Lancer - Customisation Investigation

How much can you change a Gears Lancer before it is no longer one?

This was a question we had to answer at the beginning of the project, since Tactics is the first Gears game where players can customise these iconic weapons. We started out by breaking down the Lancer into all it's different components in order to find out what we can change out without loosing the weapon's character. Of course, we kept the chainsaw in the end and focused on only swapping out secondary elements like the magazine, the barrel and the sights.
At some point we were considering to combine the Lancer and the Retro Lancer into the same class, allowing you to swap out parts between them, but quickly realised that both needed to remain their own separate and iconic self.