‘Gears Of War 5’: Xbox One Will Have Lester Speight Return As The Cole Train, Does This Mean No Pendulum Wars?

Gears of War 5 for the Xbox One will apparently have voice actor Lester Speight return as the popular character Cole Train in the next installment of the popular shooter series.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, a Gears of War TV series is one of the Xbox One originals announced by Microsoft earlier this year. One of the original Gears of War developers named Cliff Bleszinski has set up his own independent video game development company called Boss Key Productions.

At this point we know very little about the plot details or the plans for the Gears of War Xbox One project. Since GoW 3 pretty much wrapped up the Locust and Imulsion angle with a nice little bow, it’s hard to imagine how a sequel may work. After all, Gears of War: Judgment focused on Damon Baird and Augustus Cole during a prequel that barely mentioned Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago other than the fact their squad was rescued by the actions of the playable character. The game also filled in some gaps in the story from GoW 3 with the unlockable campaign, but otherwise there does not seem much left to the story to tell unless they invent an entirely new enemy.

Fortunately, it’s possible the Gears of War Xbox One game could delve back into the 79-year-long Pendulum Wars that ended the same day as E-Day. Essentially, that war was a fight between the world’s two superpowers over the primary source of energy. The only reason this would not make too much sense is that Mr. Speight just confirmed he’s going to be voicing his character once again:

“@MistaPeerez: @lesterspeight have you gotten a call about a new gears? You have to reprise your role! #whoobaby” “Yup!”

— Lester Speight (@lesterspeight) July 4, 2014

The reason why Gears of War: Pendulum Wars suddenly seems unlikely is because the Cole character did not join the CoG military as a Gear soldier until after E-Day. Unless Speight’s voice acting is limited to a cameo role where we get to see Cole during his Thrashball days, this means Cole Train should not be a playable character unless the developers decide to break previously established story canon.

Still, maybe this is what Black Tusk Studios head Rod Fergussen meant when he said the Gears of War Xbox One game will “betray” gamers to a certain extent:

“This isn’t a great way of phrasing it but I always talk about shipping a sequel to customers as ‘managing betrayal’. They want something new but they don’t want something so new that it doesn’t feel like what they want. But if you put out something that’s very familiar and is the same as the game they just had, then it’s like ‘I’ve already had this. This isn’t new enough.’

“You actually have to betray them enough to give them something new and surprising but not so much that they disconnect, and I think that is a big thing that we have to focus on. It’s how we can innovate and bring something new to the franchise while at the same time really proving that we understand ‘Gears’ — that this is the franchise that you know and love.

“So I’ve already given multiple speeches to the team like ‘here are the core tenets of ‘Gears,’ here are the things that won’t be changing, and here are opportunities for us to innovate that we think we can knock out of the park.'”

Of course, the focus is on gameplay and not so much story, so that doesn’t help us too much.

Would you like to see the Pendulum Wars be the focus of Gears of War 5 for the Xbox One?