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Gears Tactics

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Gears Tactics is a turn-based tactics video game developed by Splash Damage in

conjunction with The Coalition and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is a spin-off
of the Gears of War franchise and a prequel to the first game, and was released for
Microsoft Windows on April 28, 2020, for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on November
10, 2020.
Gears Tactics
Gears Tactics Steam promotional artwork.jpg
Developer(s)
Splash Damage
The Coalition
Publisher(s)
Xbox Game Studios
Composer(s)
Edward Patrick White
Series
Gears of War
Engine
Unreal Engine 4
Platform(s)
Microsoft Windows
Xbox One
Xbox Series X/S
Release

Microsoft Windows
April 28, 2020
Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
November 10, 2020

Genre(s)
Turn-based tactics
Mode(s)
Single-player
GameplayEdit

The game is played from a top-down perspective and is a turn-based tactics title in
which players issue commands to a squad of human soldiers to eliminate the hostiles
in a map and depending on the mission, complete secondary objectives. Players can
freely explore the map without being confined to a grid. Each character can perform
three actions, such as taking cover, shooting enemies, or remain in overwatch to
shoot any moving enemy in their line of sight.[1] When an enemy unit loses most of
its health, a friendly unit can move in and execute the downed enemy, which gives
all units an additional action point. Players need to throw grenades to destroy
erupting Emergence Holes which spawn more Locust enemies.[2] If a friendly unit is
downed, players can revive them to bring them back into battle with reduced health.
The game has five distinct character classes, with each having its own unique
abilities. The characters can be extensively customized with mods, armours, and
they can acquire new skills after they level up. Other than story-important "hero"
characters, other friendly units are procedurally generated and should these units
die in combat, their deaths will be permanent.[3]

In addition to the main campaign, players can complete different side-missions. At

numerous points in the story, the player is required to complete one or more side
missions to proceed. After the player finishes the campaign, Veteran Mode will be
unlocked. It allows players to remix the campaign missions with different modifiers
such as bonus damages and accuracy penalty.[3][4] The game, however, does not have
a multiplayer mode.[5]
StoryEdit

One year after Emergence Day, when a subterranean race of creatures known as the
Locust Horde emerged on the surface in a campaign to kill every human on the planet
of Sera, Coalition of Ordered Governments leader, Chairman Richard Prescott, orders
all major cities outside the Jacinto Plateau to be incinerated by the Hammer of
Dawn. In addition, the Chairman had sent mop-up detachments in key-cities to
eradicate the surviving Locust. One of the mop-up crews was Alpha Squad, stationed
in Aldair City. Among them is Pendulum Wars hero, Sgt. Gabriel Diaz, who had
demoted himself to working in the motor pool. Mere hours before the Hammer Strikes,
he receives orders from Chairman Prescott and Major Sid Redburn to retrieve
classified intel files from the CIC building. Sgt. Diaz and Major Redburn find the
files that reveals to be about a Locust scientist named Ukkon, who has been
responsible for the various creatures the Locust have been using as instruments of
war. The Hammer of Dawn then destroys the city of Aldair, but Sgt. Diaz and Major
Redburn survive. However, Ukkon destroyed the army base and killed everyone.
Prescott then orders Diaz to assassinate Ukkon and is granted the rights to do so
by any means possible. In need of soldiers for the fight, Sgt. Diaz and Major
Redburn rescue another mop-up squad, Echo-Five, but discover that Ukkon has been
killing the mop-up crews. After rescuing a Stranded group, a militia of civilians
who survived the Hammer Strikes, they also join Alpha Squad. Their leader, Mikayla
Dorn, is aware of Ukkon and escorts Sgt. Diaz and Major Redburn to the city of
Claybourne where Ukkon frequents. Upon spotting Ukkon, Mikayla manages to shoot
Ukkon in the mouth and apparently kill him. Ukkon, however, comes back to life and
immediately repairs the damages done to his face. Sgt. Diaz then realizes that the
COG is once again holding secrets like before, and fears that they will get them
killed.

