Today, a new chapter in the Gears saga begins with the launch of Gears Tactics, a fast-paced, turn-based strategy game developed from the ground up for PC, now available with Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta), Steam and Windows 10 PC.
Gears Tactics has garnered praise from media reviews: PC Gamer and 3DJuegos lauded the title for merging the core gameplay mechanics of the genre with the action-packed intensity and signature tone of Gears of War. Similar sentiment was shared by USgamer who praised Gears Tactics for having a strong narrative focus interwoven into the campaign, while GameSpot and Game Informer further celebrated the title as distinctly Gears, as the latter opined it to be a great fit for the tactics genre. Reviews also underlined how well Gears Tactics plays, with IGN stating that “Gears Tactics is an excellent turn-based tactics game” and PC Gamer highlighting how Gears Tactics is a “deep, fast-paced strategy game.”
Set 12 years before the first Gears of War, Gears Tactics sees cities across the planet Sera beginning to fall to the monstrous threat rising from underground – the Locust Horde. With the government in disarray, commandeer a squad of survivors led by Gabe Diaz as humanity’s last hope. Customize your squad’s loadout and equipment as you take on a desperate mission to hunt down the relentless and powerful leader of the Locust army: Ukkon, the evil mastermind who makes monsters.
Play Gears Tactics before May 4 to receive the Thrashball Cole Character Pack which includes Augustus Cole as a recruit and the Thrashball Armor Set, complete with rare abilities. If you’re new to Xbox Game Pass, you can get your first month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with all the benefits of Xbox Live Gold, and access to over 100 great games for console and PC, for just $1 USD.
Series fans will want to check out “Gears of War: Bloodlines,” the new novel by New York Times bestselling author Jason Hough, that sets the stage for the events of Gears 5 and Gears Tactics, and the father-daughter relationship between the respective games’ leads, Kait and Gabe Diaz. “Gears of War: Bloodlines“ is now available in paperback, ebook and audiobook.
For those interested in going behind the scenes with the artists and developers, ”Gears Tactics: The Art of the Game“ tracks the entire development process from concept sketches to final production art. “Gears Tactics: The Art of the Game” is available today from Titan Books.
Want to know more about Gears Tactics before diving in? Check out our Developer Blogs right here on Steam!
With Gears Tactics, we set out to create a "a strategy game worthy of the PC." This meant more than just gameplay, but a game that performed well in a wide range of PC specifications, all while upholding the high visual standards that players expect from a Gears game.
In this article, you'll find the recommended system requirements for Gears Tactics, how to get the most from adjustable settings, Intel Xe compatibility, and a list of accessibility and other features (Color Blind mode, Razer Chroma support) so that you can dial in your rig to perfection, with a little help from the game's benchmark mode.
FROM THE GROUND UP FOR PC
The Coalition and Splash Damage developed Gears Tactics from the ground up for PC, making sure that Gears Tactics expanded the franchise to new audiences and performed well in a wide range of PC specifications. Here are the minimum, recommended and ideal specifications for playing Gears Tactics.
To make sure players have everything ready to jump into the battlefield and start their journey to hunt down Ukkon, Gears Tactics will choose recommended settings that match your hardware capabilities.
For players who want to fine tune their settings and get the most out of the game’s visuals, there are a variety of graphics settings available. Most settings come with a preview that will show the precise results of changing the setting. Tune the graphics settings and then run the built-in benchmark to see how the game will perform in real gameplay.
PC SETTINGS
Let’s have a look at some of the settings you’ll be able to explore in Gears Tactics.
GENERAL SETTINGS
Gears Tactics has all the standard controls you expect. In addition, you can look forward to control over the following features.
Minimum Frame Rate This setting will allow the game to dynamically manage the resolution of a section of the rendering pipeline in order to keep the game at or above the selected frame rate. Choose the frame rate you don’t want to drop below and let the game do the rest!
Cinematic Frame Rate Cinematics in Gears Tactics are a step up in quality. The game displays cinematics at 30 FPS to keep the frame rate smooth while increasing the visual quality. You can switch this to unlimited frame rate. Cinematic Scaling Mode
Gears Tactics will, by default, fill the screen up to 21:9 aspect ratio in cinematics. In some cases, the cinematic may be cropped on the top and bottom to fill the screen. You can choose “Fit” to fit the cinematic into the screen and enjoy them as authored in all cases.
