It has now been five years since the release of Gears 5 which I reviewed a few months after release here. Although acknowledging that the visual design and gameplay was very good, I was critical of the narrative direction and the ignorance (deliberate or otherwise), of the game’s writers. As the game was released on Xbox Game Pass (which is how I played it), it is hard to work out whether it was a commercial success but I would guess it didn’t make back its budget. The claim it was played by three million on launch is less impressive when you remember that many of these people could have paid as little as $1 for the introductory subscription price. I know I’ve taken advantage of this a few times and I can’t be the only one. Even those that paid the regular subscription price paid substantially less than what the game cost at retail. Although this cannot be good for retail (or even digital sales), Microsoft seems quite happy to release its major first party releases this way and at least as of writing, still have the money to lose.
What better indicates the failure of the game is the five years that have elapsed since release as well as the June announcement of Gears of War: E-Day.
The time alone is not necessarily indicative of the game’s failure as games certainly take longer to develop now and many games were hampered by the completely unnecessary social and economic disruptions that began in early 2020. This all being the case, there were only ever previously two to three years between releases. If you ignore the releases of Gears of War: Judgement in 2013 and the remaster of the original game in 2015, there was a five year gap between the release of Gears of War 3 and its direct sequel in 2016. But even with ignoring these releases, one also has to remember that Epic Games ceased involvement in the series after the third game, a new developer (The Coalition), had to be formed and this was all during the transition into a new console generation. None of these factors are irrelevant and what became Gears of War 4 probably hadn’t begun in earnest until around 2014. Gears Tactics was released in early 2020 but by a different developer and experimenting with a different genre. It was also much smaller in scope than any of the previous games.
What really confirms the failure of Gears 5 is the announcement of Gears of War: E-Day. And one can establish this without considering anything past the title. The full name of the series is included and it is not a numbered (or even a chronological), sequel. Those that saw the Gears 5 campaign to the end know that it ended on a big cliff-hanger with the player choosing which of two supporting characters was to die. Whoever you choose, the game ends with the wider narrative unresolved and the fledgling new civilsation on Sera in almost complete collapse. Even for this notoriously bleak series, it was not a happy ending. That five years has passed and the new game is a prequel to the original series means Gears 5 was a failure. Halo 5: Guardians was similarly poorly received and the eventual sequel (which finally released six years later), mostly ignored the events of that game.
One other possible reason for phantom sequel is that one of the characters in the aforementioned late-game-choice is a “person of colour”. I am guessing that the vast majority of players chose the paler option and Microsoft and the Coalition would certainly know this definitively from player data. This is likely an issue because of all the otherwise unrelated riots, looting, murder and destruction that was allowed in American cities over the death of a violent, drug-addicted black criminal the following year. I am working on the assumption that this was the big issue when the developers began initial planning on the sequel, which left them with three options for a direct sequel. One would be to go with the most popular choice and risk some bad press from a few game journalists and lunatics on the website formerly known as Twitter. The second would be to go against the popular vote of player data for the sake of diversity and irritate people who actually play the games; an option unfortunately not without wide precedent. The third would be the more expensive option of working both choices into the narrative of Gears 6 which would involve the extra expense of additional voice work and many cinematics having to be done twice to include both characters. So they decided on the fourth option which is not to bother with the sixth game at all.
Outside of the trailer, there isn’t too much known about the game that is not Gears 6. What is interesting is it is actually where I anticipated the series to go when Gears of War 4 was originally announced. The only interesting aspect of the series after the very decisive end to Gears of War 3, was the early years of the Locust invasion which was a worthy premise for a future title. The narrative of Gears of War 4 worked but much more as a vehicle to continue the series than a story that genuinely needed to be told. E-Day or else, the Pendulum Wars were the more interesting aspects of the series lore and much of this had already been fleshed out in the Karen Traviss novels, making developing a narrative around these events all the easier.
Five years ago, I would have been very excited by this game’s announcement but given what has become of so many publishers in the last few years, I’m not expecting much. I’m honestly shocked they didn’t go with shelving the series altogether when it became clear Girl-Boss-Gears was a disaster. The trailer suggests it will be a return to the series roots and it certainly looks better than whatever Gears 6 was going to be. By the time it is released, it will be closer to six years since the last major entry and no matter how good it looks, I won’t even consider playing it until it has been released and reviewed. There’s still a lot that can go wrong.
The main takeaway is despite all the unearned praise the last game received from “official sources”, is that my assessment of the game on this humble blog was far more accurate to how well-received the game really was. Because if the last game had genuinely had a strong audience, it would certainly have had a direct sequel by now. That it didn’t, and now likely never will, is proof of its failure with the series’ core audience. I would like to be wrong because as petulant and uninteresting a character as Kait Diaz is, I still like the other characters and would even still like to see the narrative that began with Gears of War 4 brought to a close. But if all I’ve said is wrong then where is Gears 6?
UPDATE:
YouTube (for no particular reason at all), recommended this video to me. One thing I didn’t cover is the multiplayer which is a huge part of the series. I only regularly played Gears of War 3 online and I’ve mostly lived in places where it was difficult to find a match. This guy is as legit as you can get and even covers some of the same issues I have: