Gears of War 4 is launching soon (as testified by today's trailer) and Rod Fergusson, Executive Producer on the first trilogy and now Studio Head at The Coalition, was interviewed at a preview event by Windows Central. In the video interview, Fergusson talked about the impact of HDR in Gears of War 4, one of the first games to support it on Xbox One S (no HDR support is currently planned for PC):
It's really hard, unfortunately it's one of those technologies that you can't show unless you actually have the technology. But having Gears of War 4 in HDR, with brighter brights, greater color differentiation, darker darks...And even materials, when you look at the armor for JD [Fenix] with and without HDR, it has a different sort of reflection to it, it feels more grounded and it's really spectacular.
To me, it's been really funny. We've shown people via split screen HDR on and off, and they'd walk away like, "Oh great, now I got to go buy an HDR TV!" because it looks so good. It's great, it really changes the experience which is interesting.
It's one of those things that doesn't quite come for free, there's work to be done, but one of the nice things about the Xbox One S is that it has that extra bit of power that helps you do that, so we've been able to do HDR without compromising the frame rate of the game.
Fergusson also later revealed in the same interview that cross-play won't be limited to just cooperative modes (Horde Mode, campaign and multiplayer versus bots). In fact, while the matchmaking queue won't have cross-play, it will be possible to set up private competitive matches with and against gamers who play on the other platform. It will be an interesting thing to see - while mouse & keyboard should give PC gamers an edge, Gears of War 4 has been mostly designed around a controller.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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