HDR For players with an HDR monitor, Gears Tactics supports Wide Color Gamut and HDR10.
TEXTURE SETTINGS
Gears Tactics comes with Ultra (up to 4K) textures up front, so there is no need to get an extra texture pack. There are standard settings for various types of texture quality as well as a few settings unique to Gears. Here’s a sample of some of the texture settings.
Texture Streaming While you can adjust the quality of the Characters, Worlds and Effects, this setting will allow you to manage the speed that textures can stream in at the cost of some extra memory.
Shading Quality The content pipeline in Gears Tactics was built to give artists extra control over the complexity and detail in materials (groups of textures). Using Shading Quality, you can adjust the amount of detail materials have, without needing to reduce the texture resolution.
ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS
The environment settings give you control over some of the most impactful visuals in the game. Here’s a few new visual features you can look forward to.
Planar Reflections With a top-down camera, it’s often the case that buildings or other objects will not always be in view, especially around the edges of the screen. This technique is used to display accurate reflections of objects that are off screen, instead of the reflection disappearing.
Glossy Reflections This setting uses compute-based ray casting to scatter reflected light in more directions. This results in a more accurate reflection but can be expensive for the GPU.
World Detail Similar to the way Shading Quality is used to adjust extra detail in materials, World Detail is used to adjust extra detail in world objects. At higher settings, more objects will be added to the world, including more lights. The additional objects don’t have an impact on gameplay.
Contact Shadows Contact Shadows use compute-based ray casting in screen space to determine shadows between a pixel and a light source. This extension of the Gears Tactics dynamic shadowing system will generate finely detailed shadows across the entire scene.
POST PROCESS SETTINGS
Post processing is used to add the final layer of detail to the scene. Here are some of the settings you’ll be able to adjust.
Depth of Field Depth of Field is used to blur parts of the scene, generally to direct focus. Choose between Depth of Field turned off, turned on in cinematics only, or turned on in cinematics and in gameplay.
Bloom Style Bloom is the glow effect seen from bright light sources. Standard bloom spreads equally in all directions. You can also choose anamorphic bloom, which spreads further on the sides.
Lens Flare Intensity Lens flares are a result of bright light sources being viewed through a lens. Adjust the intensity of the lens flares with this setting, up to completely turning them off.
ADVANCED SETTINGS
These settings affect how the game is run and can have a significant impact on performance. To make sure a wide range of PC specifications were supported, The Coalition worked with Intel on specific optimizations. Two areas that offer broad performance improvements are covered here.
Variable Rate Shading Variable Rate Shading (or VRS), is a relatively new technique. It’s used to adjust the number of pixels affected by a pixel shader, which is a fragment of code that runs on every pixel drawn to the screen. With VRS, surrounding pixels can also be affected by a pixel shader, resulting in less overall work for the GPU. Working with Intel, this setting was built to improve performance without making a highly noticeable change to image quality.
Async Compute Async Compute is a method of running graphics workloads in parallel. Working with Intel, this setting has been expanded from a similar implementation in Gears 5 to support more workloads in parallel across different types of hardware.
BENCHMARK
All these settings come together to make Gears Tactics a game that will run well across low power hardware and scale up for the highest end gaming rigs.
Use the built-in benchmark to preview the games visuals and performance with custom settings, or check how the game will perform at recommended settings for your hardware.
Here’s a sample of the performance you’ll be able to experience across a range of devices using the games recommended settings.
Intel® Gen 11 Laptop
This thin and light laptop uses Variable Rate Shading in order to achieve over 30 FPS at 900p.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
The recommended settings for this mid-range GPU are a mix of medium to high in order to achieve over 60 FPS at 1440p.
AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
This high end GPU has most settings at ultra and uses the Minimum Frame Rate setting in order to maintain a steady 60 FPS at 4K.
INTEL Xe COMPATIBILITY
Gears Tactics was developed from the ground up to perform well on a wide range of devices. In partnership with Intel, we have optimized Gears Tactics to take advantage of the Intel® Xe Architecture. Now you can experience Gears Tactics on both desktops as well as on thin-and-light notebooks!
