People like you are reason why franchises decay.
Seems drastic. I'm a huge shooter fan, been so since the first half of the 90's with the very first FPS games like Wolf 3D and Doom. Played a lot of third person action games and shooters throughout the years, and some of my favourite games of these past couple generations fall into this category (Max Payne, Alan Wake, WET, etc.). Gears Of War, to me, has always been a bit slow and clunky, even revving up the sensitivity it feels slow compared to the games I normally play. That would be fine, not every game needs to be a runner, see the aforementioned Alan Wake also being slow.
My biggest complaint of the franchise, so far, is how linear and predictably it's been. I don't mind a linear shooter, and in fact, I play through the Call Of Duty campaigns basically every year. But what disappointed me so far is how formulaic this linearity has been. Every time you enter a big room with multiple covers you just know enemies will be swarming in from 3 directions. Every little detour is the way towards a secret collectible. Every 5 minutes the paths separate conveniently for the team of 4 to end up 2 by 2. Every other room there's an area to defend because little robot needs to hack a door or something. Apart from the boss fights, every encounter in 1 was basically the same, so I'm happy 2 introduced some slightly different enemies already.
To me, the idea of opening up the game's formula a bit seems great, because it would defeat one of the game's weaknesses in my eyes. As far as I know, this may be fixed in the second half of 2, in 3, in Judgment, in 4. I have not played those yet. I will play those. I do not claim I know anything special about this franchise as before these runs I'm doing now I played a total of maybe 4 hours between the entire franchise, and even most of those were multiplayer. To me, Gears 5 sounds exciting, exciting enough to revisit a franchise I never cared about. So far, I see why I did not bother in the past, but I'm not hating it. There's a lot of things that work and many I dislike, but it's easily a solid 7 shooter so far thanks to some excellence here and there.
Honestly, regardless of what you think of this franchise, I wouldn't like it if a game got stuck on its own clichés and shortcomings some 14 years into the franchise. Halo Infinite will be nothing like Halo 1. Forza Horizon 4 is a whole other beast compared to the first Horizon. I'd rather see Gears 5 disappoint by trying to shake up the formula a little bit than doing the exact same thing as the first games. Those games exist and can be played greatly to this day thanks to excellent backwards compatibility on Xbox One. But in 2019 I sure as hell hope a Gears Of War game manages to shake up the formula.
