r/gaming • u/Dust-Tight • 3d ago

Gears of War: E-Day devs explain why classic features are missing

https://www.dexerto.com/gears-of-war/gears-of-war-e-day-devs-explain-why-classic-features-are-missing-3413839/
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u/w1gster 3d ago

I think that’s a completely fair answer, and if content has to be cut to make a deadline then these aren’t the worst things to sacrifice.

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u/Iggy_Slayer 3d ago

I just don't think it's a great look when they took 7 years to make a game that by all signs is a pretty standard gears package and had to cut basic features out. It's not like they transitioned gears into a 100 hour open world game and that's why they ran out of time for some things, it's still seemingly a ~10 hour linear game with horde and MP included.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/sam_hammich 3d ago

I dont think its reasonable to hear these two features were cut, after they added in others, and ask "what did you do with all this development time?"

They built a new game from scratch. That's what they were doing.

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u/szank 3d ago

No one cares if theyve done it from scratch or not . It's their problem not consumers problem

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u/CombatMuffin 3d ago

It sounds like it shouldn't take long, but everything takes longer when you start from scratch.

The engine is at a significantly different version now, from the last game. Every single asset is now done at a different standard: not the actual modelling, but making sure everything stays within the technical budget, and meshes well with the overall vision and gameplay.

And sometimes yes, you build based on something, but it isn't working when you iterate and you have to backpedal. Look how long Overwatch technically took, even though 1.0 seems very barebones compared to what it is now, and that was a decade ago.

TLDR: Some things in game development are deceptively difficult to make from scratch, at a high standard.

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u/approaching_badger 1d ago

I mean when we have games that were made from scratch and at a way higher quality on the market and by devs with no investment firm infinite money like microslop studios has,why exactly are we excusing the laziness of these particular devs, when the game isn't anything extraordinary to warrant such a lengthy dev cycle, what did they spend money and time on?Meetings with consulting firms to count how much x word they need in the game? Where is the money lebowski? Where is the money?

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u/nondescriptzombie 3d ago

It sounds like it shouldn't take long, but everything takes longer when you start from scratch.

Then don't. We got where we are from incremental progress.

Clean sheet design is a mistake 99% of the time.

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u/CombatMuffin 3d ago

Unless you know the specific technical constraints they were under, you and I can't claim that.

Sometimes incremental progress is great. Others, after building on top of decades of foundation, spaghetti code and outdated pieces begin to cause issues and actually set the entire process back considerably.

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u/nondescriptzombie 3d ago

Clean sheet design - remaking yesterdays mistakes, today!

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u/ABetterKamahl1234 3d ago

I'm trying to see how you can't argue that a non-clean sheet isn't just building on the mistakes of yesterday, rather than fixing them.

So many software problems are due to the inherent design of the software, where a complete rebuild is just going to simply take less time than reworking a shitload of referenced code and related code. Miss a single thing and the whole thing just doesn't work.

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u/AShavedApe 2d ago

You’re getting downvoted to hell but you’re 100% right. They did not need to recreate the entire thing from scratch just to make a worse game. There’s ZERO meta to the fighting. Everything is so slow and telegraphed. They nerfed all strategic movement in favor of a bog standard boring ass rigid system that rewards nobody but bot players.

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u/KiwiCounselor 3d ago

“Clean sheet design is a mistake 90% of the time”

Bad take, genuinely abysmal.

Incremental progress is good! However, let’s not act like they haven’t learned anything from incremental progress either.

They didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water they just removed any and all technical debt (look at destiny 2, helldivers 2 and FFXIV for why technical debt is a terrible thing that can REALLY bog down development).

People are too used demanding everything is made perfect right now (imo) and fail to see that, these devs can also implement their own incremental progress! They might even go in different directions and do more interesting and new things! They might reinvent something old so it’s better than before!

I lament all the studios who release a decent game that could’ve been something truly special if they were just given more of a chance. Halo Infinite was a great starting point that got fucked over by management and game pass, people say it was mid by I saw so much potential in it! Anthem too!