By working together with Intel, The Coalition strived to reach their primary benchmark, which was the ability to increase the screen resolution while maintaining a stable framerate. Solutions such as variable rate shading and asynchronous compute were implemented in the game to reduce the GPU’s workload.
“We are thrilled to partner with Microsoft – The Coalition to deliver an optimized Gears Tactics experience to fans of this iconic franchise. With one of the industry’s deepest developer relations programs, we worked with Microsoft to enable Gears Tactics to take full advantage of advanced graphics hardware capabilities such as variable rate shading and asynchronous compute to unlock fantastic gaming experiences for PC gamers worldwide,” said Roger Chandler, Vice President, Visual Computing Software, Intel. “Platforms powered by Intel’s all-new Xe architecture are crafted to deliver unprecedented gaming performance in thin-and-light notebooks and we can’t wait for gamers to enjoy optimized titles such as Gears Tactics.”
It’s not all about graphics settings. Gears Tactics offers great level of control over players’ experience, including comprehensive accessibility settings, such as:
• Full screen color blind mode • Subtitles and Closed Captioning • Screen Reader • Gore and Mature Content filters
Players will also be able to fully remap their keyboard controls, adjust camera settings, resize safe zones and manage the amount of information on the UI.
Razer Chroma is supported in Gears Tactics, providing an interactive lighting experience through Razer Chroma supported peripherals to take your immersion to the next level.
Gears Tactics comes with a full set of Xbox Live achievements. If you are playing on Steam, then you will be able to earn achievements on Steam as well.
AVAILABLE NOW
We couldn’t be more excited to release Gears Tactics today! In order to play Gears Tactics, you will need an Xbox Live account (free) and if you play by May 4th, you will get the Thrashball Cole Character Pack!
FINAL NOTES
We’re excited to expand Gears of War to a new genre and bring more fans to the Gears of War family. Our passionate team developed Gears Tactics to deliver a great strategy experience, and we hope you enjoy and have fun.
TC
Gears Tactics Developer Blog - Customization
We’re closing in on the final few days before the launch of Gears Tactics! To help tide you over, let’s dive into our fifth Developer Blog where we going deep on how you can craft the playstyle – and look – of your squad on the battlefield.
5 Classes, 150+ Skills
At the core of your units in Gears Tactics is their Class. Each Class is focused around a different role on the battlefield loaded with unique Skills, weaponry and core abilities.
Each Class has over 30 skills to unlock in a simple but customizable Skill Tree, where 1 action point (earned by levelling up a Character) equals 1 ability unlock on the tree. Split across two sides, any skill can be purchased from either side of the tree at any time, as long as the skill is adjacent to an already purchased skill.
This flexibility allows you to create units with diverse skillsets. Will you go deep on a specific skill branch to give your Character powerful abilities or will you spread out the Skill purchases to create a more personalize hybrid style? It’s all down to you.
Support Class
Support Classes are the backbone of any squad. With a specialization on healing, buffing teammates and providing critical extra actions to teammates, this class is critical to keep your units alive and kicking ass on the battlefield.
The Support Class skill tree is a mix of classic support play and combat potency. There’s plenty of options for leaning into buffing and healing, including providing team mates with extra actions to escape sticky situations, or more towards combat, including healing team mates every time you rack up a chainsaw kill. Nice!
Equipped with a Lancer, they have a decent damage output with a decent hitrate – don’t forget to about the instant kill Chainsaw bayonet which is a critical piece of your tactical puzzle.
Vanguard Class
Vanguards are the ultimate disruptor of your enemy’s front line, focused on creating firing opportunities for the rest of the squad while also packing a punch themselves.
The Vanguard Class skill tree has a variety of tricks up it's sleeve - from making your Vanguard tankier, to adding debuff attacks or even a psuedo-healer role with a few damage-based healing abilities. Skills like Intimidate flushed enemies near the Vanguard out of cover and opens them up to taking more damage for a turn. The powerful Leech skill causes allies nearby to gain a percentage of damage dealt back as health.
Equipped with a Retro Lancer, they have a consistently high damage output with a good hitrate at short to medium ranges. Use the bayonet on the end of the Retro Lancer to charge across the battlefield at any enemy (provided they have a direct unbroken path) and skewer them for an instant kill at the cost of just one action.
