Gears of War: E-Day finally lets Marcus jump, set 14 years before the original

The most consequential change to Gears of War in twenty years is a button. For the first time in the franchise, players can jump. That addition, absent in every entry since the original 2006 game, opens vertical movement across rooftops, lets squads reposition above the Locust instead of behind cover, and changes how the franchise’s combat geometry works at a fundamental level. The game around it is a prequel, set on Emergence Day: the moment the Locust Horde erupted from underground and civilization on the planet Sera ended.

Gears of War: E-Day takes place in Kalona, a city no one has seen before in the franchise, over three days of complete collapse. Players follow Bravo Squad exclusively, seeing events only from that squad’s perspective. Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago — again voiced by John DiMaggio and Carlos Ferro, who played them in every prior Gears game — lead alongside three new characters. Mags Carter is a former Gear working at an Imulsion refinery when the invasion begins. Lucas Reyes is a young communications cadet thrust into combat without preparation. Tai Kaliso, familiar to franchise veterans from comics and Gears 2, rounds out the squad. The casting is deliberately more grounded than the spectacle-first direction of later entries.

The Coalition built E-Day from scratch on Unreal Engine 5. Cover materials now degrade under sustained fire: concrete behaves differently from wood, and neither survives indefinitely. Sliding from a sprint into cover is one fluid motion rather than a stop-and-press sequence. New weapons include the Gut Puncher grenade launcher and the Incinerator shotgun, plus the origin story of the series’ signature Chainsaw Lancer. MegaLights technology handles dynamic lighting across the destroyed cityscape, which becomes apparent when a building loses its roof mid-firefight and the combat lighting changes around the player.

For co-op, the campaign supports four players online and two-player split-screen on console. Split-screen has disappeared from most modern shooters; its presence here is a practical commitment for local multiplayer. Multiplayer introduces Horde Siege, a 12-player PvE mode that splits players into three squads defending across larger city maps. Versus returns with traditional 4v4 competitive play, targeting up to 120 frames per second.

The Coalition’s previous game, Gears 5, released in 2019 to strong critical reviews but a mixed reception from longtime fans who questioned the franchise’s direction. E-Day is positioned as a reset: new supporting cast, prequel framing, rebuilt engine, and what Creative Director Matt Searcy described as starting with an empty hard drive. Whether the mechanical additions — jump, degrading cover, fluid sliding — actually alter how a Gears campaign plays in practice, or remain peripheral to the familiar cover-and-shoot loop, is a question the gameplay will have to answer. An open beta runs August 6 through August 10, 2026, for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers and pre-order holders.

Gears of War: E-Day launches October 6, 2026, on Xbox Series S/X and PC, available on day one through Game Pass Ultimate and on Steam. The Collector’s Edition unlocks early access from October 1, along with cosmetic in-game items. No PlayStation 5 version has been announced.

The Chainsaw Lancer did not exist before Emergence Day. E-Day is, among other things, the story of how the soldiers who would need one first survived long enough to build it.

Tags: Xbox, gaming, Xbox Game Studios, E-Day, Gears of War, The Coalition