Gears of War: E-Day’s Campaign Lies in the Past

Background: A Prequel Should Change What Came Before

A good prequel does more than put familiar names back on screen. It should change how the later game is understood. Red Dead Redemption 2, Yakuza 0, Metal Gear Solid 3, and Halo: Reach all work in that spirit. Red Dead Redemption 2 gives more emotional weight to the first game and to John Marston's mission by humanizing his targets. Yakuza 0 deepens the bond between Kazuma Kiryu and Akira Nishikiyama, which makes the first game's tragic finale feel heavier.

Gears of War: E-Day does not build that kind of bridge.

The Coalition's latest venture returns to the world of COGs and Locusts, but its link to the 2006 original stays mostly surface-level. The endpoint is already known: Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago go to war while the human world of the surface is invaded by the subterranean Locust, and the heroes survive to fight again. The route toward that known ending offers few surprises.

The most notable changes appear inside the game's third-person, cover-based shooting framework. It remains distinctly Gears of War, with bulky soldiers and heavy weapons, but the new elements mostly polish the familiar action rather than reshape it. The increased spectacle is impressive, and the game is good, yet those additions do not lift the whole package into greatness.

For a series that has often struggled to let go of its past, jumping back 14 years before the surprise attack that started the franchise sounded like a solid idea. By confronting the past directly, The Coalition had a chance to examine the origins of Marcus, Dom, and the antagonistic Locust Horde from the moment their fates intertwined.

Instead, E-Day feels like a fairly boilerplate story. It often reads as if it were written for series newcomers rather than for players who have already fought through the conclusion of the Locust War. A character explains that throwing a grenade into a Locust-spawning Emergence Hole can close it. Boomers, Tickers, and Reavers, enemies fans have been fighting for two decades, are presented as though they still need dramatic reintroduction.

That is not a problem in itself. Reintroducing a universe can help a prequel breathe. The issue is how much E-Day treats familiar parts as fresh ideas. The game seems more interested in setting up its own moment than surprising longtime fans or digging into the series' history.

Development Process: Kalona, Weapon Mods, and 20 Years of Cover Combat

The story is entertaining at face value, with intense action and cheesy one-liners. Some of the early missions carry a horror-tinged edge because they show the brutality of the Locust invasion firsthand. Later, the game settles into the familiar rhythm of large-scale cover combat.

Marcus is still gruff, authority-bucking, and no-nonsense despite the 14-year gap and everything that happened between this story and the original. Dominic Santiago still moves through the same emotional beats, worrying about the fate of his wife, Maria. The two characters have not fully developed the close relationship seen in the 2006 original. Their bond mostly forms around shared grief for the loss of Dom's brother, but the relationship is not explored deeply enough to add anything new to what players already know.

Even the invention of the iconic Mark 2 Lancer, the assault rifle with a chainsaw bayonet that has been a staple of Gears of War since the beginning, happens off-screen. The scene involves a character the player only briefly meets twice. That throwaway moment makes the prequel feel disappointingly superfluous.

Combat is where E-Day does its best work. The Locust are still satisfying targets: bodies burst into dense chunks, heads pop like watermelons, and the crunchy sound design makes each hit feel forceful. Classic weapons remain strong. The Gnasher shotgun and Longshot sniper rifle are as satisfying as ever, and cutting a Locust in half with the Lancer's chainsaw remains a reliable thrill.

The game adds weapon mods, which give combat more depth. Players can tune gun behavior and add scopes, laser sights, or bayonets to weapons that would not otherwise have them. Perfect reloads, the series' classic mechanic that grants a damage bonus for hitting reload in time with an on-screen prompt, can be altered to grant incendiary ammo or increase fire rate. Other mods reduce flinch, speed up reloads, increase damage range, and more. The system is customizable enough to change how a weapon functions or simply strengthen what already works.

Movement has also been tinkered with. Marcus and his squad are much more agile than in past games. They can slide, jump, quickly mantle over cover, and climb ledges with relative ease. That fits the game's renewed focus on verticality in level design, but being nimbler does not meaningfully transform how it feels to play Gears.

E-Day is still a cover shooter. Players have more varied ways to move from cover to cover, but the moment-to-moment action is not all that different from the 2006 original. The loop still emphasizes popping up to take opportune shots or maneuvering to flank dug-in enemies. It is surprising how well the Gears formula holds up 20 years later, but that same fact also reveals how little has changed.

Kalona provides the setting. The entire game takes place in and around the city, alternating between explorable open areas and more linear missions. Gears 5 previously broke the series' mold by introducing open sandbox environments that allowed players to tackle objectives in the order of their choosing and explore vast areas aboard vehicles. E-Day follows that direction but reins things in considerably. The vehicles are gone, and the spaces are smaller.

When players are free to traverse blocks of the city, they can find many collectibles and occasional side missions, but those sections mostly slow the game's frenetic pace. The side missions lack variety, often asking players to survive waves of enemies. Many shops and apartments share similar layouts, so exploring every nook and cranny yields little interest. Teaming with other players helps because the group can spread out and find items faster, but co-op is obviously optional.

Kalona itself is the most visually fascinating part of the open structure. Its architecture mixes classical European-style buildings with modern industrial factories and a gothic edge. The city also becomes a record of destruction when the game lets players revisit the same locations a few hours apart. A street where a firefight once happened can turn into a giant sinkhole that cuts through the metro and beyond. That is an effective way to show how quickly the Locust decimated the city.

This is one area where E-Day does something interesting with its open-ended sections. Otherwise, its linear missions are far superior. They hone in on classic Gears action while going big on spectacle with cinematic flair.

Latest Progress: Spoiler Alert, Ending Threads, and Multiplayer Servers

Spoiler Alert: This section discusses plot turns and ending details.

E-Day introduces two new squad members, Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes. They are likable, even if the game takes a while to touch on their backstories. The problem is that neither character is ever put in real peril. Risk is reserved for characters whose survival is already known, so the stakes remain relatively low throughout the story.

The ending leaves more questions than answers, seemingly setting up a sequel or DLC at the very least. Meanwhile, the cliffhanger at the end of Gears 5 remains unaddressed.

The review window also includes online play. Multiplayer servers go live at the same time as this review, and the written coverage is scheduled to update in the next few days with multiplayer impressions and a finalized score. Until that update lands, the assessment focuses on the single-player structure: a good game carried by combat that has not changed much over the past 20 years.

The Coalition is not trying to reinvent the wheel, and that is fine. Still, E-Day also reveals how much appetite for this kind of action may have faded since 10 years ago. There are only so many times a player can man a gun turret before the thrill stops landing. For better or worse, Gears of War: E-Day is distinctly Gears. A player can still have a good time with it, even if the story is disappointing and the open areas are fairly dull.

That is the current stage of the game. It is a competent return to the COGs-versus-Locusts war, but it is not the kind of prequel that recontextualizes the 2006 original. Its strongest assets are weapon mods, vertical cover play, and Kalona's visible destruction. Its weakest part is the assumption that familiarity alone can make a 14-year jump feel urgent. For readers deciding what to expect, E-Day is less a narrative reset and more a showcase of a durable action formula, with enough spectacle to be entertaining and too little curiosity to dig deeper.