Scout Class
Scouts are adept at outmaneuvering opponents and delivering maximum damage at close range.
Equipped with the Gnasher shotgun, when these units get up close, they hit like a truck. Their defining Cloak ability allows them to maximum flexibility on the battlefield – use it to conduct hit and run attacks, escape the watchful gaze of an overwatch or outflank enemies.
If you’re all about that Cloak life, there’s plenty of ways to lean into it with extra damage when shooting from cloak and dealing additional damage to wounded targets. Use Sprint to cover vast distances across the battlefield – even when cloaked.
If you like explosions, the Scout can also specialize in Commando abilities, providing guerilla tactics like mines and a heavy supply of Frags that they will not see coming.
Heavy Class
Bring the big guns with the Heavy who use their Mulcher chaingun to hold the hell out of any position you take.
Skills like Ultra Shot let the Heavy rain fire on the battlefield, firing until the target is dead or their clip empties – whichever comes first – or by using Suppressive Fire to interrupt and pin units on the battlefield. Adopt a more defensive strategy and their abilities can be specialized heavily into Overwatch, making them hit more and harder when defending an area.
The Mulcher is a unique weapon in the world of Tactics. Once you take cover, every turn you remain in position nets you additional accuracy and damage – and, thanks to its huge clip, reloading is a rarity. This take and hold gameplay style also makes the Heavy’s overwatch particularly deadly.
Sniper Class
No surprises on this one. Snipers are the long-range critical hit dealers of your lineup, popping heads all day long.
As you would expect, the Sniper Skill tree offers plenty of opportunity to up the chance of critical hits, but also offers risk/reward abilities like Ultimate Shot – where killing or downing a target gets all of your actions back. Yes, all of them!
The abilities in the Stalker side of the skill tree, add knockdowns and debuffs into the Sniper’s Skillsets, making them effective at disrupting enemies and reducing their accuracy through pure terror.
Using their Longshot Sniper Rifle, Snipers specialize in hitting critical hits often over extended ranges. They are perfect for their ability to potentially one-hit kill enemies like the Drone and Kantus, but also for burning down tough targets like Zealots and Boomers before they are in the effective range of the rest of your squad.
Style With Substance
On top of Customization through Skills, Equipment plays a major role in the potency of your squad in Gears Tactics. When you find some new Equipment in Tactics, like some badass looking armor, it also add valuable gameplay traits to up your game.
Continuing the theme of freedom of choice in Tactics, all armor you find can be used on any Character. Armor with Critical Hit Chance bonuses are a great choice for a Sniper for example, but it could also make your Scout become an even deadlier close-range wrecking ball.
Similarly, you might think an extra stock of explosive Grenades from armor is a great choice, but add it to your Support class and now you have two healing grenades, without waiting for the cooldown. With three different armor slots – Helmet, Torso and Legs – there are an incredible number of ways to mix, match and synergize with your unit’s skills.
Each Class’ unique weapon can also be modified via four different slots. These modifications tend to lean more into the overall style of the Class they apply to with corresponding tradeoffs. A huge clip might save you a reload, but also at the cost of some damage. Conversely, you might want to trade off a potential damage boosting Stock for one that adds additional movement distance range.
Equipment can either be found on the battlefield – though it costs an action to pickup, so pick your moment – or as rewards from side missions throughout the Campaign. If you want a fully decked out Legendary squad though, you’ll need to jump into the end-game Veteran Missions – and we’ll tell you all about those in our final blog next week!
Of course, on top of upping your in-game potency, each item can be customized with a variety of colors, fabric and metallic effects to make your squad reflect your personal style.
As you play through the game, you’ll recruit new Gears. Once you’ve recruited them, you can customize their look even more than the hero characters of our story adding everything from tattoos to headgear. If you want to name your squad members, you can do that too. And for those of you who demand to see your Character’s face at all times, we let you toggle helmets off. We feel you.
So here we are…the final Saturday before launch. We cannot wait to get Gears Tactics in your hands next week.
If you want to see the game in action, we’ll be streaming this Monday with Creative Director Tyler Bielman from 10am PT over on live.gearsofwar.com. See you then.
