Talking Point: Would You Like A 'Fully Open World' Gears 6?

As in all things - it depends on whether it sucks or not. I mean...whether it IS BAD or not. I don't want the Microsoft censors to get upset.

Absolutely not.

Not every game needs to be open world.

It is getting old all these linear games getting turned into empty, soulless, open worlds.

Give me a highly scripted and intimate experience.

@InterceptorAlpha Agreed. I didn't think the skiff sections from Gears 5 were that good to be honest, featuring vast empty areas with very little to see or do. Not to say they couldn't do it better next time round, but there's still a lot to be said for well crafted, linear, mission based action games.

"Open world" is really just the new "procedurally generated." Devs know they can build some vistas, import some water effects, fill the spaces with nothing, and walk away. Sure, OW can be good (great, even) but most of the time it's a cop-out.

I want hand-crafted games, not endless traversal through a developer's vehicle, slow walk, web-swing "lengthener" content.

No.
I actually want it as linear as possible.

Absolutely not. Gears 5 was as far as it should go. Those sections reminded me of driving the APC through town in Gears 1 or driving up Mt. Kadar in 2, just with more freedom which was nice, it still felt like Gears.

There is zero reason to do a fully open world Gears from a gameplay perspective.

Open world design in itself isn't an issue to me but 'Linear' games have their strengths and merits too. It really does depend on the game, whether it has a 'negative' impact on story, on game-play etc so it 'could' work. I'd describe Gears 5 as moving away from the very Linear design of earlier Gears. Its perhaps more 'wide' linear than Open - but has some open world like elements too. Able to do things in any order and some 'side' missions and exploration too rather than sticking to quite a 'narrow' path through a game.

Each has its advantages/disadvantages. I couldn't care less whether they went 'open world' or not, I care more about the Story, game-play etc and if it 'helps' the evolution of the series, I'm all for it.

No. Gears works really well in a linear format. I can't imagine them successfully threading the line between the world feeling too empty and the random encounters being too annoying. Corpsers, pouncers etc probably won't have the same effect in a fully open world.

news to developers not every game has to be open world

So no more split screen campaign like Halo Infinite ? 🤦‍♂️

Not at all. the open world sections of gears 5 where my least favorite parts of the game.

Halo did a great job going open world. The Coalition is an excellent studio, so I am sure if they are doing an open world, it will also be awesome. However, I have some concerns with how it will feel. Movement/traversal in Gears doesn't really combine well with open spaces. I am optimistic.

Why aren't we talking more about the fantastic job the Coalition is doing with Gears? 4 was a really good start, and 5 was incredible, and HiveBusters deserve their own series.

Playing through RE4 remake at the minute.
So something like that for gears 6.
Not open world but not totally linear.

I think the best gears experiences are similar to the best RE4 remake experiences. Keep it tight but let go for a little exploration.

Little bit hesitant on this one. I mean, I don't necessarily have an issue with open-world games depending on how they are done.

If it's to continue to follow the stereotypical open-world design, then I will be annoyed; but if the Coalition can put its own spin on the idea, then I might be intrigued.

I do prefer a more linear approach when it comes to shooters. You can't beat a good close quarter gun fight with no where run, just take cover and throw everything you got at the enemy.

No thank you. Gears 5 was good but I wouldn’t want it any bigger than that. I even think the “open” areas there just padded out the playtime with collectibles and such.

Yh sure, 5 was a bit limited. Well done with the skiff and all as far as transportation goes. But I'd like more.
Preferably do multiple destinations like the island in 5's dlc

Please no, some games should be linear.

I think the consensus is that the semi-open world style similar to Halo Infinite and Metro Exodus and Gears 5 itself is good. But anything beyond that and into the GTA and RDR territory, no thanks.
I think even if they go open-world at most they will pull a Halo Infinite and for the actual missions you go into a closed and linear section so that the story telling and set ups are still there.

I actually really liked how they did it in Gears 5 and would like more of that. It had the same feel as the larger open parts of God of War and I like that about it.

Wow - tough question - as long as it is good then I will play … but sometimes you tweak a game so much it isn’t the same game anymore… so for that reason I would say stay linear…

Gears 5 was at its best when it was being a Gears-ass Gears game. The open sections were the one part of that game I didn't much care for. So, no. No open world Gears 6 please.

I wouldn't mind if it was confined to one act only but absolutely not the whole game.

Act 2 in Gears 5 felt like a nice change of pace that didn't overstay its welcome and the striking visuals made the environment fun to explore.

However repeating the exact same open world format for Act 3 completely ruined the pace of the game. This was made even worse by how drab and ugly the environment in Act 3 was compared to Act 2.