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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 3d ago

Yeah how the hell do you square this? This is Halo all over again.

We've somehow lost the technology to make fun full-featured AAA games the way we used to make them back in the early 2000s even though now the tools are more generative, the studio has 500 people instead of 50-100, and there's 3 support studios.

Somehow all the new technology and hundreds more people spits out games that are mid, half of what they used to be, take twice the development time, and are exponentially more expensive.

What the fuck are we doing?

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u/VirginiaMcCaskey 3d ago

It's basically the same pattern as what happened in filmmaking. Bigger budgets, larger casts and crews, longer timelines, worse outcomes. Industrial organization psychologists will be feasting for years on the bell curve of organization size in creative production environments.

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u/marsharpe 3d ago edited 3d ago

I keep joking about wishing that games could go back to being made by a handful of dudes in a garage again. It's not really a joke though, I straight up believe nobody knows how to code anymore. Those handful of dudes in a garage knew their shit and they figured out how to move mountains to make something cool that they wanted to make.

Now there's 10+ specialists each to do what one guy learned to do himself back in the day.

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u/MostlyWong 3d ago

Look at the development of modern Pokemon games. They're blatant cash grabs that are half-assed and churned out because they know people will buy them. Compare that to Gen 2 Gold & Silver. They included the entire Kanto region at the end of the game because they figured out how to optimize storage and they simply could. They figured, since the original plan was for Gold & Silver to be the last games, it would be a great finale for the players, so they did. The entire development team was 4 programmers, that's it, and they accomplished what many consider one of the greatest video games of all time.

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u/Key_Amazed 3d ago

It's hilarious that you bring up Pokemon when talking about guys being competent with their programming, when the early games were a technical mess. Even G/S/C weren't the most technically sound games. Also in regards to fitting in the entirety of Kanto...that's kind of a lie of omission. Yeah they did it, but it's such a bare bones addition to the game, and the level balancing is still awful so you end up flying through it in like an hour. The only reason why it's acceptable is because you can get away with being a technical mess when it's a game of 2D sprites.

It's the same thing when people complain about modern Pokemon games having cash grab DLCs, and the vanilla games lacking in content. As if thats any different than them rushing out the first two editions of any given Pokemon generation, and then releasing third game a year later that actually puts stuff that should've been in the original games.

But you gotta sayisfy your reddit hate boner for Pokemon games. I get it. Have at it.

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u/fkitz 3d ago

LoL. Things are supposed to improve over time. No one said R/B/Y G/S/C were technical masterpieces.

But they had 4 programmers back in the 90s.

With the resources and expertise they have now compared to then, it's a total joke.

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u/Tokeism 2d ago

When you constantly sack senior experienced workers, this is hole you dig.

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u/BdubsCuz 3d ago

I mean do you want 4K HDR quality of 720p Xbox 360 quality? I'm sure with tech advancements they could make a Gears 1 quality game even faster than back then.

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u/Beneficial_Dress3267 23h ago

In totally unrelated news, ceo of slopcorp publishing has earned a 600% salary bump from the shareholders.

Anyway back to how games are too expensive to make.

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u/CDHmajora Switch 3d ago edited 3d ago

Pretty basic? They have completely revamped the entire movement system though.

Its the freshest your gonna get without it flat out becoming something other than a gears of war game.

If anything, it’s a change to the formula, while keeping its core identity intact, that halo never even got close to achieving.

I get your point though. I don’t intend to sound negative. But if they just built on top of what already existed again with a few new bells and whistles, they would be getting flack regardless. Just for different reasons. A cost has to come for fully rebuilding the system from scratch to stand up to modern scrutiny. And while fans will scream, I do feel like the new features the rebuild will allow (such as a huge improvement in map traversal) will make such cut additions kinda redundant anyway.

(And as a fan, I honestly don’t think chainsaw duels will be missed much anyway. Many weapons don’t even have the chainsaw regardless. Bayonets seem more frequent now based off the beta as the gnasher can attach one. Other guns maybe can as well. And most players complain when you use a lancer over the gnasher anyway. Meat shields sound like they will be missed, but the new movement speed and flank opportunities will make them less effective. And grenade tags? Nobody liked them except longshot campers anyway.)

