Epic Games didn't give the series enough resources

Sep 23, 2014 23:27 GMT  ·  By

Epic Games' Gears of War development team was unable to take full advantage of the rich franchise because it was "sort of understaffed and overworked," according to former producer Rod Fergusson, who now leads the team at Black Tusk Studios, which has been tasked by Microsoft with creating the next entry in the series.

The Gears of War franchise ended up being one of the most emblematic series that appeared on the Xbox 360 platform, with independent studio Epic Games bringing forth four solid titles that redefined third-person shooters and showcased the power of its Unreal Engine technology.

However, seeing as how Epic had no intention of bringing Gears of War to the Xbox One, Microsoft decided to acquire the rights to the series and immediately tasked its new Black Tusk Studios group with working on a sequel. The corporation even brought in former Gears of War producer Rod Fergusson to lead development and he's now talked with OXM about the franchise's development at Epic.

Microsoft can do justice to the series

According to Fergusson, Epic Games wasn't that focused on the Gears of War franchise, as it constantly tried to do the most with the little team it had, often resulting in lots of overtime for the actual developers.

However, now that Microsoft can funnel more resources into the series, things are much better and fans should expect bigger things for the franchise.

"What's great is that at Epic we were always super lean, we always had the smallest team possible, we were always sort of understaffed and overworked so we weren't able to fully take advantage of what the franchise could do," he tells OXM.

"So one of the other reasons I'm excited about having Gears of War at Microsoft is that we can actually see Gears do more than just any one particular instance. There are just a lot more opportunities because we have more resources to do that."

Epic is still going to help Black Tusk

However, this doesn't mean that Fergusson or Microsoft aren't on good terms with Epic, as the new Gears of War will still use the Unreal Engine 4 technology and should certainly act as an example of what can be done with it.

"They've been doing a lot of work in Unreal Engine 4 and what is great is that we're going to continue that partnership with Epic," he says about the Black Tusk team. "It's not an adversarial relationship, it is very, very much a collaboration and a partnership."

"That goes back to what was Gears of War, from the first game through Judgment, but it's also a technology partnership. We're going to highlight the engine just like Gears always did. And the engine is going to enable an amazing game like Gears."

Gears of War for the Xbox One is expected to appear probably in 2015 or 2016, depending on how quickly Black Tusk makes progress.