Gears of War E-Day. A LONG Post from a retired Gears player (I did it all, Montages, content creation, competitive) who's excited to get back in when it drops. (I have 2 businesses now so it'll never be how it was but I def want to stream it and make some videos) Here's my thoughts. I've had a lot of people hitting me up that are excited and want to know what I think about #GearsofWarEDay First off, It's awesome that the Gears franchise is continuing and I'm extremely excited for it. Some things worry me. The Gears campaigns were legendary and the story was awesome, but what keeps me interested long term is the multiplayer. I'm not 100% convinced yet that this game will even have traditional PvP. It seems like it might just be a Story game with some co-op modes like Horde etc. Seeing that Gears 6 is still in the works, this reminds me of when Gears of War Ultimate Edition was released. UE came out and about a year after, the next installment of Gears released (Gears 4) Unfortunately Gears UE was short lived considering it got no content updates. It literally got 1-2 small balancing patches and the game was done be worked on. UE had sooo much potential and I remember the game being one of games that stayed the most consistent out of them all for me viewership wise. It just ran out of content once all the skins were unlocked etc. Games these days need layers. There needs to be goals and progression. (Ranked Seasons, New skins, New maps, New characters, new weapons etc) I obviously hope Gears E-Day has traditional PvP but the conversations I've seen recently are just another reason why I think it might not happen. The community is so split because Gears kind of had 2 major era's. You had the OG Gears 1 movement which obviously was tweaked over the next 2 games, and then you have new age Gears (3,4,5). Mechanic changes included "wall cancelling" which is having the ability to control your character when they are mid animation to allow you to pull out of bad situations. Vets started to abuse this mechanic to move around faster than traditional running or strafing and it became the main tactic when moving through Gears 4 and 5. I think one of the problems is that the Gears movement has been evolving. But they've been evolving off of a style that was already an evolution of something else. Gears 4/5 are an evovled version of Gears 3. Gears 3 is an evovled version of Gears 2 etc. So I think we are getting way too far away from the basics of the game. If I had any advice for the Gears devs, Go back to the roots. AND THEN evolve it. Code Gears 1 and then fix the issues you see with it. If you build another Gears 3 clone, people will get burned out fast. I personally think Wall Cancelling is a lot like building in fortnite. It's a skill. It's obviously hard. But it's turned into a different beast than what was originally intended. In early fortnite, people would use structures like walls and ramps to get up to high mountains or to create some cover so you can revive a teammate. Over time, it turned into a completely different beast and became WAY TOO crazy for new players to keep up. This is why Fortnite saw such a huge surge in popularity when they added a "no build mode" because people felt like they could somewhat be on a level playing field without having 10k hours in playground practicing building. Gears faces a similar challenge with the Wall Cancel. Why was it implemented into the game? It was impletmented into the game to make movement feel more free and smooth and over time it turned into a tool to be abused to create crazy unpredictable movement that can be very hard to watch (In some cases, even giving people motion sickness). New players, especially in this day in age, don't see wall cancelling and think "woah, that guy's a BEAST!" They see it and say "that's dumb, what is even happening." Same with when people see someone building 1 by 1 squares or trump towers with 999 mats in fortnite. It's daunting and uninviting to new players. I'm all for skill gaps in video games and I know Gears has one of the biggest ones of any game I've ever played. I think the issue for me is that I saw the population crash in Gears 4 and 5 and want the game to have more longevity in the long run. It's a FACT, that the younger generation isn't feeling Gears. I used to run into kids all the time on Gears 1 and 2 and in my years of playing Gears 4 and 5, I've heard maybe like 2? You have to get the younger generation in to the franchise to replace the people who are falling out. The amount of people I've met out in the wild that recognize me in public from Gears (It's gotta be like 20-25) not one of them still play. People move on. People grow up and have families and get jobs. The player base will dwindle and we need new blood to replace them. Thanks for reading this far. If you've fallen out of touch with me. I own 2 businesses both in the Trading Card Hobby. One which is a physical store and one that I run from my house. I've become very strict with what I choose to spend time on and the fact that I took 20 mins of my day to type this shows that I still love the franchise and want what's best for it. Just my 2 cents. The last 2 times we had this wall cancel vs wall bounce debate, wall cancel got added so I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again. I of course will still play regardless but I just think a prequel could be a great opportunity to dabble with some old mechanics to see if we can have a brighter future for this franchise and fix the problem that all the newer games have had. Thanks for reading! -Drew LiKeBuTTeR