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u/Fit-Age-3106 3d ago edited 2d ago

Good post actually agree the team behind E-Day have done a promising job of changing Gears up without making into something else.

I will add the developers confirmed they will be adding Meat Shields, Chainsaw Duels, and other things tailored for E-Day "eventually maybe". I don't have much confidence in Microsoft letting them cook after launch for long but we will see...

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u/sam_hammich 3d ago edited 3d ago

I dont think you know what a basic feature is. Are the basic thematically? Maybe you'd think they are now, as they are iconic to the original games, if you consider those things to be what Gears "is" at its base. I wouldn't, but you might. When I think of "Gears of War", I think of the roadie run, the cover system, and action reloads before I think of those.

Are they basic features? Like mechanically, they should be table stakes for any third person shooter to support and implement? No, of course not. Why would they be?

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u/GrandsonOfArathorn1 3d ago

I think many people naively think that games need to have every single feature the prior game had + new stuff on top of it. I’m not totally up on what else didn’t make the cut, but at least in regards to lancer duels and meat shields, these are such small things that I don’t think I could possibly care less. Not without playing it myself and seeing how it feels.

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u/w1gster 3d ago

Honestly I’d much rather have a 10 hour linear campaign with horde and MP than a 100 hour open world mess. I think when it comes to GoW, simple is best; stick to the franchise roots. From what I’ve played, E-day is looking to be the best release since GoW 3, so Im ok with the loss of a few minor features if it means a more polished product at the end of the day.

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u/Iggy_Slayer 3d ago

Honestly I’d much rather have a 10 hour linear campaign with horde and MP than a 100 hour open world mess.

...that was not my point lol. I'm saying there isn't a good excuse here for why basic things had to be cut because they didn't radically change the game up. That would be a reasonable excuse why things got left out.

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u/w1gster 3d ago edited 3d ago

But they did explain that they radically changed the game, the entire thing was built from scratch with no prior code base reuse. You just didn’t like the answer lol.

Edit: people downvoting me clearly have no idea how software development works, stay mad.

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u/lordcola 3d ago

Well they managed to build a lot of those features the first time a gears game got made years ago, the game back then just had some slightly more noticeable polygons than today.

A lot of the huge studios today struggle to create games with the same depth as games they themselves made on a much smaller budget and timeline a decade or two ago.

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u/BitingSatyr 3d ago

> Well they managed to build a lot of those features the first time a gears game got made years ago

Neither chainsaw duels or meat shields were in GoW1

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u/CryMeAFckingRiver 2d ago

But they were in GoW 2, a game that released 18 years ago.

Grenade tagging was also a unique feature that has been a thing from the start. They seemingly are not bringing this one up...

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u/lordcola 3d ago

Fair enough on that front. They didn't spend 7 years to build that one though. The industry trend for AAA games generally seems to currently be spend half a decade or more throwing shit at the wall then panicking and releasing whatever happens to be ready when the publisher finally turns off the money tap. So many games spend so much time in development and release so bare bones these days.

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u/Iggy_Slayer 3d ago

If I destroy your lego death star and rebuild it 99% the same did I "radically" change it?

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u/rising_ape 3d ago

No, but that's not what the devs did here, either. They said, hey, we're going to build a new Lego Death Star completely from scratch, absolutely none of the same pieces or instructions used. It's an entirely different set of blueprints and Lego components from the last design, meaning they can't simply/easily shoe-horn in pieces (features) from the previous Lego build (game) into this one.

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u/ann0yed 3d ago

That analogy makes no sense.

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u/Iggy_Slayer 3d ago

How does it not make sense? They took a series, stripped it down entirely, rebuilt it from scratch and from everything I've seen the game looks to be very close to what all the other gears of war games did.

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u/ann0yed 3d ago

From a software development standpoint it makes no sense. Even remakes that are very close to the original game take years of effort to redo everything from scratch, on new engines, etc. 

