Gears of War: E-Day Preview: Everything you need to know from the Xbox Games Showcase & Direct

Vancouver-based The Coalition has lived and breathed Gears of War for over a decade now, ever since before they were even called The Coalition and were known as Black Tusk Studios. It was in 2014 that Microsoft bought the franchise from Epic Games and tasked Black Tusk with creating the next instalment in the series alongside series veteran Rod Fergusson. Just over two years later, Gears of War 4 was released and proved that the series was in good hands. This team understood Gears of War and took the story in a new direction, with new protagonists and new enemies. Three years on, they left fans with a proper cliff-hanger in Gears 5, where Kait is forced to come to terms with her troubled family history and the loss of a close friend. Most of us probably expected the next game in the series to continue along those lines, but instead The Coalition chose to look back to the day humanity on the planet Sera first came into contact with the subterranean threat known as "the Locust". The notorious E-Day.

As Gears of War: E-Day begins, our old friends Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago have barely had time to get used to the fact that they are no longer at war. The people of Sera had been locked in bloody conflict with one another for almost eighty years even before they realised they shared their planet with bloodthirsty, drooling monsters. The inhabitants of Kalona, the city in which the entire story unfolds, are celebrating what appears to be a move towards a time of peace when the ground beneath their feet splits open, revealing that the future looks anything but peaceful. The bloodbath becomes a reality before anyone even realises what's happening, and whilst most flee in panic from the monsters, Marcus Fenix and his companions charge towards them, perhaps on pure instinct, as war is the only thing they know.

The aim of the story this time is clearly to give fans of this now 20-year-old Xbox series an intimate, first-hand account of the precise moment when the world changed irrevocably and devastatingly for Sera's people. We've heard plenty about E-Day throughout the games, but this will be the first time we actually get to experience the transition from bright prospects to a pure hellish apocalypse alongside the characters. But The Coalition also wants to delve deeper into Marcus and Dom's relationship, before they became the best mates we've always known them to be. It was Dom's older brother, the tragically deceased Carlos Santiago, who was Marcus Fenix's best friend during the war. The name may not ring a bell for everyone, but those who have read Karen Traviss' books will know the story. Gears of War: E-Day will tell the story of two people who have both lost someone they love but haven't quite had time to bond with each other yet. The game will therefore not only be an origin story for the Locust War, but also for the brotherhood between Marcus and Dom.

The two grieving soldiers are joined by two newcomers: Mags Carter, a former COG soldier now working at an Imulsion refinery, and Lucas Reyes, an eager but inexperienced COG cadet. Together, the four young war veterans form "Bravo Squad", having found themselves together by pure chance when disaster strikes. The game's narrative never strays from this group's perspective, despite the Locust attack on humanity being a global event, as The Coalition aims to keep the narrative focused on a specific group of people in a specific place, which will hopefully help make the story more personal and intimate. We know the game depicts three days in the town of Kalona, and Studio Brand Director Nicole Fawcette describes the story as having three emotional acts: "The first day is confusion and fear - the ground has opened up and no one understands what is happening. The second day is regrouping, establishing contact with the military, forming the group, and launching missions. Day three is desperation, as it becomes clear that this is not an isolated incident. This is a life-changing, world-shattering event."

We'll see the conflict begin as what is assumed to be a chaotic attack by mindless monsters, only for it to become clear that it's a deliberately targeted act of war by an organised army. It starts with bestial wretches, then escalates to drones, which are more humanoid, and it only gets worse from there. At one point, Dom turns to Marcus and says "They're firing back. They're making weapons. They can bloody well talk!"

In terms of gameplay, fans will feel right at home. Moving from cover-to-cover is still the be-all and end-all, but the so-called "cover system" has been revamped to support a wider range of cover options and offer smoother transitions to and from them. Player characters can now also slide along the ground from the running animation, whether it's sliding under objects in the environment, around corners, or behind cover. And perhaps most revolutionary of all: our heroes can now jump! This opens up a certain degree of verticality in the level design, and in the gameplay presentation we saw at the Xbox Games Showcase 2026, Marcus was shown climbing onto shelves and other tall objects that, in previous games, had been used exclusively for hiding behind.

