11 Fascinating Gaming Moments That Almost Happened

5. Epic's Original Idea For Gears Of War 4

While original creators Epic ended up selling the Gears of War franchise to Microsoft back in 2013, that wasn't always the plan, and while another team was drafted in to craft spin-off Judgement, they actually put six months of work into pre-production on a potential Gears 4.

And, remarkably, some of their original concepts were actually used in what The Coalition would end up creating, at least in the broad strokes. Like the new devs, Epic was also looking to expand the game to a new generation of heroes, including Marcus' son, who was also called JD. The game would also focus on a new villain, the Swarm. However, while the name stuck, The Coalition apparently changed everything about the new monsters, from their design to their mythology.

When the new developers inherited the franchise, they received all of Epic's preliminary work, which gave them a head start on pre-production. Obviously, they didn't just pick up where Epic left off, but used some of the better ideas as a base, transforming them to fit their own vision of the sequel.

It's not entirely known how committed the company was to this sequel before they decided to hand the reigns over to Microsoft (a decision apparently down to the bloated development costs for each new game), but it's still interesting that we could be living in a world right now not only where Epic was still in charge of Gears, but where JD was actually a good character...

JB