The rumours of a new Gears of War appearing at today’s Xbox Games Showcase were accurate – well, mostly. The next Gears of War won’t be a sequel like Gears of War 6, but instead looks to be a prequel to the entire series that returns to the very beginning of the bloody battle between humanity and the alien Locust.
The next Gears of War is called Gears of War: E-Day, referring to the universe’s Emergence Day event – when the Locust Horde invaded the planet of Sera (Gears of War’s Earth equivalent) from their underground civilisation of the Hollow, killing billions of humans and sparking the Locust War that serves as the backdrop to the games’ storyline. The first Gears of War takes place 14 years after E-Day, meaning that this next Gears will delve into how things ended up as seen in the series’ 2006 debut.
Gears of War: E-Day won’t only provide a backstory for the wider Gears-iverse, as developed nowadays by The Coalition, but some origins for muscled shooterman heroes Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago too.
E-Day’s first reveal trailer, as shown during the Xbox showcase, very much focused on that story side of things, with not a clip of gameplay in sight – though we do know it’ll be in Unreal Engine 5. Marcus wrestles around a house with a Locust Drone – redesigned for the prequel as a more deadly enemy than the hordes you mow down in latter-day Gears games – clocking it with a TV showing an emergency signal before finally blowing its brains out with an earlier model of the MK1 Lancer, equipped with a bayonet rather than a chainsaw. Then the house disintegrates into a glowing E-Hole, with Marcus being rescued by none other than a younger Dom.
The trailer simply ends with the two looking out over a city bathed in flames and destruction as spider-like Locust robots clamber over destroyed buildings on Sera.
In a particularly fun nod to E-Day’s place at the start of the series’ chronology, the trailer riffs on Gary Jules’ piano cover of Tears for Fears’ Mad World used in the earliest Gears of War advertisements almost two decades ago (ouch).
Gears of War: E-Day wasn’t given a release date during its reveal, but we do know it’ll land on Game Pass on day one.
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