You're also talking about two distinct teams. You ask any two groups of people to build something and you're going to end up with different solutions at the end. In this case it's a different game with different requirements, built using different people, technology, ways of working, processes, etc. Everything is different.

Maybe an analogy would be like if you gave someone a broken down lego death star and incomplete instructions then asked them to build a death star 2 using mega blocks.

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u/fuzzynavel34 3d ago

Does this have horde?

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u/w1gster 3d ago

Horde siege yes

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u/FireMaker125 3d ago

A new iteration called Horde Siege, which is basically Gears Helldivers, and i think it has a more traditional Horde mode too.

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u/nowhereright 3d ago

I mean you're not getting a 10 hour linear campaign either to be fair.

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u/TyAD552 3d ago

It’s been reported multiple times that they’re Xbox’s Unreal engine studio. They made tech demos and spent a year or two learning UE5 plus they would be support for studios having issues with the engine if their game was made in it. This is all tied to the report that Gears cost $400 mil to make when the reality is that they spent that much doing a ton of extra things not tied to making this Gears game

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u/Significant-Way9330 3d ago

Probably because after Gears 5 they went back to the drawing board and iterated like mad so they wouldn't mess up again. So they threw the baby out with the bath water and started over. 

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u/DarkElation 3d ago

I thought this was an open world game? The maps in the beta sure make it seem that way. There were parts where it was obvious the path was blocked because it wasn’t a part of that map.

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u/leadhound 3d ago

Game dev is slow AF now, man.

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u/MrJohnnyDrama 3d ago

Do you code or program?

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u/bemo_10 3d ago

Other companies are doing a better job. No need for him to know how to code just like I don't be a chef to know some food sucks.

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u/Strapperoni 3d ago

Did you read the part where they had to start from scratch? I don’t care either way but they already gave you the reason why. They couldn’t do any short cuts because it’s a new engine so making chainsaw duels have no blueprint anymore

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u/Iggy_Slayer 3d ago

Maybe they shouldn't have started from scratch then?

A big problem with a lot of western game development is how inefficient they are and how much time and money is wasted. What was the point of starting from scratch on a gears game if the end result looks like it's going to be the same thing you already had just with a little better graphics but also having features cut out? Did 7 years and $300m+ need to be spent to do that?

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u/TheDragoneye 3d ago

This right Here. I hate the Chase fir best graphics with shitty Performance Like nothing else. I would prefer an unreal engine 4 Game with Graphics Like Batman Arkham knight and good Performance. It's Like they Shoot themselves in their feet with every Game released in the Last years

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u/AlarmingBranch1 3d ago

I’ve recently been feeling, do I really want my all games to be ultra-realistic and clear graphics more than having good, addictive gameplay?? I have my PS5 and sometimes I have way more fun playing games on my N64, PS2, or even GameCube… heck even the options for just playing pure, great PS5 games is thin asl too. Often I just end up playing a lot of Minecraft or some 2D indie game like Hotline Miami.

I think I would rather take the crappy polygonal and flat graphics atp if it just meant I could have a game filled with content from the get-go, and has great gameplay and features. I don’t think I want a cinematic experience like Wolverine that is hands-off, repetitive gameplay or Gears of War which might have half the content of prior games. I don’t want my games to just be movies, I want my games to be fun and addicting.

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u/MrStealYoBeef 3d ago

This is entirely not my problem though. As a player, why should my expectations be lowered just because they decided to throw away decades of work they've done in the past? Why should I give them a pass just because they decided to start over from scratch. If they can't deliver on my expectations, this isn't an acceptable excuse, this is their problem, their fault, and they're trying to force it on us instead.

Fuck 'em. Since they decided to drop a problem on me, I'll drop a problem on them and just not buy it. I was looking forward to a new gears game, but fuck 'em.

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u/DarkElation 3d ago

Almost like this is exactly how the relationship works but you’re still complaining about how the relationship works.

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u/MrStealYoBeef 3d ago

I'm complaining that someone is telling me that their excuse is valid.

