Microsoft closed out its big annual Xbox Games Showcase this past weekend with Gears of War: E-Day, Vancouver-based The Coalition’s next entry in the beloved third-person shooter series. While rumours had suggested we would finally see the new Gears at the show, people were surprised to find out that it would not be a continuation of 2019’s Gears 5, but rather, a prequel to the original 2006 Xbox 360 classic.
Indeed, E-Day is set 14 years before the events of Gears of War, following fan-favourite characters Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago as they first encounter the subterranean monsters known as the Locust. It was an interesting direction for a new game, to be sure, given that Gears 5 rather infamously had two different endings in which protagonist Kait Diaz had to choose who among a pair of her friends to save.
But for The Coalition, the decision to jump back into the past came about for a few key reasons. “During the pandemic, we took time to reflect, like a lot of people did, and wanted to think about what Gears meant to us — what the parts of the franchise we were the most excited about and really try to distill what that meant,” said Matt Searcy, creative director on E-Day, during a group interview.
He points to imagery from the iconic and haunting “Mad World” trailer for the original Gears in which Marcus traverses a desolate city. “We realized that to think about where we wanted to go, to reflect on the future, we had to reflect on the past. And for us, this shot — and that whole trailer, more than anything — encompassed the vibe, the feeling that people think of when they think of Gears, the things they remember.”
Nicole Fawcette, Gears of War brand director, adds that the team “spent a lot of time talking about the franchise and listening to how fans talk about it” as well. “There’s always the same words that kind of come up over and over again: ‘brutality,’ it’s about stories of ‘brotherhood,’ it’s the ‘sadness,’ — the way the world feels very ‘weary.’ But it’s also larger than life, it’s over the top; you get those moments of catharsis when you’re chainsawing Locust. So it was awesome because that’s how we talked about the franchise internally, and we just needed to learn about ourselves through our fans and spend some time doing that.”
That begs the question, though: will The Coalition ever revisit Kait’s story?
“The cool thing about working in big franchises is we love those characters, we love that story. When we were working on Gears 5, we were [also] working on Tactics, which was a game set previously in the timeline,” responded Searcy. “Gears is nice because it can range quite rapidly. I think we will always have opportunities to go all over the place and tell stories, but like I said, this is the one we wanted to tell now.”
“We’re definitely not retreating from those stories,” added Fawcette.
For now, though, that return to the series’ past brings with it the opportunity for something of a tonal refresh. In particular, The Coalition wants to return to the more horror-inspired elements of the original Gears, and it says humanity’s first encounter with the Locust Horde — E-Day, which hasn’t been covered much in the series’ expanded lore — provides the perfect opportunity to do that. In the reveal trailer, we see Marcus struggling to defeat a lone Locust, getting thrown around a decrepit room as he tries to retrieve his gun and defend himself. That sense of desperation is a far cry from the badassery that would define Marcus in the future.
“The trailer really illustrates the emotional tone that we’re taking. There’s also the art tone — things are darker, grittier. It’s how people remember Gears — as a darker, grittier story. They remember the Locust as being scary,” says Fawcette. “And now, with Unreal Engine 5, we can actually realize that in a way where they are scary — they’re big, they’re monstrous. And so the trailer was just a great way for us to kind of show that that visual target that we have.”
The Coalition says even more of the emotion will come from the relationship between Marcus and Dom. Fans of the franchise know that they become as close as brothers, but at this point in the Gears canon, they aren’t nearly as well-acquainted. What unites them is fighting in the Pendulum Wars and the resulting loss of Carlos Santiago, Dom’s brother and Marcus’ best friend.
“They’re dealing with that grief and they themselves have not really bonded as the best friends you know them as in that original trilogy. So for us again, it’s this new take on this enduring bond that people know and love, but they’ve never seen these guys like this,” says Fawcette. “They’ve never seen them go through this kind of this story before while everything’s going to shit around them, so that was super exciting for us.”
She adds that this also feeds into one of the core ethos of the Gears series, “Never Fight Alone,” which has been used in marketing and The Coalition’s charitable mental health initiative of the same name. “We kept coming back to it over and over again as a bit of a North Star for why Gears exists, and it’s because it really creates a sense of belonging for people — for people at playing the game, for the characters inside the game,” she said. “It’s really our purpose of why we continue to make this franchise.”
As Fawcette mentioned, E-Day will also leverage Unreal Engine 5 to push the visuals of Gears further than ever. We even see that in the reveal trailer; while companies often use CG cinematics that obfuscate what a game actually looks like, the E-Day trailer was in-engine. This means that you can expect the graphics of the final product to resemble what we see in the trailer. Given the impressive technical work that The Coalition has done on the likes of Gears 5, its Hivebuster DLC and even the photorealistic Matrix Awakens demo, I’m excited to see what that team accomplishes with E-Day.
“Working on those projects, we learned a lot about where you can get the most out of Unreal, and relative to Gears, how to take the initiatives and technology to pay off in a really awesome way for players,” says Searcy. “It’s the best when the way the world looks and feels, the things you can do in it, the places you can go, they manage to show up in a way that is technologically awesome, but also feels impactful to the gameplay experience. So yeah, we’re definitely going to tear a lot of shit up in this.”
Of course, many questions still remain, especially since we have yet to see actual gameplay. In terms of what else they would divulge in the interview, Fawcette only teased that we’ll see the origins of the Lancer chainsaw gun, while Searcy said the game’s structure will be more linear compared to the open areas found in Gears 5. On the flip side, the team isn’t ready to talk about multiplayer yet or even whether John DiMaggio and Carlos Ferra will return as Marcus and Dom, respectively.
Nonetheless, everything that The Coalition is talking about sounds appealing, especially with respect to the greater focus on emotional storytelling and frightening enemies. The Canadian developer has done great work with Gears over the past decade, so I have faith that they’ll stick the landing with E-Day.
A release window for Gears of War: E-Day has yet to be confirmed.
Image credit: Xbox
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