TC
Gears Tactics Developer Blog - Enemies
Get ready for the fourth blog in our Gears Tactics Dev Blog series, as we give you the advanced intel on the Locust enemies you’ll be facing on the battlefield.
Ukkon
The big bad himself – Ukkon is the monster who creates monsters. This Locust scientist is responsible for the genetically engineered creatures that have terrorized the people of Sera since E-day, including the Brumak, Reaver and Corpser. Even worse, he’s now using Imulsion to create a new breed of biological horrors.
Here’s what stands between you and him when you get playing Tactics next week.
Locust Drone
The backbone of the Locust Army – resilient, smart and coordinated. Drones will use their Hammerburst to deal decent damage at any range, while looking for any opportunity to flank your position.
Locust Grenadier
The Locust Grenadier is a tougher variant of the Drone that is trained to push you at all costs with its deadly Gnasher shotgun.
Engaging a Grenadier at close-range is a BAD idea, due to their close-range opportunity of attack that packs a real punch. Pro tip: Grenadiers are easily enraged after taking damage – while this makes them tougher to kill but it also removes their close-range opportunity attack. Silver linings!
Locust Sniper
Another Drone variant, the Locust Sniper is (surprise!) a specialist at long range combat.
Using their Longshot Sniper Rifle, Locust Snipers will pin your units down with their ominous red laser sight of doom that will trigger on any action. Ignore the big ominous red laser sight of doom at your own peril otherwise your unit will be hit for a massive amount of damage. We’re talking potential insta-downs here!
If Snipers are pinning down one your units, interrupting them with abilities like Disabling Shot or Grenades is key to saving your bacon.
Wretches
Small, fast and mobile; these monkey-dog like creatures bound across the battlefield in packs.
They might not seem like much of a threat, but if one of these guys gets in close, you’re in trouble. Not only will the Wretches’ melee attack deal damage, but it knocks you out of cover, making you more easily targeted by other enemies.
Like the Grenadier, Wretches also have a short-range opportunity of attack – so trying to move out of their melee range or charging at them with a chainsaw is a no-no.
Kantus
The Kantus is a form of Locust Priest that can ‘toughen’ units in a nearby vicinity for three turns. This is one of those units that you’ll be hunting, cursing at and cheering about removing from the battlefield. The Kantus purposefully stays off the frontline, as much as possible, keeping distance while consistently buffing those around him.
His toughening buff makes units significantly harder to kill – we’re not talking a little more HP here. The damage reduction these units gain will turn even a normal Drone into a huge threat, so your best bet is to remove the Kantus as early as possible.
Ticker
Introducing organic creatures with bombs on their back! Yes, really.
The Ticker is a small Locust creature that explodes when it reaches a unit, dealing massive damage in a radius around it. Tickers usually come in packs and then spread themselves out, moving elusively through the battlefield to make themselves a hard target.
Every shot you take to wipe out a Ticker comes with an added nail-biting twist – if you fail to kill the Ticker, it will get to instantly move towards you right there and then. Even worse, there’s no limit to how many times this can happen in a turn.
When faced with Tickers, take high chance shots with a good chance to kill – and don’t stop panning that camera for sneaky flankers!
Boomer
You’ve had organic bombs, now it’s time for the organic tank!
Boomers are a hulking lot of walking hit-points carrying one hell of a grenade launcher (known as a Boomshot). While slower than other units, Boomers compensate by hitting you with their explosive grenades over cover, dealing huge damage. These explosions are so head-rattling that your units will also have significantly reduced movement for several turns after too.
Put everything you’ve got into Boomers and keep your units spread apart to minimize their impact on your squad. If you take one out, their Boomshot is yours for the taking to turn right back at ‘em!
Theron
The most elite Locust soldier, Therons are highly-trained, well-armored soldiers with an explosive arrow firing Torque Bow. These long range fighters are very potent as they flank your units and turn you from the hunter to the hunted.
Therons use their Torque Bow to flush you out of cover with moderate damage but long range lob shots, or, if you’re exposed, hit you with an extremely damaging direct shot.
When it comes to Therons, use cover and find opportunities to remove them from the enemy’s backline (Scouts with their cloak ability are particularly effective at this). If you take one out, like the Boomer, make sure to grab their weapon and use it to drop some hurt on the Locust!