Just because Gears of War: E-Day is a so-called prequel doesn't mean we won't get brand-new weapons to play with. The most brutal results come from "the Incinerator", an Imulsion-firing shotgun that melts the skin off the poor sod who happens to be on the receiving end when the trigger is pulled. The Coalition has also showcased the aptly named "Gut Puncher", a grenade launcher that gives the user control over when the explosive device detonates by releasing the trigger. Old favourites are making a comeback too; the "Gnasher" is still your best friend in close combat, and we'll witness the birth of the iconic chainsaw-equipped machine gun known as the "Lancer", whose raison d'être perhaps wasn't quite there before the Locust army chose to make its presence felt.

Multiplayer is also a key feature in a Gears game. We know that the campaign will be playable online with up to four players and locally with two via split-screen. The popular Horde mode is also getting a major boost in what The Coalition calls "Horde Siege", where a full twelve players, split into three groups, defend larger maps than before against the subterranean threat. Fans can also look forward to good old-fashioned deathmatches, where two teams of four players face off in intense battles on symmetrical maps. The new movement options will definitely open up entirely new ways to blast your mates with shotguns. We won't have to wait much longer to get a taste of the action either as The Coalition has promised that we'll be able to try out the game's multiplayer component as early as August when they launch a public beta.

Gears of War: E-Day is the first Gears game that The Coalition has created without reusing a single asset or animation from previous titles, as absolutely everything we see in the game has been built entirely from scratch in Unreal Engine 5. Development began with "a blank hard drive", according to Studio Technical Director Kate Rayner. "We literally rebuilt everything", she says, "characters, enemies, weapons, animation, sound, the world itself". Some on the team would say that it's a bit of a relief not to have anything inherited from older titles, as it allows them to focus on what Gears of War should be in 2026 rather than iterating on old designs.

The new technology offered by Unreal Engine 5 also allows The Coalition to make the game world more immersive than ever before. The city of Kalona has been lovingly and meticulously crafted to feel like a real place. Gears of War: E-Day is not set in an open world, but the team's level designers have created the world as a cohesive, integrated space. The hope is that this will make the city's destruction feel more intense. Gears players are used to navigating the ruins of abandoned metropolises ("destroyed beauty" was a design mantra during the development of the original), but this time we'll see a living city destroyed in real-time. Lights are still on in homes, meals are left uneaten, cars are abandoned, Kalona is treated by The Coalition as a character in its own right, with a story to tell. They want us, the players, to form an emotional connection to all the loss and devastation that the world's inhabitants are subjected to right before our eyes.

It's clear that the studio is taking this historic event within the Gears universe as seriously as possible, and their ambitions extend beyond simply taking fans on a bombastic roller coaster ride filled with comical over-the-top violence and cheesy one-liners. They also want to touch our hearts and delve deeply into the characters' traumas, they want to maintain the spirit of the series and carry forward the original game's edge, whilst at the same time modernising the formula in meaningful ways. Personally, it feels a bit unsettling to leave the characters from Gears of War 4 and 5 and their conflict completely unresolved, but at the same time it's easy to see what drew the team to E-Day. As a fan of the series from day one, I've often wondered what the sequence of events might have looked like for those who were there and witnessed it, and it's hard to argue that JD Fenix, Kait Diaz, and Del Walker have had the same impact as protagonists like Papa Fenix and his crew.

Perhaps this is exactly the right direction to take right now. Looking back isn't always synonymous with moving backwards, after all. In any case, it's clear that the story of humanity's first harrowing encounter with the Locust army is something The Coalition needs to get off its chest. The enthusiasm for the project is palpable, both in what we've seen of the game and in the interviews conducted with the developers. Gears of War: E-Day certainly looks set to be a strong game, but we'll have to wait until October to find out exactly how strong, when it's released on Xbox Series S/X and PC on October 6.