Gears of War is having something of a renaissance right now, as The Coalition go all out to put the franchise back on the map.
Gears has been one of the most consistent Xbox staples in the brand’s history, popularizing the third-person shooter genre with its gritty storytelling and bleak world. Gears 4 and 5 experimented away from the formula a bit, and perhaps got lost in the weeds in some ways as they sought to give the franchise new footing. After a successful Gears of War: E-Day beta event, increasingly it’s looking like the key to Gears’ future may, in fact, lie in the past.
Recently, I was lucky enough to go hands-on with two missions from Gears of War: E-Day’s campaign, set during the initial attacks from the vile Locust swarm.
E-Day follows a younger Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, worn down already from a major civil war that society had only just begun to recover from. Then, subterranean horrors emerged from the ground, bringing with them a whole host of terrifying war beasts and brutal makeshift weaponry in a legendary surprise attack that would eventually leave humanity on the brink of extinction.
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E-Day is about those early years, and if the full game is even close to as good as what I experienced last week, Gears of War: E-Day could cement its place as the best Gears of War story in history.
A painstakingly detailed, reactive world
The original Gears of War is very much a product of its time, but also its setting. The game is essentially post-apocalyptic, taking place years after E-Day, with much of civilization already reduced to grey-brown ash and ruins.
Given that Gears of War: E-Day takes place at the very start of the war, The Coalition had to approach it like it is: a very different beast, ultimately. The stakes are far higher; there are still survivors running around, trapped in their homes, and The Coalition weaves that bleak reality into every pixel of E-Day’s presentation and gameplay.
Taking place in the town of Kalona, the levels I experienced are right up there with the most painstakingly detailed urban environments I’ve experienced this gen. It feels less like it’s designed specifically as a gameplay canvas, and more like it’s designed to feel lived in. The Coalition absolutely delivered here, while still sneakily dotting the map with chest-high (and now shin-high) walls to hide behind with its dynamic cover system.
If you played Gears of War’s Siege mode beta, you might already have some idea of what I’m talking about with regard to environmental detail. Car tires puncture and deflate under gunfire, windows shatter, and cover deforms, giving E-Day a sense of life that was missing from the older games.
The town is full of storefronts and interiors, without even a whiff of copy-and-paste. Gears’ campaign seems to connect linear segments into wider areas, complete with a mapping tool that was reminiscent of Silent Hill’s own. Marcus will sketch notes and routes on the map as you move, which opens up exploration opportunities and side objectives for unlocking weapon mods and equipment for your loadout, as well as lore-enriching collectibles.
It’s still unmistakably Gears, complete with a rough prototype chainsaw lancer machine gun, canned execution animations, atop a more dynamic cover system. But it also feels fresh in a way that many franchises struggle with several games deep. I dare say The Coalition cooked here.
A darker, more desperate tone
Gears of War: E-Day is every bit as violent as the previous games, although I feel like we’re getting more up close and personal with the reptilian Locust than ever before.
I mentioned stakes in the intro, but there’s a keen sense of vulnerability for a C.O.G. that has been caught with its collective pants down — NPCs are seen fleeing the warzone, being gunned down (or worse) in cold blood, as wretches screech through, devouring up the remains.
This first wave of Locust is chaotic and visceral, armed with the ballistic equivalent of axes and clubs intent on murdering anything and everything with a human pulse. The top brass have no idea what’s going on. One day, everyone woke up to murderous, hungry monsters writhing out of the ground, and E-Day leans hard into that dark fantasy.
Marcus’ self-assured stoicism hasn’t fully hardened in E-Day; that sense of inexperience is oddly exposing, giving E-Day a tangible sense of vulnerability. The Coalition uses the game’s side objectives to tell short stories within the game’s world as well, giving you opportunities to see how regular civilians are being slaughtered en masse in the Locust feeding frenzy. It’s an extension of the side-objectives system The Coalition seemed to explore a bit in Gears 5, although I’d argue it makes a lot more sense in E-Day’s dense urban climbs. It doesn’t rely on vehicular traversal, which arguably tripped up the game’s pacing a bit in 5, and there are fewer engine limitations on injecting new areas on the fly.
Speaking of the engine, I think Gears of War: E-Day is probably the most visually impressive game I’ve played so far this gen. The Coalition are without a doubt the masters of Unreal Engine, perhaps surpassing Epic Games itself. The visual density, the lighting quality, the detailing, all while running at 60 FPS in an inexplicably crisp resolution, demand wonder and immersion like few other developers can muster.
The visuals and music delivery make Gears of War: E-Day’s darkly cinematic presentation all the more evocative as you scrape through the blood-soaked streets of cities that are undoubtedly in the process of total destruction.
The Coalition takes Gears to the next level with total and complete confidence
There’s little room for hope in Gears of War: E-Day. We all know the conclusion. But for the first time, we’re going to experience that hopelessness firsthand.
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Right after playing through the E-Day campaign preview, I loaded up the original Gears of War to do a direct comparison. It’s easy to forget sometimes just how far we’ve come in terms of visuals, presentation, gameplay fidelity, and general polish. It’s also easy to fill in the blanks with your imagination — that’s practically what we had to do back in the day, playing games at 480p.
The Coalition and other developers working on legacy franchises have some of the toughest jobs in the business. How can you deliver experiences that compete with our nostalgia-tinted imagination? How can you exceed expectations that are, in part, misremembered through fragments of fading memories?
The Coalition’s answer seems to be: “you have to over-deliver.”
If Gears of War: E-Day’s full campaign offers the kind of quality I experienced last week throughout — I’m confident it’ll not only be remembered as the best entry in the franchise … Gears: E-Day could also represent the starting point for a new decade of an Xbox dominated by The Coalition.
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