Ukkon’s Creations
On top of this iconic lineup of Locust enemies, Ukkon has been creating his own Monsters – from the huge genetically engineered bosses you’ll face throughout the Campaign to new battlefield units that bring new terror to the Locust Army’s lineup.
Disciples Disciples are an amped up version of the Locust Drone thanks to the bio-fuel Imulsion being pumped through their veins. We’re not going to spoil this Drone’s unique twist, but suffice to say, be careful where and when you kill them. There’s no explosion, just something a little worse.
Zealots Zealots are another biologically modified Locust, this time originating as a Kantus. The Zealot is one of the deadliest close-range threats in the game so stay as far away from it as possible. We’ll let you discover exactly what deadly surprises it will bring.
As we’ve mentioned before, in Gears Tactics, you’ll be fighting more enemies per turn than your average squad-based tactics game. Throughout the Campaign, expect to see a huge variety of enemy combinations and nasty tricks up their sleeve that will put your strategic chops to the test. We wish you luck.
We’ll be back on Friday with a look at how you can build a squad to match up to this threat with our next Dev Blog – Customization. Not only will we give you a look at some of the badass visual customization on offer for your squad, but we’ll also dive into the 5 Classes packing 150+ skills between them.
6. Days. Left. AHH!
TC
Gears Tactics Developer Blog - Heroes
We’re back with our third Gears Tactics Dev Blog, as we dive into the Heroes taking the fight to Ukkon alongside your recruited and customizable Gears!
Gabriel Diaz
Gabriel “Gabe” Diaz is the character at the center of Gears Tactics’ story and the father of Gears 5 protagonist Kait Diaz. A natural born leader and tactician, Gabe is the key to building an organized force to take down Ukkon.
Formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG), Gabe demoted himself to Sergeant after the Battle of Gatka Ridge – a brutal battle that soured Gabe’s opinion of the COG and its leader, Chairman Prescott.
Unfortunately for Gabe, Prescott is not so easily shaken off. Approximately a year after Emergence Day, hours before the COG plan to fire their Hammer of Dawn super-weapon to scorch the surface and wipe out the Locust, Prescott drags Gabe into action once more to secure some classified files before the strike. As with anything Prescott related, things are not always so simple.
Gabe is a Support Class Character, specializing in healing, buffing teammates and providing critical extra actions to teammates around the battlefield. Don’t rest on the attacking potency of the Support Class though – each one packs a Lancer with a chainsaw for instant close-range executions!
Sid Redburn
Sid Redburn is a COG loyalist to his core, willing to carry out any order given to him at any cost. Packing a whole lot of gruff, no-bullshit attitude, the only thing as serious as his demeanor is his hefty moustache.
Sid Redburn joins Gabe Diaz at the start of our story to ‘escort’ Gabe on their mission to grab the classified files.
Although he appears like a straight-laced soldier’s soldier on the surface, Sid’s background is anything but – and his vendetta against Ukkon feels like more than just orders.
Sid is a Vanguard Class Character, specializing in breaking and disrupting the enemy’s front line to create more firing opportunities for the rest of the squad. Their skillset includes debuffing enemies, intimidating them out of cover and getting into the thick of the fight with hard hitting weaponry.
Mikayla Dorn
Mikayla was a civilian engineer who was unable to escape the Hammer of Dawn strike zones, subjecting her to living through the horrific destruction of her own people’s super weapon. As you can imagine, Mikayla is not the biggest fan of the COG right now.
Following the strikes, Mikalya banded together a civilian militia as they fight for survival against a now very-pissed off enemy. After facing numerous assaults from the Locust with limited weaponry and an untrained civilian militia, her only goal is to keep her people alive and take out Ukkon.
No matter who you are, Mikayla doesn’t take shit from anyone – and earning her trust, especially if you are part of the COG, will be hard earned.
Mikalya is a Sniper Class Character, specializing in accuracy at long range with a much higher chance to land her hard hitting critical hits. When Mikayla’s in town, sit back and watch those heads pop.
So there you have it – the main Heroes of our story! In Gears Tactics, these Heroes will be fighting alongside customizable Gears that are recruited on the battlefield. Depending on the mission, you will be required to have one or more of these Heroes to be in your squad as you hunt down Ukkon once and for all.
