MS acquires rights to Gears of War franchise; Black Tusk Studios to take over series

[Shifty Geezer]

Is there any proof that they were deep into development of a game that didn't even have a name? Or a game that actually had AAA franchise potential?

It's been mentioned in this thread (the evidence on which I base my assumptions). eg.

http://www.gamesradar.com/black-tusk-studios-looking-build-next-halo/

But I'll follow the paper trail to the very source, which was a story in The Vancouver Sun...

Built up from 5 EA vets to a 55 person developer before the renaming of the studio, so they were best part of a year doing that I imagine, and another year working with the E3 reveal until this change to Gears.

Select quotes, though you should read the whole article...

Studio staff have an average of 12 years experience in triple-A games, the industry’s equivalent of Hollywood summer blockbuster movies — “big games, big teams, big budgets, long timelines,” said Crump.
“What that means is we are working on Microsoft’s next big entertainment franchise,” he said. “We’re not working on an existing franchise, we’re looking to build the next Halo here in Vancouver, for example, which is really exciting. We are building something from the ground up.”

Seems excited at the prospect of doing their own thing.

“We have been officially green-lit by Microsoft executives to go ahead with the project that we’re on,” he said.
“That’s the way game development works — it’s just like making a movie, you go through pitching and concepting and then at some point you have a very large meeting with the executive team and present your full pitch with the business plan and you get the green light, so that’s happened for us.”

So they went through the work of refining their project, their exciting new IP, to get it green lit, get the go ahead, and had spent a year on it most likely, before getting taken off to do Gears. If in that situation Mike Crump said, "Yeessssss! Let's ditch our game and do Gears. Awesome!" then I accept I'm a lousy judge of human behaviour.

You then have some people questioning MS's position on it when Phil Spencer says the company's E3 showing was a concept piece and they've been incubating ideas for the past 6 or 9 months. That doesn't fit with the puzzle pieces, although there may be some pieces missing (like MS dropped the BT IP shortly after E3 and asked them to find something new to do, perhaps Gears, we'll look into it...). However, it's precisely the evidence that's fuelling at least my personal opinion. This is random, unsubstantiated theory.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So many feels about the feels.

Anyone care about what they'll do with gears?

You may want to spawn a game discussion thread. This thread's better suited to circular arguments about how evil MS is. So many feely-feels!

 

[Nesh]

Doesn't seem true really anymore. Take A. Creed. It's annualized let alone 3. Uncharted, Halo, others certainly wont nor should stop at 3.

Assasins Creed kept people coming because of its episodic storyline. Uncharted was also getting tired. Uncharted on Vita was an indication of that. Halo thankfully took a break for next gen

 

[Brad Grenz]

I really dont understand how Gears is a tired old franchise. How many Final Fantasy games have there been? How many more are comimg? God of war will have been on 3 generations of hardware when it comes to the Ps4. Same with Killzone and I havent heard one mention of it being tired or old.

Killzone, God of War and Final Fantasy are all routinely criticized for having worn out their welcome. Hell, God of War: Ascension and Gears of War: Judgement as a pair invited numerous jokes last year for both being unnecessary additions to each series or questionable quality, both of which relied on dubious prequel story-lines. And Final Fantasy XIII-3, which is about to come out, is basically and industry punchline at this point. So why don't you take off your blinders and stop pretending like Gears has been unfairly singled out for this complaint.

And let's be clear. There is no God of War sequel announced for the PS4 right now. Most rumors suggest SSM is working on new IP. If Sony announced another God of War game starring Kratos fighting Greek gods you bet your ass people would complain.

 

[JPT]

And let's be clear. There is no God of War sequel announced for the PS4 right now. Most rumors suggest SSM is working on new IP. If Sony announced another God of War game starring Kratos fighting Greek gods you bet your ass people would complain.

But if Kratos takes on Confucius in philosophic debate implemented through a bunch of puzzle games or maybe point n click adventure, its going to sell 10M copies......

 

[Brad Grenz]

There is an argument to be made for Kratos jumping to a new Pantheon, but I think they'd probably change protagonists at the same time (IE: Goddess of War: Valkyrie about Norse gods).

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I'd like to see a remake of the first God of War with updated graphics and some new gameplay stuff. That was such a great game from start to finish and the ending was superb, it didn't really need any sequels.

 

[joker454]

I think most all franchises have become old and tired now, many on their 3rd, 4th or even 5th runs. At least with Tomb Raider they rebooted the series to give it some freshness, they really need to do the same with most other franchises out there as well. A new dev team for Gears is a great idea, breathe some new life into the series. I don't know about y'all but I've shifted mostly to other types of games now as these AAA games are all looking the same to me now, more of the same old same old. There's exceptions like Bioshock Infinite which was different enough from past games to stand on it's own but man some of these other games have really become long in the tooth.

 

[AlNom]

I think there's room in the Gears universe for something a little more than just shooting. Silly story ideas aside, there's only tens of thousands of humans left with crap for technology left and zero fuel sources.

They really do need something more than the rollercoaster cinematic ride. I'm very tired of that formula in all shooters these days. It doesn't have to be a mix to the extent of Mass Effect, nor does it have to be like Metro (although I suppose that fits the dystopia setting), but... what I find lacking is just that exploratory section of games or just getting to know the characters better without needing it to be told during straight up brofist, running and gunning.

idk. Never played FC2/3 though...

--

In light of the Halo 2 anniversary & H3/4 ports to XO, I wonder if MS have any interest in porting/updating the Gears Trilogy (dreams of PC ports deader than Dreamcast :3 ). Guess it'd be too much for BT to handle in the short term... e.g. remake Gears 1 with modern renderer (lightmass/deferred etc).

Gears 1 was really nice in 1080p60 on PC, if a bit buggy. sigh... all those art assets wasted @ 720p.

You may want to spawn a game discussion thread. This thread's better suited to circular arguments about how evil MS is. So many feely-feels!

"Evil doesn't stand a chance against these twin-hellfired canNons!" >_> Erm... nevermind.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think there's room in the Gears universe for something a little more than just shooting. Silly story ideas aside, there's only tens of thousands of humans left with crap for technology left and zero fuel sources.

Sounds like it's ripe for the upcoming vogue of open sandbox survival games. You could have objectives like destroy the enemy base/ship/thing, but to accomplish that you need to gather resources which is entirely down to you to plan and execute. That'd also tie in with a mobile game quite nicely, methinks. So certainly scope for something new beyond the hardcore shooter, but then will that be the right choice if the intention is to target existing Gears fans? Is the formula of Gears important? I can't say I've heard people rave about the universe much, which leaves me thinking the appeal is much more in the gameplay (and AAA production with, importantly, the first truly next-gen game of the last generation).

 

[Scott_Arm]

Gears of FarmVille

 

[Bigduo209]

Assasins Creed kept people coming because of its episodic storyline. Uncharted was also getting tired. Uncharted on Vita was an indication of that. Halo thankfully took a break for next gen

I call bias on that considering that MS announced Halo for XB1 only a few months before Sony announced a new Uncharted for PS4.

Halo isn't safe from this discussion either. The 360 has had Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Halo 4. It might be prolonged on the strength of a bigger universe and multiplayer, but it doesn't guarantee the series won't overstay it's welcome.