Gears Tactics Returns as XSX Launch Title - Interview with Coalition Studio

Table of Contents

• Gears Tactics Returns as XSX Launch Title - Interview with Coalition Studio
• Jack is back
• Xbox Series X updates and the future of Gears of War

Xbox Series X updates and the future of Gears of War

Are there any other further updates planned after the game launches on Series X?

Tyler Bielman: Yeah, and we're completely focused on getting this release out the door and to the players. We couldn't be more excited to be a launch title with Series X and Series S, but we've not announced anything beyond this update, so I really can't speak to anything yet. Sorry.

This is another console launch that will have a Gears game to go with it. Do you think it's important to ensure there's a new Gears adventure for every new chapter of the Xbox story?

Tyler Bielman: We at The Coalition take a lot of pride in being able to deliver great experiences that showcase whatever technology or service Xbox has to offer. So whether it be... Gears 5 was an incredible addition to Game Pass. Gears Tactics came along and was one of the first sort of AAA PC Game Pass titles. As you mentioned, Gears has sort of been participating in the hardware launches. Part of what we do at The Coalition is we'd love to show up for those big moments and be part of the player's journey as they invest in Xbox and come with us and tell their stories. So, I wouldn't say that we have a lot of flexibility in what we do.

We are very proud of being able to show up for those moments, and I think we have every intention of showing up for those moments in the future.

Cam McRae: Yeah, I'm just going to second that and say that I think it's really important, at least for our studio, to help show what the platform can do when there's new hardware coming out, and really try and push the limits. And that means showing up with a Gears title as a launch title and helping first-party or even other third-parties that we work with understand how to use the hardware.

What are some of the most important parts of Gears Tactics that you needed to ensure felt great on console like they do on PC?

Tyler Bielman: The controls were critical. We basically started over with the gamepad. And the other one, another key one, was just the usability of the convoy. The convoy is your equipment screens where you customize your units. We refreshed all of that so it worked better on controller and also better with keyboard and mouse. Of course, you can plug a keyboard and mouse into your Xbox and get the best experience for the keyboard and mouse controls that way. So, those were important. Those two areas were really important.

Cam McRae: Yeah. I think performance is a given, that we just have to be performant and can't be dropping frames. So, I think when we look at the product and how we approached it to what Tyler said, controls and the controller and how you move the camera and interact, and different shortcuts that you wouldn't have on the mouse and keyboard because they don't make sense there, but you would have on the controller, was our biggest focus. And the way we approached that was not like, "How do we port this PC game to Xbox?" It was, "We have this great PC game to start with. Now, let's go to the drawing board on how controls should work on it, and make controls that are unique and make sense on the gamepad without trying to port what's there in the mouse and keyboard, and let the mouse and keyboard feel correct by themselves and then make the controller feel great as well."

Challenges in bringing Gears Tactics to Xbox Series X

Were there any unique challenges in bringing the game to Series X specifically?

Cam McRae: One of the interesting challenges of adding something like hijack is in my mind here is on paper, it made sense. Yeah, Jack can take over enemy unit. And then once we got into the implementation details, boy, did it kind of get out of control a little bit. Because we realized that, okay, Jack needs to make it so that every enemy in the game is now playable. So every enemy is a playable character. And if we're going to make them playable characters, then every enemy should have a unique skill as well.

So adding hijack was, for me, a nice sneaky way for Tyler to get a whole lot more characters in the game. But the end result was really awesome in that it changes the strategy of the game so much that you can take over enemy unit, and then you can find these little hidden skills in them all because they all have something to offer that's a little different from what your own units have, and unique to them.

What are some of the most important gameplay strategies you can offer to new players coming in when the Series X launches?

Tyler Bielman: Well, I mean, the key thing that we always tried to do with Tactics was allow you to play more aggressively than you might with a different kind of turn-based strategy game. Learning how to use executions is critical. Knowing that you can grant your whole team extra actions through an execution, and then setting yourself up to save that unit that went forward and pushed forward to do the execution, that is sort of core to how to find success sort of in an aggressive strategy with Tactics. I would say that for people coming over who have played on PC and are familiar, take the time to go into the controller settings. You can adjust a lot of new elements of the controls. Play around with the zoom and the precision movement. Figure out how to end your movement in the correct place.

It's really important when you have a contextual action like a revive, or picking up a crate that you're sort of able to see where to end your movement. And then the last thing is there's sort of a... I wouldn't call it a hidden feature, but something that we engineered into the game but we don't explicitly call out very much, which is if you are moving and spending actions to move, you can move within a certain radius. But if you actually end your movement in cover, we give you an extra percentage of movement to sort of push you into cover. So moving through cover is not only defensively really important so that your units don't get attacked, but also it actually is the most efficient way to move through the world, because we give you a little extra to slide into cover in a very Gears of War way. And so that's something that emerges as you play, but that's a little tip that we love it when people sort of discover that.

Gears Tactics more accessible

What do you think is the most important part of making games like Gears Tactics accessible to everyone and not just one slice of the gaming community?

Tyler Bielman: We set out to make a PC game that really was for kind of a love letter to PC strategy gamers initially. We took our time to do that to the best of our ability, and the results were great. Then we gave ourselves the time, didn't rush, to bring the game to console, because we want everyone who has the opportunity to try it no matter what their gaming background is or their gaming preferences are. To come in and give this game a try, because we believe that its appeal and its reach and what the game is at its core is really accessible, whether you're a shooter fan, an RPG fan, a turn-based strategy fan, a platforming fan. All of those have different DNA inside of Gears Tactics. And just Gears Tactics as an idea, the idea of doing a Gears game in a very different genre, it was always there to just bring more people to the magic of Gears. And that was the mission of the publishing team. That is the mission of Gears Tactics as a product. So we just can't wait to see everyone's response.

You said accessibility, which really speaks to me there,. that making the game, this specific game, available not only on different platforms, but to everybody, no matter how they want to play. So if you want to play on the console with a mouse and keyboard, that's fine. You can do that. You can plug in your mouse and keyboard. You can play with your gamepad on the PC, and then you can go through our accessibility settings. And if there's something that you want to change, then you can change it. We have different colorblind modes. We have a narrator. And we've added more accessibility options based on the launch of PC and some of the feedback that we heard from users on how they can control colorblindness and certain aspects of the game, that if it caused some sort of visual disorientation, then they can turn them off so that everybody can feel comfortable playing the game.