With Gears: Reloaded and Gears: E-Day, Microsoft is making a bet on returning to the series' roots right now - and original Gears of War art director Jerry O’Flaherty, for one, seems quite happy with this new direction from Xbox HQ.
Speaking in a new interview with FRVR, O’Flaherty said that the original Gears was always intended to be a "horror game" with a "reduced palette" - adding that Gears 1 was "a horror game with monsters" while the sequels became pure "monster games" according to the OG art director. He went on to say that "people fricking love 2, 3, 4", before talking about what he felt made the first game great.
"If Gears 1 was Alien, the rest of the franchise was Aliens, [...] It was a lot more, you know, there was a hiding of the bad guy, there was just the tension and the horror that you were pulling out of every location, and I loved that… I loved the horror aspect of what we did in the first one."
The interviewer went on to say that Gears of War: E-Day "looks like a very faithful take on what the original game was trying to accomplish", to which O’Flaherty replied with: "Agreed". The art director didn't really elaborate on that, but it's clear that he's pretty passionate about the series' roots - which E-Day is clearly trying to follow.
You can feel that passion in the full interview - which we'll link down below if you'd like to read it all. The last we heard from Xbox dev The Coalition on E-day was that it was "super passionate about E-Day" and "excited to bring it to market". We're looking forward to seeing what the team has been cooking up when it's scheduled to launch in 2026!