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If you can’t stand Ryan McCaffrey like me, he gave it a 9/10.
So is the Guardian’s review the outlier?
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It seems like it and it’s good to see. Happy about that.
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Feels good.
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Very happy for a great Gears package, sad that studio seems to awaiting layoffs and miss on review score bonuses 
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I read that too, what the fuck is that? The game is very well received, can MS already just chill and wait and see how well it sells before even more layoffs and this time TC?
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I don’t think it’s about the game’s performance. Just cost cutting now that the game released there’d be “unnecessary” headcount, some of which they’ll fire and then hire in 2-3 years when the next project ramps up development… Disgusting I know
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Great review Jesse!! Will be playing in a little while since I purchased the Premium Edition Upgrade. Hoping I can actually play it today unlike Halo: Campaign Evolved which didn’t unlock despite me having the Paid Upgrade.
Gears is back baby!!! Hyped!! 
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Nice! Looking forward to joining the fight next week, but hope the studio aren’t hit too hard.
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Friend of mine who is also a colleague of mine and a Xbox brother has never played Gears of War before. Xbox One was his first Xbox console, holy shit is he in for a treat since E-Day is a prequel. And from there on our he can check out the greatness that is Gears of War 1-3 and IMO not nearly as good but still worth it 4 and 5.
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Let’s hope. 
But Microsoft hasn’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt. Especially since this game is getting great reviews and seems to be really awesome. Let the team build on that instead of gutting them!
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Excellent review as always Jesse and the only review that matters, so happy to see that you liked the game so much. I was planning to wait for my retail version to arrive next week but I am too weak so I’ll grab the early access upgrade and start playing tonight. Gears is back (with a vengeance!) after 7 fuckin’ years baby! 
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The predictions thread on resetera was funny to follow, felt like a lot of people were trying to wish into existence this game scoring less or the same as Wolverine, which was odd to me considering that The Coalition’s games have pretty consistently scored around 84-85 and this never looked like a high 70s or low 80s to me, but 88-92 game, I think the current Opencritic score of 89 is the best representation of what this is from what I’ve played so far, goddamn that intro is insane, it has TLOU1, RE2 and Gears 1 vibes back to back to back for me, amazing.
Please allow this studio to make a new IP and don’t lay off half the studio 
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I don’t think they’ll want the backlash. I reckon they’ll leave them for now. The next beat would be to see how this performs on Gamepass.
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“Masterpiece video game”
“Story director laid off before launch”
It’s just cruel the guy didn’t even get to celebrate the launch of the game he had a huge hand in creating. How can Microsoft even say they want to focus on major franchises and building better games when they even include the people are responsible for building their best games within their biggest franchises in these layoffs?
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New IPs are definitely dead for the time being. Xbox & Microsoft have both emphasized franchises & major existing IP.
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It’s something we’ve been seeing more in the game industry and just a plague on everything. It’s also been a major cause of studios struggling to maintain quality and get games out on a reasonable timeline. Having to hire & train new staff is a big time suck. The new staff just also isn’t part of the studio culture and doesn’t understand the game like people who have worked on it for years through multiple releases do. Positions that involve working with and managing different teams are sometimes even more difficult with a new outsider (though sometimes having an outside perspective can be beneficial). It would be fine if it were 1) a small number of positions and more importantly 2) problematic positions only and following unsuccessful launches NOT 3) just blind culling that they think they can get away with as currently “non-essential”.