Where Does Gears Go From Here?
We recently played through the entire campaign of Gears of War 4. We liked the return-to-form for the series and the gameplay still holds up, but we felt a bit frustrated with the lack of risks the game takes. Gears of War 4 is a perfectly serviceable sequel but, much like the other three sequels, it doesn’t come close to capturing the experience of playing the original Gears. We think that Gears needs to evolve a bit, and here’s our recommendations on where Gears can go from here.
The son of Marcus Phoenix (as played by Nathan Drake).
Introduce Loot
Nothing inspires replayability like loot. The possibility of finding some nifty new weapon or upgrade keeps us returning to Destiny and Borderlands long after the original quest had been completed. The key to loot is to have a lot of different weapon types with a variety of possible upgrades, and Gears already has that. There are bows, rifles, sniper rifles, chainsaws, and machine guns already, and we could easy see melee weapons, lasers and other projectiles added to the lineup. Sure, loot changes the gameplay in that each playthrough becomes a continuation of the previous playthrough so that your weapons are maintained and Gears doesn’t always do this between missions (though it’s frustrating when I’ll carry the same gun into the next mission without reloading!). Loot would change this dynamic, but it would also make the gunfights more creative and the scavenging much more interesting.
They really should have made their robot army chainsaw-proof.
Create an Open World
Most open world combat games like The Division and Destiny are built around a story of a sustained combat, much like the Gears games backstory. In Destiny and The Division, you start from a home base and venture out into the world for either specific quests (or levels) or more general open-world exploration and side-quest seeking. Gears could develop a similar structure and provide an open-world experience with mini-quests to engage in around the levels that make up the campaign. These are easy enough to envision as the Gears team frequently explores friendly locations and is often tasked with digging out a platoon of enemies who are invading a specific location. Heck, the swarm even burrows up through the ground, meaning they’d be easy to drop into pre-existing locations for side-quests. Gears has all the elements it needs for the open world already, it just needs to let us play that part rather than keeping it in cutscenes.
It’s a planet filled with homicidal aliens and insanely dangerous lightning storms. WHY DO PEOPLE LIVE HERE?
More Level Creativity
Open worlds and loot doesn’t work for everybody and the designers behind Gears may be reluctant to move in those directions. Whatever they do, though, they need to get a little more creative in level design. In Gears of War 4, you spend time in run down plants and burned down cities fighting wave after wave of identical soldiers (either waves of robots or waves of swarm). These fights become painfully predictable and there is not enough enemy diversity or level diversity to keep things interesting. In fact, Gears 4 is probably the least creative of all the Gears games in designing levels; other than occasional storm effects and one motorbike chase, each level is essentially the same with superficial variations. Gears has been more creative in the past, with driving and flying sequences and set-pieces in each of the previous titles. I’m not sure why Gears plays it so safe this time around, but more creative levels in the future would be appreciated!
After all that running and gunning, these robots will provide some much needed change in gameplay. What do they do? Well, mostly just run and gun.
Keep the Tone Somber
One of the weirdest elements of Gears 4 is the lighthearted banter between Marcus’s son and his friends as they blast their way through missions. No matter what horrors they see or how many of their friends get killed, they are always there with the wisecracks and one-liners at each others’ expense. It feels like Nathan Drake on steroids and it’s completely discordant with the rest of the game. Gears needs to be a somber experience about the bonds of war and the sacrifices of the people who fight them. Marcus still has this tone which makes him jarringly different than the lighthearted kids he’s traveling with; the resulting dialogue feels less like a Gears of War game and more like Kindergarden Cop. Gears’ best moments occur between Marcus and his son’s girlfriend, as she bonds with her future father-in-law and becomes more hardened throughout the game. Meanwhile Marcus’s son is making lame jokes that hardly even amuse him. I appreciate the desire to introduce new characters (and I always liked Baird’s sarcasm which always felt like an attempt at levity against overwhelming odds), but Gears definitely needs to keep it serious.
