Chainsaws & Championships - Chatting with the Echo Fox Gears of War Team

Currently in the midst of the Gears Pro Circuit Season 2, Echo Fox has seen a major amount of success so far. Securing a 2nd place finish at the Gears Pro Circuit Dallas Open and a 5th place finish at the Gears Pro Circuit Mexico City Open, Echo Fox is one of the top teams in the world of professional Gears of War. Wanting to pick the team's brains about the Gears of War world, Twin Galaxies caught up to the team of Kyle "Kyle" Mason, Jose ”FraNChiS” Mavo, Jamie “ToySxldier” Rivera, Arody “Praized” Dipre,  and Brian “Solurs” Valenzuela at Echo Fox's past roster day. 

Gears of War Today

While the rest of the Echo Fox organization was taking part in other roster day activities, we asked the team what made Gears of War 4 the go-to game in the franchise, as opposed to the older titles. Praized attributed it to Epic's heigtened willingness to work with and listen to players. 

"We are having alot more play tests, the developers are alot more invloved and they are listening to us now., where as before they were not listening to us as much as they maybe should have. That right there alone is what distinguishes Gears 4 from the other Gears."

 The team went on to explain their thoughts on which areas Gears of War 4 excels at compared to the older titles in the franchise, and what issues they would like to see fixed from Gears of War 4 in the next entry in the series. 

"One thing that Gears 4 does better than all of the other games," said Kyle, " Is that the deveopers [use player feedback] for constant updates on the game, so if there is a problem they will fix it right away. That is something other Gears titles did not have. Thinking back on it, Gears 1, Gears 2 or Gear 3 could have been the best Gears if we had what we have now in developer contacts, and them constantly doing updates to the game to make it progress. I think it is all about the relationship with the developers."

FraNChis told us that he would like to see the slower pace of past titles make a comeback in the next Gears of War game. 

"Gears 4 does a good job of getting high octane, action packed gunfights, but you do not see alot of the thought process behind it. Back in older titles you were able to see that process in-game and you can't see it as much anymore. Combining that with Gears 1 mechanics would probably make a great Gears 5." 

"I like the mechanics of the weapons of the older games compared to what they are now. Back then I would say they were a little bit better," Solurs explained, "Gears 4 does a better job of adding new weapons and news things with the movement." 

ToySxldier gave us his thoughts on the active reload system in the older titles compared to Gears of War 4. 

"What I like about the old Gears games is the whole active system. With Gears 4 the active system has a delay in which you can active. Back in the other Gears you would shoot a bullet or two and you would always get that active ready to go at a spawn. With Gears 4 you can reload while you have a full clip and the active will come up every so often. It does add another element of keeping track of when you can active, but I always liked just shooting and getting my active ready to go." 

The Echo Fox Journey

With the core of the Echo Fox roster (FraNChiS, ToySxldier, Praized and Solurs) formerly of Team EnVyUs, FraNChis gave us an inside look in how they became apart of the Echo Fox organization. 

"We wanted Kyle to be our fifth, and through roster talks we made the decision to join Kyle at Echo Fox. It was a very hard decision for us to make at first, but we wanted to make this roster happen in order to win multiple championships. The most efficient way for it to work out was to join Echo Fox, and we are very happy we made the decision. It has been a huge blessing for us and we are just happy to be here."

Moving on to the team's accomplishments, we asked what was the proudest moment that the team has had in their time together so far. 

"We haven't had that moment yet to be completely honest. We have expectations of winning and beating one team, which is OpTic Gaming. They are the reigning champions and we are expected to beat every other team and we do that. We just have not beat OpTic." Said Kyle.

"The plan to beat OpTic is to have confidence," continued Kyle, "You can't go into the game having any doubt you may lose. Against a team like that you have to be psychology ready. You have to prepare your mental game months in advance. You have to realize that it's player one through five and not looking at their names. It's not about them, it's about what you do good."

With five more major LAN events in Season 2 of the Gears Pro Circuit left, Echo Fox will be looking to dethrone OpTic Gaming as the kings of professional Gears of War, and show that they are the team to be feared. 

Interested in reading more about the players that compete for Echo Fox? Check out our interview with Echo Fox's professional Madden player Raidel "Joke" Brito.

(Cover Photo Courtesy of Echo Fox)