Ehh, not really... Gears looked extremely impressive and I never got the complaints about the "poor art direction" from the NeoGAF critic brigade. The Fred Durst wannabe character design sucked, but DAMN... for some of the environments. The mansion, the courtyard where you fight the Berserker in Act 1, the arboretum... fuck that game looked GREAT.
Gears was really good... I expected nothing less from EPIC, my favorite Western developer ever!