The Locusts are out of the bag: Gears of War: E-Day has revealed tons of gameplay—the shooter is one of Microsoft’s biggest guns. And we’ve even found out more behind the scenes.
Interviews with AAA developers are often the most tedious part of my job. You’re sitting there with professionals who’ve had years of media training, surrounded by PR people who are meticulously careful to ensure that not a single word strays from the official press release. And hey, I can totally understand that—we’ve all seen how just two off-the-cuff remarks can trigger an avalanche in the age of the internet. Yves Guillemot probably still wakes up in a cold sweat today, screaming “AAA game!”
That makes it all the more refreshing when blockbuster developers just let loose and speak their minds. Take Gears of War: E-Day, for example. I’m sitting in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the big Xbox Showcase event with Matt Searcy, Aryan Hanbeck, and Nicole Fawcette in a private little room—all key figures behind the new Gears—to chat freely about everything I want to know about the new Gears. There are no restrictions, no script, no rules.
But developer The Coalition also has a lot to make up for. 2019’s Gears 5 suffers from a reputation worse than Hawaiian pizza. When it came to open world, storytelling, microtransactions, and game design, the game went in completely the wrong direction for many fans. No wonder there’s been radio silence for seven years now.
Gears of War: E-Day aims to change that with a spectacular comeback. And I leave my meeting feeling pretty good, because in my opinion, the shooter is heading in three really promising directions.
1. An open world that isn’t really one
Gears 5 is a late victim of the open-world trend of the 2010s. You remember: It felt like every new blockbuster suddenly needed an open-world setting just to slap the buzzword on the box and, ideally, weave in some service-game gimmicks to keep people hooked for as long as possible. Sometimes the strategy worked… but not in the case of Gears 5.
The empty, open areas and forced vehicle sequences remain the biggest point of criticism for Gears 5 to this day. That’s why its quasi-sequel, E-Day, addresses this point clearly and unequivocally: something like that won’t happen again.
It’s all the more ironic that the term “open world” slips out of Art Director Aryan Hanbeck’s mouth, but he immediately corrects the slip of the tongue: E-Day does away with open-world sections. No endless wandering, no forced vehicle segments. But that doesn’t mean E-Day will be completely linear either.
The Coalition is striving for a better balance than in its predecessor, because as Aryan Hanbeck explains: In E-Day, you’ll mostly follow scripted missions through the devastated city of Kalona, but every now and then the level opens up. You can then decide fairly freely within a district where you want to go first—including optional mission objectives.
For example, you can choose to rescue any group in distress from the Locust at your own discretion and receive story or equipment rewards in return. Alternatively, you can ignore the group (shame on you).
To me, that sounds like just the right balance: an imposing city like this wastes its potential in purely linear levels—it’s okay to have a little openness. Ideally, the battle arenas will become more like a sandbox where I can truly decide for myself how, where, and what to attack. Very cool.
2. More Movement
When the first Gears of War was released, cover-based shooters were revolutionary. Finally, I could shoot it out in shooters on a console without any trouble, because I had time to catch my breath and aim. Cover shooters finally opened the doors to consoles for mainstream shooters, after Halo and the like had already dipped their toes in a few years earlier.
By 2026, the landscape has changed; shooters have long been commonplace on consoles—cover shooters, on the other hand, are all the rarer. Nevertheless, E-Day makes the right decision not to abandon this core element of the franchise. The sight of Gears soldiers heaving themselves into cover in their heavy armor, crushing car doors in the process, while all around them
But Marcus and Dom are getting a few new tricks. The game will now distinguish between different cover heights, so the Gears will sometimes sneak along barricades that are one meter high. They can also slide over short distances. And jump! The devs are quick to point out that jumps in Gears aren’t a silver bullet for dodging enemy fire. So Gears won’t be a CoD clone where everyone hops around like wild bunnies.
Especially in multiplayer, I’m hoping the new movement options will lead to a more modern gameplay flow—it sounds like exactly the right direction.
3. We Travel Back in Time
Much like Halo, the story of the Gears saga hit a bit of a dead end after the end of the third installment. At the same time, the series’ heyday was so long ago that you’ll probably have to reintroduce the appeal of Gears to the young players of tomorrow. The fact that E-Day takes us back in time kills two birds with one stone.
E-Day has what it takes to become the Halo: Reach of the Gears saga: A dark prequel that reveals a world we’ve only experienced in books and comics so far. Because before the Gears went into battle against the Locust, they were fresh off a massive civil war against their own kind. Much like the Spartans in Halo, the Gears are actually part of a fascist-like military machine that mercilessly exploits people.
I’d love to experience this Sera in a game. A society where the “bad guys” only become the “good guys” because they’re fighting even worse villains. A society that seems technologically similar to Earth, but ultimately operates on a completely different level. A society of contradictions that produces rough-and-tumble heroes like Marcus, Dom, and the rest.
And the ruins of a civilization hold the potential for so much cool storytelling—stories both big and small, told through the environment or directly through dialogue. I keep seeing disappointment out there that E-Day doesn’t pick up the storyline from Gears 5, but on the contrary, I’m firmly convinced: there are still so many story gems lying in the past of the Gears universe. It’s about time someone dug them up.
And the fact that the devs are even collaborating with Karen Traviss, who wrote the original Gears novels, is more than just the icing on the cake. It gives me confidence that the developers at The Coalition know how to handle the Gears legacy. Or at least have finally learned from the missteps of its predecessors.
Editor’s Verdict
Gears of War: E-Day is my highlight of Summer Game Fest 2026. As fantastic as I find the variety of games—both big and small—beyond the big-budget blockbusters: two or three games a year should still be allowed to push the boundaries of what’s technically possible right now. And E-Day seems to be doing exactly that. The Fall of Kalona promises a visual spectacle unlike any other.
But more than that: it promises a return to the Gears series’ classic strengths. With a focus on classic Locust shootouts, classic character dynamics, and classic game design virtues. No open world, no forced unlocking grind, no meandering story that only exists because the plot has to keep going somehow.
The Coalition is championing exactly the right things here. Now the finished game just has to deliver—and that’s where the biggest question marks lie for me right now. Gears of War: E-Day has the potential to be the first Gears game of the post-Epic era to come close to the genius of the classics. But those are some damn big shoes to fill.
