While the story of "Gears of War 4" has already moved on from the original protagonist Marcus Fenix, the upcoming role-playing title is only the opening of a whole new trilogy, according to the franchise's developers.

In an exclusive with Game Informer, developer The Coalition revealed that "Gears of War 4" is not the end of the franchise. Although the story has already shifted from Marcus Fenix to the next generation of characters, the upcoming title is only the beginning of a new franchise trilogy, rather than only providing clues to ananswered questions in "Gears of War 3."

"Gears of War 4" creative director Chuck Osieja even hinted at one time that the upcoming new trilogy may expand outside of the known in-game world.

Osieja said, "For us it was 'ok, moving forward, how do we setup a foundation for not just a trilogy, but for a much larger universe."

However, The Coalition executive Rod Fergusson wants to connect to both old and new players of the franchise, so a familiar backdrop to the story is needed for the sequel.

Fergusson countered, "We talked about things like alternate planets and things like that [but] we wanted to stay on Sera because we wanted to have the opportunity to revisit old places and use specific weapons, to have these touchstones to the past."

Whether hardcore fans of the franchise can really connect to the new story using the same backdrops in Sera will be known soon as the beta version for "Gears of War 4" goes live. There will two roll-outs for the beta version. Fans who have a copy of "Gears of War: Ultimate Edition" on either Xbox One or Windows 10 and play until April 11 can get into the early access beta on April 18 to 24. Meanwhile, the open beta itself for "Gears of War 4" rolls out in the last week of April, from April 25 to May 1.