The biggest change in the Gears of War franchise was the switching of its main protagonist to Kait Diaz’s character. The Coalition’s head Rod Fergusson reveals everything we need to know about this not-so-sudden-after-all change.
Kait Diaz first appeared in Gears of War 4 as an important supporting character who was helping JD Fenix throughout his adventure. However, players did not realize at the time that Kait was so important that the time would come when she would take the lead and become the main character of the franchise. Rod Fergusson explained how easy it was for them to make her the main protagonist in their next video game:
“We thought since it already was Kait’s story, why not embrace that further and let the player play as Kait in 5? It felt like a natural way to pivot the franchise a little bit, and allow you to actually play the true hero of the story.”
On the other hand, when explaining if they predicted the possibility of fans becoming angry by having to play a female character they do not think is suitable to be an action hero, Fergusson said:
“One of the biggest things that I’m proudest of with the Gears of War franchise is we’ve always been about diversity. When you look at our cast, we’ve always tried to have a diverse cast, both in ethnicity and in gender, and we’ve really been focused on trying to make that part of our world.”
While comparing the Gears of War franchise to Star Trek, he pointed out that things like racism, homophobia and sexism do not exist in Gears’ world, and the decision to make Kait the main protagonist of Gears 5 came naturally.
“I kind of see the Gears of War franchise like Star Trek. There’s an underlying optimism in that world, and that’s something I wanted to have in our world as well. Things like racism, sexism, homophobia, are things that aren’t part of our world. The decision to have Kait become the protagonist was really an organic decision. it wasn’t a forced or contrived situation where we were trying to follow a trend. It was completely natural.”
With Kait as the lead character, the Gears of War franchise is taken to a completely new level and Gears 5 sounds very promising so far. Hopefully this change will feel natural to the fans as well because it already seems interesting and very challenging.