Honestly I can’t see it working for Gears in its current form. Something about the movement and the cover system just doesn’t feel like it would work in the open world. However I also think Gears is at the point where it needs a bit of a refresh so if Coalition do it and make it into a good game I would be happy. I’d rather they take some risks than play it safe. I haven’t completed a gears campaign since 3 because they just get a bit samey after a while.

I think the best parts of Gears of War were always the tighter corners and hallways, going down in the basements. I am not sure an open world creates much of the suspense and horror elements that made the first 3 games classics. Gears 5 was my least favorite single player gears. I did however love the multiplayer. Anything if done right works. So if they choose open world end nail it to perfection, then i will of course be happy and say they made the right decision. But if it’s a prettier Gears 5, i am not so sure that will be enough.

I can’t connect with the cast I can’t get over how fast the main were shelved as if the franchise been out since n64

Halo open world seemed lazy and bare bones so if that’s the route then noo

I just want a Gears 6 !

No. I just want Gears 6. Keep doing what works.

It was a disaster in Halo and Id rather they didnt ruin Gears too.

A linear well designed mission offers more enjoyment than open endedness for many games, and I believe Gears has had some of the best designed missions around. It would be a shame to lose that control of experience just to chase the open world trend...

Not really.

I want to start a game by choosing an estimated mission length between 15 minutes to 3 hours or somewhere inbetween, be given an objective that is randomly selected from a (large) list based on that mission length, and then be dropped into a carefully balanced procedurally-generated map (that is mostly linear) to carry out my objective. If I can do this with a team online or in split-screen local play then all the better.

@Titntin i agree. I am a known Gears of War fanatic. So much so i will repeat myself with my top 3 gaming franchises and thats Red Dead, Diablo and Gears of War. So to say i have a strong interest in where this franchise goes would be an understatement. I have around 600 hours of multi player alone in Gears 5. Some might be too young on here to remember the 360 Gears of war days. Play them on BC if my comments make you interested. But all the best moments like first seeing General Raam and fighting him in a tight space, added to the sense of fear and size of him. The underground tunnels, the mood in the basements and just heightened sense of fear around the corner was very special and then quickly taking cover and picking your spots to shoot were some of it not the best in gaming at the time. Open world does very little for that in my opinion. Or at least it did for me in Gears 5. Halo open world to me was actually kind of the right idea with poor execution. Had it not all looked the same and had more enemies and diversity, i actually liked the idea and Halo feels good in an open space. Just not sure Gears would or can. I love what Blizzard did with Diablo 4 and making it a bigger world, i love Red Dead 2 as it may be the best open world ever made. But Zelda open world did nothing for me, but make me bored and often times lost or feeling like busy work. So certain games that go the open world route are very 50/50 for me. But i like your take on the matter and respect your opinion cause you know games and what drives their core ideas and i think we both agree the scariness and experience of gears is a lot better in tighter spaces. Sorry for the long rant, this series is something i can go on and on about until someone finally says be quiet haha 😊

I enjoyed gears of war 5 to be honest so if it semi open world like that ill be happy then again I don't care whether it's open world or linear as long as its good and gears of war never disappoints

@HonestHick Thanks for the long reply! Its clear you are passionate about Gears and I think we both share the same fears about what open world might potentially do to such a crafted experience.
I'm certainly not against open world games, and some of my favourite games are in that genre, I just dont think its the best pick for all game styles.
Open world or otherwise, the possibility of more Gears makes me happy 😀

I very much enjoyed 5. I have played through every game on every difficulty (including Inconceivable) solo, and also in co-op, multiple times. I don't think 6 needs to expand any larger than 5, to be honest, though if it does, it just needs to have more battles to get involved in along the way, otherwise the world just feels empty, and open world just for the sake of it.

What I will say about 6 is that it needs to hurry up and get here as I'm not getting any younger! I'll be 60 this December, and there is only so much my arthritic fingers and failing eyesight can cope with! And I want to complete 6 on my own on Inconceivable..! 😂

No. Gears 5 suffered greatly from its mini open worlds and it destroyed the pace of the game. Going full open world with icons all over the map and side missions isn’t Gears, it’s any number of other open world games out there.

Give me a tight, fun, on the rails cover shooter with a good story. That’s when Gears was at its best.

Big fan just as yourself, @HonestHick, though the majority of my time in Gears 5 (a mere 46 Days, 8 Hours and 7 minutes (or 1112 hours) has been spent playing Horde accounting for some 26 Days 12 Hours and 7 minutes. I never play Multiplayer PvP, so the rest of the time (nearly 20 Days) has been spent playing the Campaign.

