/prototype stage’ over at Black Tusk Studios, the new holder of the IP.
“It’s only been 100 days,” he said during the studio’s podcast. “I can’t go into a lot of depth about a lot of things. This isn’t going to be the place where I announce the name of the next game and all these sorts of things. Obviously it’s going to take some time to get to a point where we can do some stuff like that.”
The only hard detail of Gears 4 we have to go on is a laughably blurry bit of concept art which was shown during the cast—blurry to no fault of Black Tusk, but to the stubborn focusing of the camera used for the cast. With that said, it’s not unreasonable to expect the game to pop up during Microsoft’s E3 presentation; at the very least, Black Tusk may be able to throw together a vague but enticing teaser trailer a la Uncharted PS4.
Fergusson also spoke to the differences in development that the IP has seen since switching hands, from creator Epic Games to Microsoft, who then assigned it to Black Tusk.
“The hardest part is getting everyone up to speed here on how you make a Gears game,” he said. “I mean, everyone here is a Gears fan, everybody’s played the games and loves the games, but there’s a certain style—the way you have to think when you make a Gears of War game. That’s been the hardest part; there’s a lot of rules and ways and design methodologies and pillars and the way we think about the franchise.”
It seems Microsoft owning the IP—that is, the financial freedom they provide—has been a boon to the series, allowing the studio “to push a lot harder in a lot of bigger areas.”
“The franchise can do a lot more now that Microsoft owns the IP,” Fergusson added.