With Ukkon a bigger threat then they thought, Sgt. Diaz then relocated his entire
squad into the deserts of Vasgar to teach them how to fight and prepare for the
battle against Ukkon. Eventually, Alpha discovers an empty canister that Ukkon had
used to inhale earlier. Mikayla translates the canister as belonging to the Nedroma
Health Institute. Upon arriving, Mikayla reveals that Nedroma was a quarantine zone
and research facility for Rustlung, a fatal condition caused by the exposure of
Imulsion fumes. Upon finding Ukkon's stash of canisters, Mikayla reveals that the
canisters are full of immune system boosters, but only work against Rustlung, and
with devastating side-effects. Realizing Ukkon is dying of Rustlung and in need of
the canisters, Sgt. Diaz prepares a trap to lure Ukkon using the immune canisters
as bait. Alpha Squad is successful in luring Ukkon and capturing him. However,
Ukkon reveals to recognize Major Redburn as an old acquaintance. Major Redburn then
knocks out Sgt. Diaz and prepares to drive off with Ukkon, alive and imprisoned,
back to Ephyra. Mikayla stops him, and Ukkon manages to break free and escape. Sgt.
Diaz and Mikayla then detain Major Redburn, with Chairman Prescott ordering to
execute him for treason. Major Redburn then reveals to them that when he was
younger, he worked for a genetics lab called the New Hope Research Facility, who,
like Nedroma, was trying to cure Rustlung. However, the scientists went mad and
used genetic experimentation to try and evolve the patients into greater beings,
but instead made monsters. Most of the patients lost their minds and went feral,
except for Ukkon. Ukkon had also developed the ability to quickly heal to the point
of immortality. When Chairman Prescott discovers that Alpha Squad had learned the
truth about New Hope and the COG creating the Locust, he attempts to kill them with
the Hammer of Dawn. While Alpha were no longer part of the COG, they still believed
in killing Ukkon. Major Redburn also revealed that the scientists at New Hope had
created a fail-safe called cytostatic gas that could block Ukkon's healing ability,
as Major Redburn believes he can make and weaponize it.

After Major Redburn makes the cytostatic gas into gas grenades, the next step was
to find Ukkon's base of operations. Sgt. Diaz discovered that the only city not be
raided or destroyed was the city of Zenic, believing Ukkon didn't hit it because
his base must be located within the city, and he didn't want anything to leave
tracks. Upon investigating Zenic, Sgt. Diaz rescued a civilian taken as a prisoner
of the Locust. She revealed that she and her father were taking shelter in a nearby
laboratory, but Ukkon arrived and transformed it into his own lab. For reasons
unknown, he only spared the woman while he killed her father and everyone else. She
then agrees to show Alpha the location of the lab, but on the condition that she
gets to kill Ukkon. Sgt. Diaz, taken with her, asks for her name, to which she
replies is Reyna. After showing where the lab is, all of Alpha's recruits besiege
Ukkon's laboratory. Meanwhile, Diaz, Redburn, Mikayla, and Reyna take the fight
inside to kill Ukkon. Mikayla uses the cytostatic gas grenade on Ukkon and shoots
at him, wounding him and causing Ukkon to unleash his army and his Hydra mount.
Alpha Squad eliminates Ukkon's army and the Hydra. Ukkon, now weakened by the gas,
is shot in the head by Reyna in revenge for the murder of her father. She then
retrieves her amulet from his body and reveals that it belonged to her mother, who
she never knew. Now Stranded, Alpha Squad decides to dedicate themselves to
destroying Ukkon's remaining creations.
DevelopmentEdit

The game's development was handled by Splash Damage with The Coalition providing
assistance. The Coalition wanted to introduce the franchise to a wider audience and
the development team identified that there were a lot of similarities between the
franchise, which was a series of squad-based third-person shooters with cover-based
combat, and turn-based strategy games.[6] According to Alex Grimbley, the game's
executive producer, "[the team] actually just took existing Gears and just moved
the camera up".[7] The team took four and a half years to develop the game.[8] The
game is not related to Gears of War: Tactics, a cancelled spin-off developed by
Epic Games.[9]

The team wanted the game to play at a faster pace when compared to other competing
games in the genre. Thus the team decided to give each unit three action points
instead of two to ensure that players can get to perform various actions within one
turn.[3] The team put a large emphasis on the game's narrative, and the team aimed
to tell a "personal and emotional story" and invested a lot of resources into
creating the game's cutscenes and employing the voice actors. The team consulted
343 Industries, which worked on Halo Wars, a strategy spin-off of the Halo
franchise. However, unlike Halo Wars, the game was considered to be a PC premium
title instead of a strategy game designed for console owners.[3]

Publisher Xbox Game Studios announced the game at E3 2018, alongside Gears 5 and
Gears Pop!.[10] At The Game Awards 2019, Microsoft announced that the game would be
released for Windows on April 28, 2020, while Rod Fergusson, the founder of The
Coalition, later confirmed that an Xbox One version is being developed.[11] Players
who pre-ordered the game would gain access to the "Thrashball Cole" pack, which
allows the player to play as Augustus Cole.[8] The game was also released for Xbox
Game Pass subscribers at launch.[12]
Reception
References
External links
Last edited 40 minutes ago by 142.182.48.207
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