Original Gears of War Could Have Featured Female Co-Op Partner

One of the ideas tossed around for the original Gears of War game was to let the player to choose the gender of their co-op partner, according to producer Rod Fergusson. However, it never happened.

"When I first joined Epic, one of my first ideas I had for Cliff [Bleszinksi] was, 'Hey, how about we get to pick the gender of your co-op player,'" he told IGN. "So there's Dominic and Dominique and you get to pick whether you want to play as male or female. Cliff laughed at me and we never did it."

Bleszinski vetoing the idea might have been for the best, Fergusson said.

"We would have had to write so much branching dialogue, and we basically would have [had] to create two stories," he explained. "Gears 1 was a trial by fire, and so to create one more scope by saying let's double the amount of dialogue we need to have…it's not a free choice."

Fergusson left Epic Games but is now working on the Gears of War franchise, which Microsoft acquired, at Microsoft's The Coalition studio. Gears of War 4, which comes out in October, offers a solution for people who want to play as a female character, as the character Kait Diaz appears in the game, voiced by Laura Bailey.

"What we decided to do, now that Cliff's not here to veto me, let's still look at having that ability for the co-op player to have that choice, whether they want to play as male or female," Fergusson said. "But, instead of having it be different sexes of the same character, just have it be from two different perspectives. So, Dell or Kate. And so, I like that idea of being like, you decide who you want to be as you're going along on JD's journey."

Gears of War 4 launches on October 11 for Xbox One and PC. It is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, so you can buy it digitally on Xbox One and get the PC edition free or vice versa.