 Epic has been famous for their Unreal licensed products including  Unreal Tournament and Unreal Championship. Gears of War was  originally going to be a new Unreal game called Unreal Warfare,  which would focus on vehicle combat. As the development progressed  the games director realized that the real action came from close  quarters brutality with a focus on cover. This new take was unlike  the Unreal brand too much, so a new IP was created.