If you didn’t know already, earlier in the year Microsoft bought the rights to the Gears of War franchise from its original developer Epic Games, and handed the games responsibility over to Balck Tusk Studios. Microsoft then appointed Rod Fergusson, former director of production at Epic to help Black Tusk bring the franchise to Xbox One. The wake of these revelations Rod had this to save about developing the games sequels
“It’s the same thing with all sequels,” he told OXM.”This isn’t a great way of phrasing it, but I always talk about shipping a sequel to customers as ‘managing betrayal’. They want something new but they don’t want something so new that it doesn’t feel like what they want. But if you put out something that’s very familiar and is the same as the game they just had, then it’s like ‘I’ve already had this. This isn’t new enough.'”
He’s talking about balancing new aspects to bring to the franchise whilst keeping the old flavour of the game alive.
“You actually have to betray them enough to give them something new and surprising but not so much that they disconnect, and I think that is a big thing that we have to focus on. It’s how we can innovate and bring something new to the franchise while at the same time really proving that we understand Gears – that this is the franchise that you know and love. So I’ve already given multiple speeches to the team like ‘here are the core tenets of Gears, here are the things that won’t be changing, and here are opportunities for us to innovate that we think we can knock out of the park.'”
Microsoft head Phil Spencer said that the company has no plans to rush the next Gears of War installment onto the Xbox One, and that it wants to allow Black Tusk enough time to evolve the series gameplay, which is a good thing if I do say so myself.
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