One of Gears of War 5's characters was inspired by Super Mario Galaxy

Multiple developers have been inspired by countless other creations when making their games. That includes inspiration from movies, TV shows, and even other games. When it comes to Gears 5, it turns out the dev team was directly inspired by Super Mario Galaxy when creating their robotic assist character, Jack. Rod Fergusson, studio head at The Coalition, Super Mario Galaxy's unique co-op experience was a directly responsible for how Jack works.

"As we thought about how we would deal with this from a beginner's perspective, we realized that the best way to deal with things as a beginner is to do everything sort of counter to what is the core of Gears. So we purposely created this character whose abilities and movement were the exact opposite of what the main game is like, so that it would have a different way of playing."

In Gears 5, Jack can be used for support functions like cloaking abilities, laying down proximity mines, showing the other players enemy locations and more.