Gears of War E-Day story details, trailer & more

Xbox had ‘one more thing’ up its sleeve at its Games Showcase in June 2024, and that came in the form of a brand new Gears of War title, succinctly named E-Day. Developed by the team at The Coalition, it’s a prequel story set within the Gears universe and follows a younger version of Marcus Fenix on the day that the Locusts emerged on Sera.

We don’t know a great deal about when we’ll get our hands on Gears of War E-Day, nor have we seen any gameplay just yet. That said, there are a few details we can glean from the cinematic trailer so far.

As mentioned, Gears of War E-Day will be set during Emergence Day, a key point in the Gears timeline when the Locusts first made themselves known on the planet of Sera. In the reveal trailer, we see a much younger version of Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago fighting off a handful of Drones, before looking out disdainfully across the havoc that the Locusts have already wreaked on the planet.

In a blog post from Xbox Wire, The Coalition is clear that E-Day is not a spin-off title. Instead, it will fill a gap in the known canon of the Gears series, taking us back to where the story began and serving as an origin story for the characters we’ve come to know and love.

It’s worth noting that, while the Coalition developed Gears 4 and 5, the original trilogy of games was built by Epic Games before the license was sold to Microsoft. As such, this will be The Coalition’s first attempt at going back to the original storylines of the Gears series, although original characters have appeared in their own games.

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We’ve not seen any gameplay of E-Day just yet, but we do know that it won’t stray too far away from what we know and love from other Gears games. As such, you can expect to be playing in the third person, with switching from cover to cover playing a huge part in the moment-to-moment combat.

In the gameplay trailer, we see a younger Pheonix wielding a variant of the Chainsaw Lancer, but with a bayonet instead of a Locust muncher attached. After all, why would your weapon need a chainsaw attachment if you’ve never had to face off against giant bugs before? We’ll likely see similar weaponry to what we saw in the original Gears of War, albeit a little less well-equipped for fending off the imminent invasion.

Oh, and Gears of War E-Day will take full advantage of Unreal Engine 5, the technology behind some of the best-looking games out there right now, like Senua's Saga Hellblade 2.

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Gears of War E-Day is an Xbox first-party title, meaning it will most likely be released on Xbox Series X|S and PC. This is the precedent that Microsoft has set for all of its first-party titles in the recent past, so it’s fair to assume that the same will happen for E-Day.

It’s also likely that Gears of War E-Day will arrive on Xbox Game Pass the same day that it launches.

As for when the launch will be, we don’t know yet. Most of the games at the Xbox Games Showcase had a release window attached in some form, whether that was a concrete date or a generic year. However, Gears of War E-Day didn’t even get a year attached to its name.

As such, it’s likely that we’ll be waiting a good while longer before we step into the shoes of Marcus Pheonix once again. Once we know more information about when Gears of War E-Day is on its way, I’ll be sure to update this article.

For more Xbox coverage, stick with GGRecon. We've also covered new updates for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, DOOM The Dark Ages, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, plus new information about Avowed.