'Gears of War 4' Release Date, News, And Rumors: Black Tusk Producer Rod Fergusson Talks About Future Of The Franchise [PHOTO]

"Gears of War 4" will be returnint to its roots according to Black Tusk producer Rod Fergusson. 

Fergusson was one of the original developers at Epic Games who made "Gears of War." Microsoft bought the "Gears of War"  franchise from Epic Games in January 2014.

In an interview with Polygon, Fergusson noted that the having the same studio and developers working on the game for an extended period of time can cause the game to deviate from what originally made it great.

"Regardless of how good the franchise is or how successful you are, I think people in the development team will tend to get tired or just want to express something differently," said Fergusson.

"And so I think there was a little bit of frustration of 'we're doing more Gears.' I imagine if you were to talk to Infinity Ward or those types of people, regardless of how much success they have, people want to branch out and do something different.

"And so, that was something that I think was really great about Black Tusk, because there's such an energy about Gears, about getting to do Gears and just being able to embrace it.

"So, for me, it's about staying true to Gears as opposed to how can we just fundamentally change it just to change it creatively.

"So it's more about just hearkening back to what is the core essence of Gears," Fergusson added.

"I think there's a lot people that feel like they don't know about our world, and we purposely did that," he said.

"It's a mixture of purposely leaving stuff out because we wanted mystery, and there's just some stuff we just didn't want to or need to explain in the game.

"That's what I like about Gears of War games is, it tends to be a very constricted moment in time for the characters. It's like an episode of 24 to me. We're not 'let's go talk about three years in the life of this character.' It's about what happens over this two-day period, and so there's things.

Fergusson added: "There's lots of stuff, backstory from the E Day, Pendulum Wars all the way to Gears 3, there's a lot of room in there. But I don't know if that's the place to go. I think there's lots of other places to go as well."

"With Black Tusk, we have to show that we have a legitimate claim to this IP and be able to show we know how to do it right before we do it differently," Fergusson told Polygon in an interview. "There are some things that even though people try to copy us, we don't think they've nailed. I think the cover system, there's a feel to a Gears of War game that I've yet to find in another game where it feels the same. Whether it's the fluidity, the weight, the heaviness to the characters, the way that it feels like to be in cover, the roadie run character, those sorts of things."

Fergusson didn't share any details about where and when in the Gears of War universe the next game will take place, but did mention that the previous games left big gaps in the timeline and many unanswered questions.

Not a lot of information has been shared by the companies involved in the production of the next "Gears of War," and there is no release date on the horizon, but Microsoft should be sharing its plans sometime this year. All we know is that they are working on it.