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Gears 5 will not present any depiction of smoking as part of an effort to avoid highlighting the habit of life-threatening addiction. Rod Fergusson, the development manager for The Coalition, said in a series of tweets that he was opposed to representations of smoking at Gears "since the beginning".
He pointed out that the artistic concept of the character Dizzy of Gears 2 was shown with a cigarette. But in the last game, the character does not smoke. That's because Fergusson stepped in and "stop that."
Some Gears of War games feature smoking representations, but Gears 4 was not a smoker and Gears 5 did not. Fergusson said as long as he controlled the Gears series, smoking will never come back.
The Gears of War series was originally created and developed by Epic Games, until the Fortnite studio sold it to Microsoft in 2014 for an undisclosed amount.
Some stories have suggested that Gears 5 at one point had representations of smoking and was then deleted, but this is not trueSaid Fergusson. He said that there was "no censorship" because Gears 5 had never started smoking; you can not take away what has never been there.
Netizens on Twitter have pointed out that this was a strange decision because the Gears franchise is an adult series with brutal depictions of violence and alcohol abuse. Why focus so much on smoking? Fergusson said that he do not try to be the "moral police" but instead, he wanted to clean up Gears from smoking to avoid smoking in a fascinating way and because of his personal connection to lung cancer.
"I did not want to show off something that is addictive and kill you," he said. "I was not trying to moral police, just reflecting my beliefs after losing friends because of lung cancer.If you had the opportunity to create a world, what would you change?"
My father smoked. He died of a heart attack at 38 years old. I was 4 years old.
– Rod Fergusson (@GearsViking) July 13, 2019
According to Variety, the anti-smoking group Truth Initiative contacted the television company Turner – which broadcast the program Gears 5 Summer Series – to discuss smoking in Gears 5. According to the report, "Turner collaborated with The Coalition to eliminate smoking of the match ", but something seems to be lost here, as Fergusson pointed out, Gears 5 never started smoking, so it could not be removed.
For years, the Truth Initiative has been calling for video games to promote smoking. The group criticized Blizzard for putting a cigar in the mouth of Overwatch McCree. "The creators of Overwatch might not realize that their choice of representing a hero with a cigar lit sends an influential and potentially addictive and deadly message to young people who play the game," said the organization.
In 2017, the Truth Initiative released the results of a study that research shows that there is a link between exposure to images of smoking and the likelihood that young people start to smoke.
The Truth Initiative also released a list of video games aimed at teenagers attracted to smoking, including Overwatch, StarCraft II: The Wings of Freedom, Uncharted 4: The End of a Thief, We Sing, XCOM 2 and Injustice: gods among us.
Gears 5 will be launched in September on Xbox One and PC. The first technical test of the game takes place this weekend. Here's how to enter and everything you need to know.
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