'Gears of War 4' release date news update: Minimum specs, 4K gameplay footage revealed at Gamescom

At last week's Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, video game publisher Microsoft Studios and developer The Coalition announced the required and recommended specs for the PC version of the upcoming "Gears of War 4."

According to Microsoft, there are three tiers of specs for the game. These are minimum, recommended, and ideal. Players need to be running the Windows 10 anniversary update to play the game on their PCs, regardless of which tier their gear is in. The game also requires a massive 80GB of hard drive space.

The minimum required GPU to play "Gears of War 4" is either a GTX 750 Ti or an R7 260X. The ideal GPU is a GTX 980 Ti or a GTX 1080 or an R9 Fury X. The game can be played on a PC with 80 GB free in its HDD, but the ideal specs call for a solid state drive.

Apart from the specs required to play the game, 4K gameplay footage from "Gears of War 4" was also unveiled.

"Gears of War 4" is set 25 years after the events in "Gears of War 3" and the death of Queen Myrrah, the leader of the Locust Horde. The fourth installment in the "Gears of War" video game franchise will follow JD Fenix, the son of Marcus Fenix, along with his teammates Del and Kait.

Like the narrative of the original "Gears of War," the story in "Gears of War 4" will unfold over a short timespan, i.e. 24 hours in the lives of the game's characters.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly earlier this year, The Coalition studio head Rob Fergusson spoke about the "Gears of War 4" story and how it follows the structure of the first game in the franchise.

"For me I really like the words 'tension' and 'drama,'" he said. "That's what we're really trying to do with '4.' We're trying to go back to that feeling, so we're taking the story down from — if you look at 'Gears 3' as this sort of planetary genocide or trying to save the human race from extinction — we wanted to get back to the story of three people and one night, and how can these three people survive this one night. Getting that intimacy back with story, and the intimacy back in terms of tone and to allow you to be afraid again."

"Gears of War 4" is set to be released for the Xbox One and PC on Oct.11.