The Coalition will be using Unreal Engine 5 to create the next game in the Gears of War franchise. The developer has put together a tech test called The Cavern, which has shown how they will be using the engine’s “higher-quality visuals” and “larger and more interactive environments” to create the next Gears of War game, which could potentially focus on an open-world adventure.
Will Gears of War 6 be an open-world game?
The use of Unreal Engine 5 makes it likely that Gears of War 6 will be an open-world game.
Unreal Engine 5 is an engine that will allow developers to create extensive, realistic open-world environments. This is the reason why CD Projekt Red chose Unreal Engine 5 over their proprietary REDengine. Gears 5 had already experimented with an open world in some sections and the next Gears of War game could perhaps push towards a bigger open-world focus.
In an interview with Xbox Wire, The Coalition explained how it was one of several developers who had early access to Unreal Engine 5 before it was opened up to all developers yesterday and how they’ve already seen its benefits. While they were unable to talk specifically about their next game, they did say the new tools and features in Unreal Engine 5 “enable higher-quality visuals, larger and more interactive environments, and a host of other aspects which we are excited for.”
For The Cavern tech demo, the team recruited an actor to capture performance before it was turned into “full-quality movie assets to be rendered in real-time.” Both the character and the surrounding environment were created using “tens of millions of polygons, scalable to scenes with billions and billions,” which can create a game that has visuals “more than 100 times what was possible before” on Xbox Series X.
Take a look at how a warrior exploring a cavern is attacked by an evil dust cloud before he repels it with a shiny crystal:
In other news, Halo Infinite’s latest update has changed the Sudden Death rules for the Capture the Flag game mode. Elsewhere, a brand new RPG called Citizen Sleeper, from developer Jump Over The Age, will be released on Nintendo Switch, PC, and Xbox consoles next month.