Gears of War's original art director has recalled how strongly influenced the first game was by the horror genre, a style that was diluted over time in the sequels, as he compared them to the Alien franchise.
"If Gears 1 was Alien, the rest of the franchise was Aliens," art director Jerry O’Flaherty tells FRVR, speaking to how James Cameron's sequel was more of a guns-blazing action movie compared to Ridley Scott's tight, claustrophobic, straight-up horror original.
"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," he adds.
He then explains how the sequels "quickly became a monster game," which, in his view, isn't a problem because of how much fans love the following, much more colorful shooters.
The dulled-out yellow-ish-brown color palette was so overused during the Xbox 360 generation that it's hard to remember just how effective it was in the original Gears of War game. And, according to O'Flaherty, it was all intentional, of course. "It was horror. It was a horror game, and horror is going to be a reduced palette, it's going to be a lot of dark."
2006's Gears of War is still undoubtably an action game in how it plays - you're never really reserving ammo or avoiding encounters aside from a few scripted moments - but it wears its horror influence on its sleeve, for sure. At least, it's a lot more pronounced than the sequels' bombastic approach.
The Coalition is also promising that the upcoming prequel, Gears of War: E-Day, will return to those horror-tinted roots, as well as feature a return to Marcus Fenix and right-hand man Dom on center stage. Depending on who you ask, it's probably a more exciting direction than going to space, which was Rod Fergusson's initial plan for Gears of War 6.
Microsoft reportedly had Gears of War devs work on a project that was "Uncharted with spies" to rival Sony's PlayStation series, but it was scrapped for Gears of War 4
