Unlike Ashes of the Singularity or Fable Legends, Gears of War Ultimate Edition was never designed to be a DX12 — or even a DX11 — title. When Digital Foundry reviewed the game last August, it noted:
While Gears of War 4 is in development using Unreal Engine 4, Gears Ultimate instead opts for more familiar ground – the original 2006 source code. From the beginning, the Ultimate Edition was designed to capture the original experience as accurately as possible while updating its presentation for the current generation. More recent versions of Unreal Engine 3, and even UE4, were considered early in development, but the decision to stick with the original codebase was made in order to preserve the original simulation. (emphasis added)
Gears of War Ultimate Edition isn’t a new implementation of a classic game, it’s built on the same source code and engine as its 10-year-old predecessor. That means everything The Coalition did to bring the game into the modern age, like adding 4K support and higher-quality textures, was done with a version of the Unreal Engine that was barely out of diapers. Not even the latest version of UE3 supports DX12 — but Microsoft decided to stuff it into a decade-old title and shove it into the Windows Store. However they hacked the engine to implement DirectX 12, there’s no way that the 2006-era Unreal engine could ever be considered a good candidate for the process.
