Seven long years since the last original Gears of War release, the Coalition is set to drop the next installment of the franchise, Gears of War: E-Day, in a few short months.

Players have been able to check the game out over a few weekends thanks to a public multiplayer beta; however, up until now, no access to the single-player component of the game has been granted. I got a chance to dive into a small section of the campaign to share my thoughts.

Taking place during the titular E-Day (Emergence Day), showcasing the initial, violent bursting of the Locust horde onto the scene, this new instalment focuses on being an origins story for many of the characters that call Gears of War and its planet, Sera, home.

Gears as a franchise has evolved since the original game released in 2006; each subsequent release polished the movement, combat, and storytelling. Most of these increments were relatively subtle, though. Gears of War: E-Day is the biggest shift in gameplay in the series history.

The controls are probably the biggest area to receive changes. Previous entries all had a very simple, single-button system for most of the game’s traversal mechanics. Sprinting, diving into cover and out of cover, rolling around, and climbing over obstacles all used the same button, with the action performed being context-sensitive.

E-Day has changed things up, introducing a more traditional control scheme. For example, climbing has moved to the CTRL key, and sprinting is now its own button, Shift on a keyboard, which has been a standard for a long time.

It isn’t necessarily an unwelcome change, but as someone who’s been playing Gears for 20 years, it was a bit of an adjustment. Anyone preferring the original controls has that option, too, with a toggle being present in the options. Once I’d gotten used to the updates, it was like nothing had changed, and I was able to play the game like I normally would on a controller. 

Gameplay is another area that has been tweaked to a noticeable degree. The last entry, Gears 5, experimented with small open-world areas, adding in smaller side quests and objectives to accomplish. It was an interesting addition to an otherwise extremely linear game. E-Day expands on this by making the open-world aspects far more central to the core experience.

Moving through the map revealed mini-objectives, most of which only took a few minutes to complete. Short, snacky, side-quests that did a decent job of breaking up the commute from A-B on the map.

For example, one saw your team having to free a group of civilians trapped in a building, first repelling a wave of Locust attackers, then finding a way inside to let them out.

Each of the environments, especially the city sections, is ridiculously detailed, to an almost psychotic degree. Graphical fidelity has plateaued somewhat in recent years, with each advance being somewhat iterative on the last. It’s rare to see the massive leaps we did between previous generations, but E-Day does feel like a huge step up over Gears 5.

Despite it being a great-looking game that still holds up well, the maps look relatively barren and empty when compared to E-Day’s.

I’m perhaps biased, being a big Gears fan who’s been waiting to play something related to Emergence Day ever since the series first exploded onto Xbox 360 20  years ago, but I’m excited for Gears of War: E-Day. Its gameplay feels more refined than ever, taking the cover-based shooter mechanics that the original game pioneered and polishing them to a mirror shine.

Gears of War: E-Day is due to release on October 6th, 2026, on Xbox Series S/X and PC.