Speaking of Ukkon, for our next blog, we dive into the enemies and villains you’ll be trying to take down in Gears Tactics. Consider it some advanced intel for your strategies. Look out for that blog next week.
Less than 2 weeks till release!
TC
Gears Tactics Developer Blog - Bosses
We’re back with another Gears Tactics Dev Blog, our new blog series that drops oh-so juicy details about our upcoming strategy game releasing April 28th.
In our second blog, we’re talking about the biggest and baddest enemies of them all – Bosses.
Mad Man’s Monsters
For those of you who have yet to enter the world of Gears of War, or just need a refresher, your enemy are the Locust – an underground dwelling species that has invaded the human world of Sera from their Hollow deep below the surface.
The Locust are a diverse group of monsters ranging from scaled-humanoid Locust Drones to flying squid-legged Reavers to the giant missile-laden Brumak. The Locust army has monsters for every occasion. And some of them are big...REAL BIG.
These most formidable comes from the evil mind of Ukkon, a mad scientist ‘monster who creates monsters,’ that has transformed the oversized monsters of the Hollow (seriously, these things are HUGE!) into tools for humanity’s destruction.
In Gears Tactics, your role is to hunt down Ukkon and shut down his deadly monster production line. As you would expect, he’ll use everything in his arsenal to try and stop you. This is where Gears Tactics delivers a huge, unique entry for the genre – big boss fights.
Monster Combat Puzzles
At the end of each Act in the Gears Tactics campaign, you face off against Ukkon’s biggest creations including the spider-like Corpser, the massive Brumak and more. These boss battles have been intricately designed to be the ultimate combat puzzles.
Each boss has unique mechanics that will push you out of your comfort zone and force you to fight on the monster’s terms. The Corpser, for example, raises its legs one turn before slamming them down creating impact zones that will cause huge damage to anyone caught within it (friend or foe). The impact zones are marked by a red area that targets the location of your units. Staying safe sounds simple but the Corpser’s legs are armored, meaning you’ll only be able to damage them when they’re raised.
Of course, this is at the same time you need to: get the hell out of those dangerous impact zones, deal to the additional throngs of enemies threatening to overrun you, and all while trying to find new, vital cover positions not under the threat of a leg slam.
And did we mention the area-of-denial high damage mines it throws out every two turns? Yeah, that too.
Set Phases To Stun
Now it wouldn’t be a proper boss fight without multiple phases to work through.
As the battle progresses, things get tougher and tougher. The core mechanics of the fight will stay the same, but each phase shakes up the combat puzzle enough to offset your strategic rhythm and challenge your decision making.
For example, for every third of health you take off, the boss will increase the number of special mechanics they can use in a turn. The additional enemies will also become tougher variants forcing you to continually adapt your strategy.
We aren’t masochists though, so you do get a handy checkpoint at these moments too – to give you respite as you try to nail down your strategy. And for the Ironman mode players – you get the break but still have to be perfect as there are no checkpoint reloads for you. No pressure.
The rest is for you to discover and master yourself when you take on Ukkon’s biggest and scariest creations at the end of this month when Gears Tactics releases on April 28, 2020.
In the meantime, we’ll be back next week for another Developer Blog as we dive into the Characters at the heart of Gears Tactics. Stay tuned right here on Steam for more!
Gears Tactics Developer Blog - Gameplay Pillars
Welcome to our first Gears Tactics developer blog! Over the coming weeks, we’re going showcase some of the key features in Gears Tactics so you know what to expect from this new squad-based strategy game releasing on PC this April 28th.
For our first blog, we’re going to cover some of the core pillars behind Gears Tactics that define its unique gameplay in the strategy space.
More Enemies, More Action, More Freedom
Gears Tactics takes squad-based tactical action and gives it one hell of a shot of adrenaline with a big side of freedom.
Firstly, you’re going to take on huge numbers of enemies all at once. How huge? We’re talking up to as many as 15+ Locust enemies on the battlefield – every one of them out for your squad’s blood - from explosive fast-moving Tickers to huge tanky Boomers wielding Boomshot rocket launchers.
