During the month of January 2014, Microsoft surprised the world when the company announced that they will be acquiring the rights to one of the most popular third person shooters on the Xbox, the Gears of War franchise. This decision made fans all around the globe very happy and at the same time excited them for the next release in the franchise as the last instalment was not well received by the community and the critics. Now the game is in hands of Microsoft we can expect higher quality production values and bigger marketing campaigns. Even though the next instalment is far away from release, here are my expectations, or should I say, my wishes.
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Story
If you ever had a chance to play the complete Gears of War trilogy you will come to know the difference in the story setting of each title. The first entry in the series has a dark world where their is always a sense of fear of Locust and difficult boss fights, the game puts a lot of emphasises on making you realise how dangerous the enemy is. While the second entry takes the combat and the scale of the battle to a whole new level, making the story feel like a full scale war between the Humans and Locust, it also explores the home of Locust. The third entry has a personal touch to it, reveals more about the characters and at the same time maintains the epic scale of battle. The next entry can take these elements and make it part of its story. Keeping the scale of battle and adding a sense of fear at the same time is not an easy task however I want to explore more about the characters and strongly want Black Tusk Studios to give more details about them. Very few details have been made available about the characters and the world of Gears, both have strong potential but it will depend on how Black Tusk harness it.
Taking a page from The Order 1886 Black Tusk Studios can add a bit more cinematic feel to the game while retaining its core gameplay elements but they need to restrict it to the campaign oriented modes only. Moreover it will allow them to up the visually quality of the game and overall making it more presentable. It can also help them to re-energise the campaign and narrative giving the Gears fans another reason to pick up the game.
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Better Character Movements and Changes To Art-style
The characters in Gears of War appear to have very stiff and limited movement, while many games try to make them look more realistic the character movement in Gears seems to be artificial. This could change with future entries and I want it to happen, not only it will make the game look good it will allow the developers to make new areas accessible and add better character animations. The world of Gears is very dull and it is very hard to get pulled in that world, most of the time locations feel similar with only changes being made into size of buildings. The world lacks colours and is very unattractive for new comers. The franchise has come to a point where making some serious changes to art-style can disappoint many fans although developers could start doing changes on smaller scale and with passage of time they can evolve the art-style in the game. Gears of War: Judgment had a better set of character movements than trilogy but the overall execution was poor accompanied with a lacklustre set of animations which seemed to be inconsistent during various parts of the games. Better set of movements will make the game more fluid and fast paced, making the closed quarter combat more intense than ever.
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Bigger Multiplayer Maps
Gears of War multiplayer focuses on 5 vs 5 combat with most of the maps falling in the small to medium size category. It is one of those few games which rely more on skill rather than unlocking weapons and other gear. All the weapons are available from start so it depends how well are you aware about the placement of guns on map and the core gameplay mechanic in Gears multiplayer involves using a combination of various movement based tactics and the shotgun. Such a steep learning curve can put off many gamers who are just looking for few hours of fun. The developer cannot afford to abandon its current fans in favour of new comers however introducing a mode with more players can improve the situation. Bigger maps means other guns rather than the shotgun will come into play. They can also add destructible environments, if the scale of destructibility is on par with Battlefield 4 it will make the game more entertaining, the players can craft their own locations (sniping spots, hidden areas) which can be prove to be useful in different situations and it will also decrease the dependence on natural cover.
It would be a moment of joy for me to have all this functionality in the game but it should not come at the cost of the core gameplay which makes Gears stand out in the market. Better net code and use of dedicated servers should reduce the lag and make the game better, especially for us people in India. Adding more modes and making few changes to other modes to keep them fresh is welcomed. More character customisation and new weapon skins will give fans more reasons to come back and play the multiplayer.
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Cloud AI
While many people still doubt the capabilities of Xbox Live Cloud because Microsoft is yet to show demos that prove the power of the cloud even though many people have praised it for it’s excellent implementation in franchises like Forza. When a developer decides to use cloud based AI the decision lets him adopt an ever evolving artificial intelligence that keeps on learning and becomes better after every encounter. This feature obviously needs to be optional because not all players like increased difficulty level in games. For a specific set of players though, it will take the combat to whole new level. It is very rare to see challenging yet fun boss fights in shooters but with cloud the enemy AI will finally evolve. We are talking about functionality where every player will develop his/her own tactic to tackle enemies, the same tactic might not work for others.
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While the basic list ends here there are several other minor features that could be added. I would also like hear what all you want from next Gears of War in the comments section below.
