Gears of War Ultimate Edition

https://gearsofwar.com/en-us/games/gears-of-war-ultimate/xbox-one

There were leaks for months, but this was finally unveiled at E3. It’s a remastered version of Gears of War for Xbox One. Textures and map geometry have been updated, and some encounters have been tweaked for balance. On the multiplayer side, some of the improvements from Gears 3 have been incorporated like spotting and weapon changes, plus it plays in 60fps. August 25th launch date.

  1. Keep in mind that this is only a remake of the first game. It’s not a last-gen franchise bundle like The Master Chief Collection.

  2. It’s going to retail for $39.99.

  3. It is coming to PC. No ETA on release date for that platform.

Digital Foundry posted a comparison video that shows some of the changes. https://youtu.be/JphX4LMtt88

I am so tired of this remake business. But I have a feeling my friends are going to buy it and peer pressure me into playing with them. Which I’ll do, all the while making passive aggressive comments and sighing heavily. I’m not a very good friend sometimes.

I liked Gears 1 a lot. I think I ended up liking Gears 3 more because it included that terrific Horde mode, but a remastered Gears 1 on PC should be great - if MS/The Coalition don’t mess it up.

I do have a couple of questions:

  1. Will they keep the offline bots for skirmish matches? Gears always had great bots, but I don’t see any mention of it here.

  2. Win 10 / Microsoft App Store only?

Oh, that was quickly answered. No bots.

I’m not sure why they would drop the bots, when they were already in the game. :/

Hm, while I like the new material response (much less shiny plastic look), the Gears games aesthetic always seemed to be the high contrast, which is gone with the more naturalistic lighting. Weird choice.

Some of the changes look really good, but some of them aren’t great. I assume there were some compromises to get the game running up to 60fps.

I’m guessing the removal of bots has to do with the “map geometry update” and not wanting to do much of anything that they don’t have to besides texture replacement. The whole “remastered” for full or near full price (often with missing features or DLC) seems to be the easy mode income for a still transitional era for consoles. Only being Gears of War 1 and none of the newer (or even not all of the original) franchise features means Microsoft has again missed a chance to have me think I am missing anything by not having a XboxOne (or Win10 at some point I guess) and thus it continues to be a “transitional era”.

$40 for a 9 year old game with updated textures and some better geometry? Yea sure thing M$…

Wait, how does the xbox one version look worse (@ that ocean screenshot).

There are a lot of shots in which the newer version looks much better, but I think there are some areas in which the remaster process got the better of the art direction.

Example of a good change:

Xbox 360

Xbox One

That makes me want to fire up Doom3 again. Man, I wish I’d picked up the fancy flashlight edition of Doom 3 during the sale. I NEVER remember that exists until it’s too late!

“Guys, we are totally taking PC seriously this time.”

They could have NOT put this out on PC - I’m not sure I see the problem here. A revamped classic available for the first time for PC players who may have missed it. If it’s not worth it to re-purchase it, you aren’t the target audience. (I’m not, fwiw, either).

They’re releasing a game that’s almost 10 years old, and that already has a PC version. If they’re serious about supporting PC as a platform they should port the entire trilogy, not the one game that we already have.

Oh, they may release all three eventually. They just want you to pay for them individually.

One of the things 343 Studios is saying repeatedly after the botched multiplayer lobbies in the Master Chief Collection is that they should never have tried to combine 3 different games together into one. That they each had their own quirks, different development studios working on each remake, different type of multiplayer code that they had to try to unify, etc. And it was a complete nightmare for them. That they’ve learned their lesson, never try to do combine multiple games like that again.

So I’m not surprised that if they do a Gears of War series remakes, that they will now do so only one game at a time.

Because Microsoft.

-Tom

IMO, looks much worse in the new version. The art direction was completely changed, and not in a good way.

Higher quality assets don’t surpass the importance of art direction.

Btw, the BFG edition of Doom 3 ALSO looks significantly worse than the original.

I wonder how this affects the odds of MS including the original in its newly announced backwards compat initiative. Gears is a core franchise, after all, so its absence would be conspicuous. But wouldn’t its inclusion undermine the sales of the “Ultimate” edition? I don’t think most people would pay $40 for the “Ultimate” edition when you can pop the old disk in for free, or buy a used copy on the cheap.

Played the beta, realized I’m over this playstyle