Gears of War: E-Day started the Xbox Showcase, confirming a 6th October release date. In a major pivot, Xbox boss Asha Sharma confirms that this will be an Xbox console exclusive.
More of the game will be featured in the Gears of War E-Day direct following the main show.
The gameplay trailer showed events from E-day itself with Marcus and friends still in their civvies as monsters start busting out of the ground, but with the city around them already in disarray and filled with destruction. Answering a distress call to help a fellow COG in an electronics hardware store, it looks like some pretty classic Gears of War cover shooting,with Marcus already having access to guns like the Gnasher, but with the Lancer having a bayonet on the front instead of the later trademark chainsaw.
But…. it does look like we get a chainsaw origin story.
Last minute rumours in the run up to the Xbox showcase were that Microsoft was pivoting on Gears of War: E-Day coming to PlayStation 5, as had previously been expected after the cross-platform launch of Gears of War: Reloaded last year. Countering that, however, was the appearance of some placeholder store pages. One of them had to be right and… well, now we know, and it’s answering the persistent calls from Xbox fans to at least tickle the console wars, if not fully reignite them.
Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel to the series as a whole, set 14 years before the original and depicting the events of Emergence Day, where the Locust suddenly emerged from below the cities of Sera. Not only that, but it’s an origin story for the series’ most popular protagonist, Marcus Fenix, and his long-standing friendship with Dom, from the Pendulum Wars.
The Coalition has been working with Polish studio and one-time Gears of War partners People Can Fly on the game – PCF co-developed Gears of War Judgment with Epic back in 2013 before The Coalition took over as franchise developers.