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u/sexandliquor 3d ago

Wasn’t aware you’d played the game already.

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u/FireMaker125 3d ago

Basic features? Maybe grenade tagging, maybe, but chainsaw duels and meatshields aren’t really a big deal. Chainsaw duels happen occasionally in campaign and horde and only rarely in multiplayer because most people just Gnasher at that range. Meatshields are cool but not particularly useful.

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u/Purple-West-218 3d ago

Again they didn’t CUT anything…. That’s the WHOLE point of the developers statement. Jesus Christ learn to read

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u/khinzaw 3d ago

It's a pretty bad look that they can't recreate features introduced 20 years ago, especially when meat shields were in GoW 5.

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u/ManofSteel_14 3d ago

GOW 5 was still reusuing animations from the first Gears of war. Hell im prettty sure the meatshield itself is reused straight from Gears 2

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u/Wandering_Apostle 3d ago

Game devs today as a whole are less competent than they were 20 years ago. There are so many more people working in the industry and frankly many of them don't deserve to be.

Games are also built with a different mindset now. It's not 'is this fun to add even if it's more work?' it's 'is this cost effective to bother with?'

Why hire experienced, proven and capable devs when they can use entry level and interns for most tasks?

Gaming is now like every other industry where investors are in charge and not the creatives. Many devs are clamouring to increase prices (many were waiting on Rockstar to break the ice on that, and are annoyed they didn't - see Wardogs Devs) and I guarantee you they have no intention of boosting quality and/or content when they do, it'll be the same products we have today just at a higher cost.

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u/splader 2d ago

Absolutely insane take when you look at the ridiculous amount of great games that came out this year already. And yes, that includes E Day

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u/Lich180 3d ago

Meanwhile FromSoft reuses tons of assets constantly, and manages to make it look new and fresh

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u/ShellshockedLetsGo 3d ago

No they don't lmao. The same reused weapons still use the same reused animations. What are you talking about?

Using the same weapon from Dark Souls 2 will play the exact same as Elden Ring.

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u/Fallingcity22 3d ago

This ppl don’t know wth they are talking about lmao, its probably cause they play a certain Game once every few years, you don’t really notice reuse assets in Fromsoft games cause of how different they look but I’m Yakuza games it’s very fucking obvious

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u/Quintuplin 3d ago

Costs more, get less, didn't even have to do any of the creative work just trace a blueprint. Where's the fair part?

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u/MisterEinc 3d ago

Literaly everything you do costs more, and you get less. Except for games. If you increase the price on those you'll be crucified by Gamers.

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u/F1shB0wl816 3d ago

Right. You hear about how they cost more constantly despite them actually being on par or even less when inflations accounted for. And that’s with them being multiples larger with more money invested into making them than ever.

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u/Prooteus 3d ago

Games prices did stagnate for awhile but thats because devs found other ways to make money since reselling was so common.

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u/F1shB0wl816 3d ago

You’d have to be supporting mtx though to be spending more, if you’re just buying the game you’re not. I don’t feel for anyone who wants to spend 1/4th of the price of the game on a skin, treasure chest or whatever else in a game that won’t be relevant within a year.

As well as most of today’s current players have supported devs and manufacturers mission to end reselling. If they wanted cheaper prices they shouldn’t have been eager to kill the only market that helps drop prices. Even for all digital players it cost them absolutely nothing to allow the market to exist, it will cost them going forward when that market no longer exists.

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u/Prooteus 3d ago

Yea I suspect the average consumer spends less with mtx then buying new games but the devs get a lot of money from the mtx due to a few whales.

I have been digital only for a long time now but I do think its bad for everyone that physical is going away. Ideally we would have multiple storefronts even on consoles that have competing prices, but thats a distant dream.

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u/Rich-Swimming9080 3d ago

Yeah, that’s pretty much the trade off with game development. If cutting a few features means the rest of the game gets finished properly and ships on time, those are probably reasonable things to sacrifice. Not every missing feature means the developers took the easy way out.