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Everything We Learned From The Gears Of War: E-Day Direct
Gears of WarGears Of War: E-DaySummer Game FestXbox
Gears of War: E-Day is the next mainline entry in the popular Xbox franchise. But this isn’t a sequel to Gears 5. Instead, this upcoming installment takes the series back in time and shows players the beginning of the conflict with the Locust on Emergence Day and all the chaos that followed.
During today’s big Xbox Showcase, developer The Coalition shared more about the game and what to expect. And then, even more details were shared in a lengthy Xbox Wire post. Here are eight key takeaways that you should know about.
Gears of War: E-Day is primarily set in one city, Kalona, depicting how it falls apart over three days as the Locust burst through the ground and wreak havoc on the planet of Sera. And we’ll get to see how Marcus and others deal with this new threat, one they’ve never seen before at this point in the timeline.
“At the beginning, people don’t know what the hell is going on,” art director Aryan Hanbeck says. “Then they’re being slaughtered by monsters. Later, you might encounter groups that are trying to fight back. The evolution of how our civilians act, and how we act towards them, has been one of the most interesting things to explore.”
According to The Coalition, this is the first Gears of War game the team has built that doesn’t port forward any old assets or pieces of old games. The leap to Unreal 5 has opened up the team to add not only tons of new, advanced graphical elements but also to recreate all the old pieces of Gears, including character models, weapons, and more.
Even the iconic “Bwwamm” noise that plays after killing the last enemy during a fight is brand new.
“We literally rebuilt everything from scratch,” studio technical director Kate Rayner says. “Characters, enemies, weapons, animation, sound, the world itself.” Nicole Fawcette, brand director, added: “Literally everything you see in E-Day did not exist before we made it for this game.”
The Coalition’s goal with Gears of War: E-Day was to make a cover shooter that felt like the old games, but offered more options and features. For example, Marcus and other characters can now slide from a sprint, which is useful for getting into cover or sliding through an opening.
Gears of War: E-Day also supports different types of cover, including environmental elements that are lower than those used for cover in past games, forcing Marcus to go nearly prone. And for the first time in the series, players can now jump, which the studio says adds more verticality to levels and lets you explore the rooftops of Kalona.