Rod Fergusson explains why Gears 5 has 3-player co-op campaign instead of 4 like the original trilogy

Gears 5 is very close to arriving on consoles and PC; the game launches on September 10 (those with an active Game Pass Ultimate subscription can play it 4 days early, that is, on September 6) and as the release date approaches, more details are released. The newest detail, revealed at Comic-Con, is that the game will let up to 3 players play the campaign in co-op mode, an increase compared with Gears of War 4 (which allowed only 2 simultaneous players in campaign mode), but still fewer than the original trilogy, which allowed up to 4 players to play the campaign together. According to the franchise’s top boss, this is because 4-player co-op is “chaos”, forcing developers to rethink all the level design to accommodate 4 players, and there would also be problems on the narrative side of the game, since players will want to see all the characters taking part in the scenes, which would result in more lines and script changes. Fergusson said:

“I play a lot of co-op and everything I do is based on co-op. The problem with 4-player co-op is that it’s chaos. When you played that Halo experience for the first time, I bet you didn’t fully understand what was going on all the time. While you were picking up ammo, someone else triggered an event that causes something… you know what I mean. There’s a problem with four players that forces you to have bigger worlds. One of the things you’ll notice in Gears 1, 2 and then 3 is that 3 had much bigger levels because, ‘Now we have to find places where four players can lean up against.’ It’s much harder to build.”

“It’s also a bigger challenge for the narrative. If you look at Gears 3 and the cutscenes, it was one of the things I had to work on with Karen Traviss, she started doing a kind of round, where everyone had a line. You couldn’t have the characters alone. It was always a scene with four people, always four people in a moment. So all four people shared their opinion.”

For those who want to watch Rod Fergusson’s full presentation, here is the video (in English):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReHk0wlXmOE

Source: Eurogamer