Gears of War: E-Day brings fresh ideas to the iconic series

The Locust are coming. Again. But this time, players get to experience the catastrophe that started it all. Gears of War: E-Day will be available to play tomorrow, October 6, on Xbox Series X/S and PC. The game is set 14 years before the original Gears of War, and it allows players to experience the Emergence Day through the eyes of younger Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago. That premise might sound like an excuse to revisit familiar territory, but The Coalition has taken the foundations that made the series famous and modernized several of its systems to offer an experience that returns to the horror-focused atmosphere of the first games.

This approach is defintely working, as the game has already gathere a maximum of 20,374 concurrent players on Steam. This is almost twice the all-time peak achieved by Gears 5 and it's also well ahead of Gears of War: Reloaded.

E-Day is not simply Gears 5 with a different story

Gears of War: E-Day puts players directly into the moment when humanity first encounters the subterranean threat. The campaign takes place during the original Emergence Day and follows Marcus and Dom as they attempt to survive the sudden invasion. The Locust are are an unknown, terrifying force emerging from beneath Sera, which gives the campaign a darker tone than some of the later entries in the franchise.

The Coalition has also leaned heavily into horror for this game. Enemies that could feem familiar to the fans of the series have been redesigned to feel more threatening, while new creatures reinforce the idea that the Locust are something humanity has never encountered before. The result is an experience that is very close in spirit to the claustrophobic brutality of the original Gears of War. The game still is all about cover-based shooting but combat has been enhanced by giving players considerably more freedom.

In Gears of War: E-Day players can jump, vault, slide and flank. This translates into giving firefights with more verticality and allows Marcus to move through arenas more dynamically than in previous games. This is a significant change, since Gears has always been about chunky soldiers wielding powerful weapons and diving between pieces of cover, powerful weapons and deliberate movement. The new mechanics appear to have been designed as extensions of the cover system, making gameplay more fluid.

Another major change is the scale of the campaign environments. Gears of War: E-Day gives players larger spaces to explore. There are optional objectives, collectibles and equipment-related discoveries scattered around the scenario, providing more opportunities to move away from the traditional corridor-to-arena structure. However, this change doesn't turn Gears of War: E-Day into a conventional open-world game. More options do not have to be better, as they may divert players from progressing through the campaign. This is especially true for old fans of the series who may find that it slows down the experience.

Horde gets a major makeover

The multiplayer side of Gears of War: E-Day also introduces many novelties. The traditional Horde concept has been reimagined as Horde Siege, a larger-scale PvE mode built around squads, objectives and massive battles. Players can choose between four classes and cooperate in four-player squads while tackling shared objectives and fighting world bosses. Multiple squads can operate together, making the mode substantially larger than the traditional Horde experience.

Gears of War: E-Day also brings back Versus with new maps, refined 4v4 modes and modernized movement. Ranked and Social playlists provide different ways to approach competitive play.

October 5 patch prepares E-Day for launch

The Coalition has also released a new update ahead of tomorrow's launch. The patch focuses primarily on stability, performance, multiplayer connectivity and campaign bugs that have been reported by players in Early Access. 

The main changes include improvements to overall stability, performance, hardware compatibility and reporting. Several problems with progression during the campaign have been solved, as well as errors preventing obejctives from being completed in Horde Siege. You can check out the official patch notes here.

Gears of War: E-Day doesn't reinvent the wheel

Gears of War: E-Day modernizes the series around the elements that made it famous: cover shooting, brutal weapons, memorable monsters and the relationship between its soldiers. The game features more fluid movement, larger environments, a darker horror tone, and a redesigned PvE experience with better graphics than ever. It attempts to reconnect the franchise with its original identity while finally giving it room to evolve.

The early numbers certainly suggest players are interested, but the real test begins tomorrow, when Gears of War: E-Day is officially released. If you are a long-time fan of the series or just want to find out why Gears of War is so popular, make sure to visit our comparator to find the best discounts for Gears of War: E-Day.