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It starts with the game's beating heart - the game engine. While Gears of War 4 is in development using Unreal Engine 4, Gears Ultimate instead opts for more familiar ground - the original 2006 source code. From the beginning, the Ultimate Edition was designed to capture the original experience as accurately as possible while updating its presentation for the current generation. More recent versions of Unreal Engine 3, and even UE4, were considered early in development, but the decision to stick with the original codebase was made in order to preserve the original simulation. Re-scripting things such as enemy behavior in a new engine would have changed its core DNA, resulting in something that wasn't quite Gears of War. Despite the huge visual upgrades, authenticity to the original experience is a key component of the Ultimate Edition.
This approach also extends to map design - the original grey box map layouts were kept in the transition but virtually everything else was tossed out. Every asset was compiled and re-authored at a much higher fidelity before being placed back into the game. It's an approach not unlike that of the Halo Anniversary remasters - keeping the original simulation and level structure while improving the overall presentation. Unlike Halo, the requirements necessary to run both the original version of the game and the Ultimate Edition simultaneously were simply too high, making it impossible to toggle between the two versions on the fly.
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