Microsoft have announced a new chapter in the popular Gears Of War franchise, subtitled Judgment (or Judgement, as it will most likely be known over here). The new game takes place before the original Gears, following the events of series fan favorites Augustus ‘Cole Train’ Cole and Damon Baird.

The game is the first in the series not to be developed in-house by industry veterans Epic Games, who have passed the baton over to Painkilller developers People Can Fly, who has previously developed a good relationship with Epic when developing last years excellent (but commercially unsuccessful) Bulletstorm. While the game is using the base Gears Of War 3 engine, from first impressions it appears that People Can Fly are taking the game in a brand new direction.

The games’ multiplayer is now class-based, with each side receiving unique classes to play around with. On the human side, there’s the general Engineer, Soldier, Medic and Scout classes. On the Locust side, however, things seem a little more interesting, with all the bizarre classes that were seen from Gears 3′s popular Beast Mode. From the tiny Ticker and Wretch classes who can zip across the field to the massive, hulking Corpser, there’s a strategy for everyone.

There’s also a new multiplayer mode called Overrun, which the developers have said has taken inspiration from the mega-popular DOTA. Details on Overrun are scarce, but will involve two teams of five working together to defend an objective, which does indeed sound quite like DOTA (as the saying goes, nobody ever went broke stealing from DOTA), but hopefully there will be enough of a Gears twist on the formula to be worthwhile. The fact it’s a shooter probably helps.

The Campaign has also been briefly outlined, and is set 15 years before the events of Gears Of War. Cole and Baird are on trial for treason, and the gameplay sections are part of the tribunal, with testimonies leaking into the playable chapters. It sounds like a really interesting way of framing a story, and we here at LUNA think that the fresh perspective given by new developers People Can Fly may be the exact shot in the arm that the Gears franchise needs. Gears Of War: Judgment currently has no concrete release date, so stay tuned for more details.