Why Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is just one game, and has no Horde mode

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition sparked a lot of discussion at San Diego Comic-Con 2015.

Gears of War producer Rod Fergusson lead a panel at San Diego Comic-Con focused on the upcoming Gears 4 as well as August's Ultimate Edition.

One of the questions he answered was why The Coalition hasn't bundled all four Gears of War games up for the Ultimate Edition, as 343 Industries did with Halo: The Master Chief Collection.

"It's really hard work. It takes a long time," he said, as reported by IGN.

"It took us in the end 16 to 18 months to do the first one, and to try and do three games - how many people would we need to have? It just wasn't logistically or physically or technically possible. For us it was really about what can we do, what can we focus on."

Ultimate Edition isn't just a port or an HD remaster but a rebuild, and so it serves as a sort of franchise introduction for The Coalition, which took over the series after Epic sold it to Microsoft.

"It was sort of this on-ramp to the franchise to get ready for Gears of War 4," Fergusson said.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition has a full multiplayer suite, so attendees wanted to know why it doesn't include a Horde mode - the series' calling card.

"We didn't want it to creep too much into Gears of War 2 territory," Fergusson said, according to Polygon.

Gears of War 2 introduced a significant number of new enemy types to the game, Fergusson said. A Horde Mode for the first game would feel sadly lacking in variety without all those new baddies.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition hits Xbox One on August 25. It's also coming to PC, but has not been dated.