Diablo 4 boss' plan for Gears of War 6 would've taken the series to space, but "we weren't going to start Mass Effect-ing this"

gamesradar.com:

Diablo 4 lead Rodd Fergusson was previously known for his work on pretty much every single Gears of War game, well before his involvement in Blizzard's dark and loot-filled world, and he's now opened up about what the plan for Gears of War 6 looked like before his departure from developer The Coalition.

Asked about his opinions on the recently-revealed prequel Gears of War: E-Day in an interview with Podcast Unlocked, Fergusson said "it's a little surreal to have something come out about Gears that I haven't been involved in. You know, I spent 15 years with Gears of War and basically every game that was made - I think 9 or 10 total." 

Fergusson said that he was surprised by The Coalition's decision to explore the series' past, rather than continue a story that was only partway done in Gears 5, but it was ultimately "really smart" because fans had been asking to see E-Day - the moment when the Locust first erupted from the ground - for years. But as he previously explained, OG series developer Epic Games never depicted Gears of War: E-Day's events because the team couldn't "do it justice" on the Xbox 360.

Things get extra juicy when Fergusson talks about the plans for Gears of War 6 that he left behind since, surprisingly, the sequel was apparently going to take us off the Earth-like planet of Sera for the very first time. "Gears 6 was to leave Sera," he said. "That was something we were building to. If you paid attention to the story in Gears 5, you come across the UIR [Union of Independent Republics] sort-of rocket technology. We were sort of laying the seeds and the groundwork that in taking over that UIR territory, we've adopted their space program. So what I wanted to do with Gears 6 is take you off Sera to encounter what that could mean to the rest of the galaxy or, at least, the rest of the solar system. Not that you'd be hopping [between planets], but... it was old, Russian-era, sputnik-type tech, so we weren't going to start Mass Effect-ing this. It was