Xbox Unveils Gears of War: E-Day

The franchise returns after a few years’ hiatus.

The world is in chaos once more. During its Xbox Games Showcase at the Summer Game Fest, Microsoft revealed the latest entry in the sci-fi shooter series: Gears of War E-Day. This new game is being developed by The Coalition, Xbox’s in-house studio dedicated to the Gears series. Although the release date is still unknown, it is confirmed to be built on Unreal Engine 5.

The announcement trailer pays homage to the iconic “Mad World” commercial from the original Gears game. Appropriately, E-Day is set 14 years before the first Gears game and “narrates the story of the initial Locust emergence on Sera.” Marcus Fenix returns as the protagonist in this origin story.

This will be the first new title in the series since Gears 5 in 2019, which was part of Microsoft’s plan to elevate the franchise to a multimedia level comparable to Halo. Although this plan hasn’t fully materialized yet, there was a strategy spinoff called Gears Tactics in 2020, and Netflix has announced plans for both a live-action film and an animated series set in the Gears universe. (Additionally, a Funko Pop-styled mobile game was released but shut down in 2021.)