Microsoft has finally announced Gears of War: Reloaded, a second remaster of the original game in the series, which will be released on August 26 for $39.99. Owners of the Ultimate Edition remaster from a decade ago will also get Reloaded for free. Most notably, this re-release of the original game will also include the series’ debut on both Steam and PlayStation 5. As usual, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will be able to play the game on launch without any extra purchase. As of this writing, there is no Nintendo Switch 2 release announced, but that could happen in the future.
Is Gears of War: Reloaded a remake or remaster?
From the wording given in the Xbox Wire blog for the game, Gears of War: Reloaded is a remaster, similar to the recent release of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. It should more or less play exactly the same as it did back in 2006, but with better graphics and frame rate. In recent months, there were rumors that Microsoft was excluding the multiplayer experience from this re-release, but that appears to not be the case with the blog saying the following:
“Featuring 4K resolution, 120 FPS support, and the ultimate multiplayer experience with cross-progression and cross-play, across all platforms, this is the definitive way to experience the game that started it all.”
Gears of War: Reloaded seems to be an attempt to bring in more outside players that never experienced the series on PlayStation or Steam. Of course, long-time fans of the games will probably jump in for the refresher before E-Day comes out in the future, but we imagine this to try to build excitement for that on outside platforms that have no reference to the original games.
With Gears finally getting the official announcement that it is coming to PlayStation, it seems only a matter of time until the biggest domino in Halo gets the call as well. There are a couple of rumors that either a remaster of that series’ original game is coming, or a simple re-release of the Master Chief Collection on other consoles. Honestly, we would prefer the latter, but more people getting access to these games gives them a much better chance to continue into the future.
