Over the newly discovered substance, two groups begin a war with one another: the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) and the Union of Independent Republics (UIR).
Let’s start with the original Gears of War and what’s happening in the series. It’s not worth talking about the history of Gears of War without a backdrop to what the game series is about. The developer is under the Microsoft Studios umbrella, and is responsible for Gears 4 and 5. Rod Fergusson, executive producer of the first 3 Gears games came over to work with The Coalition. Similarly to 343 Studios and their work on Halo, the new name marked the game on which they’d spend most of their time.
Microsoft, being the sole console carrying the Gears of War series, purchased the rights from Epic and then renamed Black Tusk into The Coalition. They also worked on a game called Project Columbia for the Xbox Kinect, before both it and Microsoft Flight were canceled. Beginning as a developer of Facebook games under the name Black Tusk Studios, The Coalition began its relationship with Microsoft by working on Microsoft Flight, a game in the vein of the popular 90s and 00s series Flight Simulator.