Love me some Gears. Dread to think how long I've played the entire series, including Tactics. I haven't looked, but I imagine that Gears 3 has my second longest play time. Looking at these stats makes me realise I may need to get a life... 😂

I'm leaning towards like to see how open world would be. Could be lot fun.

@Titntin Thank you, and i couldn’t agree more. I have plenty of love for open world games. I even get that most devs want to explore that area with their games. But not all are a match for it. I can’t wait for more Gears. I really miss playing it and so badly wanted the rumor of the collection of the first 3 games to be true. Would be amazing to see them in Unreal Engine 5 and of course it would bring them to the PC. Think that rumor is about as dead as Switch Pro.

@Fiendish-Beaver HAHAHA agreed. If i added up Red Dead, Diablo and Gears the total time would scare me so i don’t add them up anymore. However i did just look at my Diablo 4 time and it’s already a little over 270 hours. I like Horde mode a ton and they almost never mess that mode up as i think they know what the fan’s want and expect of those. I just can’t find the excitement for open world gears, at least without not seeing it in action and see what it looks like. I have been wrong, or shall i say happily wrong before and ended up loving a game i thought i wouldn’t for whatever reason. So by all means i would love to be wrong and see an amazing Gears 6. But my preference at the moment is more linear and scary and make it have that feeling of Doom around the corner or put up out of the ground.

No, Not at all. Open world is not necessary for every freaken game. smh.

@Titntin yup they need to go back to the horror grime route too …

Absolutely not. Love Gears but keep it linear please. Not every game needs to be open world. The kite sequences in Gears 5 are fine but not memorable enough tbh.

Not even a little.

A narrative driven game similar to the original trilogy. There is a reason its still the vast majority of peoples favourites over 15 years later

The open world parts of Gear 5 were my least favourite parts so no not really.

wasn't interested at all in the open world segments of gears 5. all it ended up being was my friend being bored while i just drive us to the next spot to shoot things.

I never played these games, so cant tell what I would want on a 6th entry. I do would like to see a remake of 2 and 3 since those entries don't look the part compared to the remake of 1, much less the 4th and 5th entries.

I would be a lot more likely to jump into the series if I knew I could get through the whole saga in modern consoles, and not just via BC.

I don't think Gears of War needs to have levels that are more open than what's in 5, and even that I thought was pushing it a little bit. However, as others have stated, it's all about execution. If Gears 6 is a full open world game, all I ask is that it's fun to explore and not bogged down by stuff that has plagued other open world games, particularly some from Ubisoft.

Nope, enough open world games already. Give me an on rails Gears and I'm happy.

The series can do it but do I want one no. Even if the areas in 5 were a fair test and God of War Ragnarok did the same with it's side areas in it's way.

Like the other comment above said. Close quarters, really thinking about a strategy to make your way through. Sure they can be shooting galleries sometimes but if designed well they can balance those moments and the calm ones of talking and just obstacles if they feel the need to. You don't need an open world for everything.

Standing out can be a good thing, competing all the time makes them boring and I at least buy less of those games because they directly compete and become boring/samey/lose elements we liked about them then their strengths they had and just expanding on what worked already.

I'm not a big Gears fan but at the same time I'd hate to see it directly compete and we see more and more open world shooter blandness on the market.

Just stand out and offer Gears strengths of singleplayer/multiplayer (with some new tweaks and were good) that's probably all people want. That's all I want at least.

Not all games need dramatic changes (sometimes they back track even when we praise them but whatever), sometimes yes, sometimes no but just a few tweaks can do the job most times.

Open worlds have there place but we don't need everything to be.

Also I enjoyed Sunset/Gravity Rush for puzzles/platforming. Not outposts, not bland rewards, skill trees and quests. There is a reason I don't play RPGs or DON'T WANT EVERYTHIING to be an RPG.

With Insomniac doing Spiderman PS4 and Resistance 2 (hence 3 was a good backstep to more their DNA as a studio) you can tell the times they followed the industry I hated the games elements, they did their spin on things I enjoyed them more. It's amazing when devs make better games when they aren't competing and changing the games to be more bland and put actual different things in them, their design element strength they become more fun right? XD

Give us smartly designed linear and wide-ish areas and I'm happy. That's it, it's not hard. The series strengths and

I'm not into the current state of shooters so I've been buying up retro modern 2000s shooters for 6th/7th gen I missed out on and to see what ideas I think were cool in them and could be reapplied (or not). Other than Immortals of Aveum/Bright Memory Infinite I couldn't care less. Boomer shooters are fine but not my thing as much and if on PC well I buy physical console so unless I see them (which i see mostly multiplayer online ones and as a singleplare type player personally I'm going to be buying retro 2000s shooters aren't I).

