Gears of War: E-Day takes The Coalition back to Emergence Day

The Gears of War franchise used to sit firmly among Xbox’s biggest flagship series, yet it may surprise you that there hasn’t been a new mainline instalment since before the pandemic. In 2019, Gears 5 pushed forward with the narrative of a newer generation of COGs, mixing in broad exploration spaces and leaning heavily into Kait Diaz’s family connections. Even though that next step for Gears introduced some compelling concepts, the storyline didn’t appear to connect with the wider audience in the same way the original arc centred on Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago did. With Gears of War: E-Day, The Coalition is deliberately winding the clock back-years before the first Gears of War-to depict the Locusts’ arrival on Sera.

Gears of War: E-Day goes back to the series’ origins

The Coalition is framing this as a return to what made the series tick, giving players the opportunity to watch events that have mostly been referenced in passing across the Gears of War games unfold first-hand. The story spans three days, during which you’ll see Kalona collapse in a manner the studio wants to feel like a full-scale monster invasion. Using Unreal Engine 5, The Coalition has built out the entire city-even though the game is not open world. The result is that you’ll spot distant vistas, then later reach them, and even witness them being destroyed as the three days move forwards; the studio says the longer you play, the more the situation spirals into chaos and devastation.

"It is a very linear game, so it has very classic Gears levels that are linear streets leading to arenas and combat arenas, but we do have sections that open up into a wide linear couple of blocks," studio creative director Matt Searcy says. "You always have a main objective, you're always going to the next thing. You don't get to pick and choose what your quests are, and you can't just re-traverse all over the game however you want. Our story re-traverses through the city, but we're pulling you through a very linear adventure. We just wanted to find a way to really feel Kalona, and also the way the gameplay mechanics can experience E-Day."

Bravo Squad, Kalona, and the start of Emergence Day

This time, you play as Bravo Squad: a group of COGs thrown together by circumstance. After the Pendulum Wars end, Marcus and Dom arrive in Kalona for a military ceremony. At this stage, their bond is rooted largely in service-and in the mutual grief they share for the late Carlos Santiago, Dom’s brother, who was killed in combat. Only a few weeks have passed since the Pendulum Wars concluded, a conflict that ran for nearly 80 years. But later that evening, while they are at a bar, the peace they assumed would follow the war is shattered. Openings tear through the city and Locusts pour out, slaughtering most of the human population; the events are savage, bleak, and extremely gory. Marcus and Dom react immediately, leaving the bar and teaming up with Lucas Reyes and Mags Carter.

"They're all returned home, and they're all trying to figure out what life looks like next for them," studio brand director Nicole Fawcette says. "Marcus and Dom are having this conversation when the ground starts to shake and chaos erupts around them, and these four people that were just kind of living their lives in the bar, basically get thrown together by their shared values of being a Gear and knowing that duty comes first. They run towards the danger rather than running away from the danger. [...] Mags Carter is a former Gear veteran; she served previously in the Gears and was dishonorably discharged, and we're not going to get too far into her story, but now she works at the Imulsion refinery. Both her and Lucas are from Kalona, and that's really great when you're playing through the game, because Marcus and Dom are not from the city; they're here for a very special event. They basically get stuck in the city as Emergence Day unfolds, and Mags and Lucas are basically your guide to the city."

Co-op options and movement updates

Gears of War: E-Day supports four-player online co-op across all modes, and it also includes two-player split-screen co-op. In addition, you can choose whichever character you want right from the beginning. As a group, players can take advantage of a fresh set of movement options, such as jumping, sliding, and performing high mantles to climb taller walls than before. There are smaller tweaks too, including the camera pulling back-rather than pushing in-when you sprint, which is intended to improve spatial awareness. The active reload UI has also been repositioned to the centre of the screen to better match the player’s natural sightline.

A 14-year gap-and what it might mean

Because Gears of War: E-Day is set 14 years before the first Gears of War, I asked Searcy whether he sees that extra space in the timeline as an opening to expand this single instalment into a multi-game prequel saga. As you might expect, his response is cautious.

"When we look at telling Gears stories, one of the awesome things about working on Gears is it's got a bunch of lore, a bunch of characters, all sorts of stuff," he says. "We had this moment, I think we talked about it in 2024, where we just, at the studio, wanted to tell this story really, really badly. We decided that would be our next mainline entry, and we basically have been focused on that this whole time. And now, on this day, we're still trying to land this one, right? We always look at it as we have all these opportunities to tell stories, whether they're this time frame or other time frames, all sort of characters. We don't really have a commitment to what the next one's going to be right now, but it was really awesome to go back here, and I think there's a rich amount of storytelling in all over the Gears eras."

Although the gameplay segment I watched didn’t extend beyond what appeared in the Xbox Showcase’s Gears of War: E-Day Direct, it was valuable to hear extra context directly from the team behind what I see as one of the most promising games slated for this autumn. For me, Gears of War once belonged in the same conversation as Xbox’s greatest first-party franchises; and despite being absent for nearly a whole console generation, E-Day looks as though it could mark a return to the level I once expected from the series. We’ll find out whether it lives up to that when Gears of War: E-Day arrives on Xbox Series X/S and PC on October 6.