no surprise -gears was not coded by the original team,God of wars was.
God of wars main problem is because in Ascension Kratos is too human.Killing the complete Olymp as supergod in gow3 and than start to fight as human being you will lose the Epic momentum=huge step back.
The good thing is-now they left huge space for epic improvement as they haven't wasted the real good ideas for this spin off.In Gow4 Kratos can now fight the gods from asgard,the roman gods,the muslim genie,the jewish leviathan,the babylonian molech(bohemian grove),the four horseman.
Gears may have the problem to gain this momentum with the next sequel as too much was broken,but the game will sell better than god of war(in the us),as shooters are selling extremly god in the states-even such crap like AliensCM sold almost 400k.