Thankfully, you’ve got plenty to fire back with. In Gears Tactics, each unit gets 3 actions that can be used in any order you choose and in any combination. This freedom gives you multiple ways to handle every fight, putting the emphasis on maximizing the potential of each action at your disposal with your decision making.
See an incoming close-range threat that you can’t hit without moving and exposing your flank to other enemies? No problem. Move, take your shot and relocate to a safe position all in one turn. This flexibility allows you to maximize damage output and movement.
This focus on freedom also extends to our Squad System, featuring 5 Classes with over 30 Skills each that can be mixed and matched. As you progress through the game, you’ll also unlock a variety of skills that will provide more utility to help deal with the growing numbers – and toughness - of enemies being thrown at you.
The structure of Class skill trees provides huge flexibility on how to use your squad on the battlefield – look out for more info on Customization and Classes in a future Development Blog!
Executions Make Actions
Even with three actions and some fancy Skills up your sleeve, the enemy count is still going to bring overwhelming pressure – especially as you face tougher and tougher combinations of units. This is where Executions come in to play.
When an enemy’s health is depleted to zero, there’s a chance that enemy will fall to their knees and be downed. In this state, your units have the opportunity to move in for a close range finisher, known as an Execution.
When a unit is executed, in all of its Gears-style goretastic glory, everyone in your squad gains an action point (except the one executing). This round extension is a critical part of the Gears Tactics formula. With practice and skill, you will extend the duration and possibilities of a usual 3 action-per-unit turn into a symphony of Locust destruction. If you can keep Executing, there’s no limit to the number of actions that can be earned.
Planning when and how to chain your Executions adds a ton of strategic depth to your decision making, and doing it right will mean you can wipe huge numbers of Locust enemies off the battlefield in just a single turn. We’re talking 10+ actions PER UNIT in a turn. Crazy, we know, but that’s Gears for you.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a true Tactics game if we let you off easy. As you move deeper into the Campaign, you’ll discover more enemies that get deadly opportunity attacks at close range, explode or even release a poisonous cloud that reduces any nearby unit’s damage significantly for a few turns. Chaining Executions will become ever important as you progress, but the decisions and strategies you’ll form to… uhhh… execute on your Executions will be increasingly challenging to accomplish.
Free Movement and Overwatch
Another step we’ve taken in providing strategic freedom is our movement system. Gears Tactics ditches the traditional grid-based system in favor of allowing you to position and move your units exactly where you want them. The distance that you can move each unit is dictated by whether or not you want to use one, two or all three of your actions.
This innovative movement approach allows for far more control for setting up flanking shots, routing yourself around enemy Overwatches and maximizing your possible movement range down to the millimeter. In the right situation, your units are generally tough enough to use this freedom of movement to gain critical flanking shot bonuses while out of cover.
Of course, this is Gears of War so cover is always king! Not only will it offer the most protection from enemy fire but, just like in the main series of games, sliding into cover will extend your movement distance slightly beyond its normal limits. Savvy players should use cover-to-cover movement to push their movement range to the very limits.
Finally, there’s Overwatch – a genre staple that we’ve put a new twist on. For those of you who don’t know, Overwatch is a state where your unit enters a defensive ‘ready to fire’ state, attacking anyone who enters the Overwatch range.
If you want to maximize defensive firepower, you can set an Overwatch with all of your remaining actions. This means up to three shots can be channeled into Overwatch.
In Tactics, Overwatch will only cover an area defined by you. The Overwatch shots aretriggered when an enemy enters a cone of fire that you have laid out. This means you can optimize when your unit’s fire at enemies to their optimal range (ie. Gnasher shotgun users only shooting at targets who get close) or focus on locking down at-risk parts of the battlefield without firing on other enemies who currently present less risk.
Overwatch is a key part of an effective defense against the overwhelming odds you’ll sometimes face, helping you prioritize the right threats at the right time – well, until a stupid Wretch steps into your fire zone that was meant for that Grenadier. Damnit Wretches!
So that’s that – your first look at the gameplay pillars of Gears Tactics. There’s still SO much to talk about – from our cinematic-filled story to our huge boss fights and the end-game Veteran missions. Stay tuned over the coming weeks on the road to launch as we drop all the info you could ever want and need right here on steam.
Until then, we’ll see you in the next blog. Less than a month to go!
