The Coalition wants to keep telling stories about Marcus and Dom

On The Expansion Pass podcast, brand director Nicole Fossett and creative director Matt Searcy said The Coalition is not ready to move Gears of War forward without Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago. After Gears 5 in 2019, the ending left a cliffhanger for the next generation of heroes, but instead of a sequel the studio rewound 14 years, to Emergence Day.

Fossett’s answer to why tell a story whose ending the third game already showed: people who only played the original trilogy saw the surface, and there are still many games to make about these characters as people. Searcy calls the pair the family the brand rests on, and says twenty years of the series stand on them. Stepping away, in his view, pulls out the support, while the existing lore can keep supplying prequels.

Art director Aryan Khanbek adds that bringing the pair back is also a clean door for newcomers who have not played the fourth and fifth games. Veterans still get the chapters between the Pendulum Wars and the first invasion.

The thread of Kait Diaz and JD Fenix, left open after Gears 5’s disputed ending in which an ally could die, still has no resolution. E-Day’s release on PC and Xbox locks Marcus and Dom in as the face of the series for the years ahead.

The Expansion Pass interview