I'm fine with linear shooters. If we wanted an open world shooter we'd play the ones on offer, not a series that continued linear that we are happy with and just ignoring fans anyway.

Goodbye sales then, there are plenty on the market for open world shooters/open world games in general so standing out or consistency and 'other ideas' that can be tried a more appealing to me.

The west can follow trends that's fine, but when it comes to standing out many times they can suck at doing that due to publishers or they themselves get too 'directly compete' focused and then they wonder why (at least for me anyway) I buy western games 'particularly AA' and also many Japanese games that do 'actually stand out not copy their opponent directly which I didn't want'.

We wonder why saturation happens or us audiences seeking some fair new directions or most likely CONSISTENCY in themes or game design with a game series or "CHANGES IN OTHER AREAS worth applying/expanding on"

(not dramatically open world changing it or 180ing what we liked so why even have us fans say we liked all this stuff here and then the devs just ignore what we praised of the dramatic changes. Leaving us with a "so what was the point" in giving feedback, which feedback or dev ideas were the stronger of the responses cough Crack in Time to Rift Apart).

It annoys me when they don't do that and just go yep we are going to dramatically change this and well good bye series indeed then (see Gran Turismo, Ratchet and God of War for me).

So when we audiences don't want change the devs don't listen to us so what's the point then. Then they wonder why we go retro or complain about the direction of a series.

While a hack n slash open world like Atlas Fallen appealed or platformers I don't care for EVERYTHING to be that way. I seek circuit racers, yet I have to go to older games to get touge/hillclimb events as open worlds have taken them away I think at least.

Linear offers things open world can't (let alone the pacing of abilities for characters, it's why I don't want to play an open world platformer I want the things those platforms and abilities offer in a linear way, the cooridors add challenge), same as menus can then 5+ minutes to navigate the open world. Sometimes I like obstacle courses or corridors/side paths for more ammo, collectibles or mini battle segments with my games and menus to hop between things then taking longer to do the same thing.

When Forza Motorsport 6 became linear with it's tours I hated it. I like linear with a balance. PGR2 was like lets be linear with classes but not the track you drive on/event types they offer. Other Forza Motorsport games offer more choice in cars and menus not 'you suck at this track, good luck because other than car class to change your stuck'.

I get some levels can be tough but at the same time smart design while being linear or in racing games terms offering options but restrictions. If I can do something yet sure the barriers make sense whether a car, or a gadget/ability in a platformer, a key to a door in a dungeon of an adventure game or RPG or whatever.

Granted yes 5+ levels of menus isn't fun either (cough Gran Turismo) but at the same time that's what good menu design or quick access is for (cough GT1, 2 & 5 exist, yet GT7 could learn from them or the current quick access buttons on the Xbox dashboard).

Everything being open world makes me want to never buy the games if they have similar layouts/formula no thank you.

Halo I guess made sense (besides it's inspirations) and Halo 1 open spaces were just that a mix of wide spaces and linear insides of buildings. Sometimes you need the balance.

I am playing old modern shooters from the 2000s and while not all are perfect still more fun. I'm not into multiplayer but there is plenty out there.

The reason Immortals of Aveum and Bright Memory Infinite were so appealing is while Aveum is nothing new it's just magic and refined 7th gen shooter elements of Bioshock Infinite, Doom, Titanfall and Borderalnds loot of gear I found it appealing.

Bright Memory for being flashy and hack n slash but shooter different then how Wanted Dead/Devil's Third or others that combine them of the 2000s do it also first person then third person those ones are.

No thanks. Let Gears be Gears not an Ubisoft clone.

Personally, I just want another Gears game where I can run around like a crazy person with the chainsaw on the lancer.

I still think Gears is one of the best IPs MS has.

Open world with a distinct purpose that contributes directly to the story progression could be good. Otherwise, don't break a good thing.

Gears 5 I found pretty boring, but I'd still prefer them making a good linear game though.

It could be awesome of course; and i’m sure on a first playthrough it will be good but ultimately I think it loses replay value.

I really enjoyed the openness of Gears 5 but a full open world only works if the world feels really engaging and like it exists despite you being there, not just because you are there (if I'm making sense).

Personally no not every game needs to have lifeless open world filled with padding didn't enjoy Halo being more open world either.

I hated gears 5, its worse than judgement in my opinion ,and the MP is crap now,can we not just go back to the original gears design ,small tight levels with amazing fire fights ,I use to love that game.

I don't know how well open-world Gears would work out but a semi-open world with large hub areas akin to God of War: Ragnarök would be ideal. Basically refining the formula established in Gears 5.

No, i like the linear levels of prior gears of war games

absolutely not , that’s very dumb .