UK developer Splash Damage has posted numerous job listings seeking people to work on the Gears of War franchise. The Splash Damage jobs for Gears of War include artists, storyboarders, programmers and engineers.
Obviously, the Splash Damage jobs for Gears of War don’t state they’re for an upcoming sequel.
The listed positions merely state that they’re related to the Gears of War franchise.
What’s interesting though is that while Splash Damage co-developed the multiplayer component in Gears of War 4 and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition.
Even more interesting are the jobs themselves and descriptions included in the listing.
Splash Damage jobs for Gears of War
Of the 18 Splash Damage jobs for Gears of War, the most interesting and telling are Storyboard Artist and Cinematic Lead. The Storyboard Artist’s role includes the following description;
“You’ll be inspiring the team and helping visualize the narrative while collaborating with the Cinematic Lead to ensure that the visual style and pacing is maintained.
You will help to establish the artistic vision for Cinematics and be highly film literate, with a good understanding of layout, composition, sequential drawing and editing.
As a Storyboard artist, you will
Help establish and drive the visual narrative in collaboration with Leads.
Iterate and explore ideas based around the game and narrative design.”
The Cinematic Lead position is described as;
“As a Cinematic Lead at Splash Damage, you will be responsible for planning, directing and delivering high-quality in-game cinematics that will tie together gameplay and narrative through realistic acting, compelling action and expressive dialogues.”
Neither of these positions sounds like it relates to multiplayer components, nor does it sound like ongoing work on Gears of War 4. Multiplayer rarely focuses on narrative, pacing, acting or cinematics, so it’s more likely that these positions relate to some single-player content.
Just because a company is hiring doesn’t necessarily confirm anything right?
Sure, that’s true, but we also have the slight tease from Xbox Boss Phil Spencer about the future of Microsoft’s big exclusive franchises.
But Phil Spencer said so
Speaking with Xbox Wire and discussing the Xbox Games Pass, Spencer said the plan was to release a game to the service at the same time as they launch worldwide.
This plan to bring new games timed with their global release into Xbox Game Pass not only includes announced titles like Sea of Thieves, State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3 but future unannounced games from Microsoft Studios including new iterations of our biggest Xbox One exclusive franchises such as Halo, Forza and Gears of War, on the same day they launch.
Again, Spencer’s comments don’t confirm anything, but it does suggest that Microsoft has Gears of War and Halo at the front of its mind.
What about The Coalition?
Gears of War 4 was developed by Microsoft’s The Coalition studio. The Coalition was named Black Tusk Studios when Gears of War was acquired from Epic Games. Following Black Tusk’s appointment to the Gears franchise it was renamed The Coalition to reflect the property it would work on.
However, in 2017 motion capture production house StoryLab Productions announced it was working on a brand-new IP with The Coalition. The link is dead now, but you can see a screen capture above.
If The Coalition is busy working on a new IP and Microsoft is keen to get a new entry in the franchise out it makes sense to hand over development duties to a developer that’s familiar with the IP.
All of this is merely circumstantial evidence at this stage, but we wouldn’t be surprised to hear about Gears of War 5 during this year’s E3.
More updates as we have them.
