He Xbox Games Showcase last Sunday, June 9, was one of those that make time. An event that remembered one of the best E3. It was a presentation full of bombshells of all kinds in which the main course was left for last: gears of war will return in the form of prequel call Gears of War: E-Day. As seen in its trailer and as its name indicates, it is a story that takes place in the invasion initial of the Locust on the planet Sera. In this news we detail their five key points and we explain why this new adventure of Marcus Fenix is one of the most important games on Xbox:
The story of Gears of War: E-Day, the prequel to the saga
The first gears of war began in medias res fourteen years after Emergency Daythe fateful day when A race of ruthless and bloodthirsty humanoid creatures called the Locust began to emerge from the ground across the planet Sera.. These beasts murder 25% of the globe’s population during the first day.
Not that Sera was at her best at this point. precisely, then E-Day takes place just six weeks after the end of the Pendulum Warsa eighty-year-long global conflict in which the Coalition of Ordered Governments (CGO) and the Union of Independent Republics (URI) were fighting for the imulsionan energy resource. The COG won the warbut at a very high cost.
The Locustwhich until then They had been inhabiting a complex system of underground caverns called La Hondonada, were aware of what was happening on the surface, and They attacked humanity at the time when it was most weakened. In the trailer we can see a young Marcus Fénix scared and desperate to kill a single Locust drone when in the future he will eliminate them with relative ease, which perfectly captures that in this story Emphasis will be placed on the first, harrowing hours of the Locust attack.. We are facing a Gears of War 0 to all effects.
The deliberate search for nostalgia towards the first Gears of War
Near the end of the Gears of War: E-Day trailer you can hear a few notes from one cover from the legendary ‘Mad World’ by Gary Julesa theme used in the praised television commercial for the first game of the series, released in 2006.
The combination of melancholic music with huge and destroyed settings along with the presence of the nightmarish creatures that are the Locust horde It was very successful, and This television spot was burned into the memory of many players. This not-so-subtle reference in the E-Day trailer indicates a clear intention to take fans of the saga back to this era not only of the saga in terms of setting, but also of successes of the Xbox brand.
gears of war For many, it was the first video game that demonstrated the enormous graphical leap between that generation of consoles and the previous one., and impressed with its technical aspect to such a level that it received a score of 94/100 on Metacritic. It was the first chapter of a saga that only on Xbox 360 launched four games between 2006 and 2013turning it into a series as important to the company as Halo.
The return of Marcus Fénix as the protagonist
In Gears of War 4released in 2016 and set several years after the end of the Locust War, felt a clear intention to pass the baton of the role of an elderly Marcus Fénix to JD, his son. But in 2019, with the launch of Gears 5these plans were truncated.
One of the biggest sins committed in Gears 5 was relegate JD from the lead role and going to the point of debasing him in order to highlight Kait Díaz, the new heroine. It’s more: it was even possible to make him die making a decision near the end of the game. It was something that resonated very negatively. among the most stubborn fans of the saga.
Gears of War: E-Day’s prequel status is a new opportunity to correct the course of the saga and put Marcus Fénix back at the helm. Because one of its hallmarks is the personal turn that the war against the Locust takes in the Phoenix saga, where Marcus’s father Adam is also involved. AND That is also reflected in the name change of the saga; in Gears 5 it was shortened from “Gears of War” to simply “Gears”, but this E-Day it is back to “Gears of War”.
The flirtation with the horror genre
The setting of the game is a golden opportunity to explore new genres beyond the shooter in third person with a coverage system that has characterized the saga since its origins. And it is that the trailer tells more than it seemswith that first confrontation of Marcus against a Locust drone in which he barely survives to move to a general shot of a city being invaded at multiple points by nightmarish creaturesin the purest Raccoon City style from Resident Evil.
In the first game of the saga there is already a certain deliberate intention to play with the horror genre in some sections such as those in Act II, where we must avoid dark areas at all costs to prevent the Kryll from killing us. Taking into account the nature of what has already been shown, it is possible that the setpieces of this type don’t just come back, but rather that they are enhanced or that they even mark a radical change in the general gameplay of the game.
We do not expect it to become a Alien: Isolation where we have to be hiding all the time from a single almost indestructible enemy, but Yes, it would be interesting to add alternative ways to direct confrontation with an unknown enemy and with such a disturbing appearance. It would be a pleasant surprise to see sections where, in pursuit of variety and atmosphere, we have to avoid the Locust either because they vastly outnumber us or because our resources such as ammunition are very limited.
Gears of War: E-Day is Xbox’s new technical stronghold
Last but not least, we must highlight the fact that the E-Day trailer was in-engine. That is to say, It is something done in real time with the game engine itself, and not a scene previously rendered by computer. This title uses Unreal Engine 5, the latest version of the Epic Games engine, who were also developers of the original video game trilogy. Is one of the most powerful graphics engines available todayand also It is used intensively in large film and television productions.
Given the the last main game in the series (Gears 5) I used Unreal Engine 4it is possible that The Coalition also preferred to give the green light to this project rather than a hypothetical Gears 6, which would be the closing of this second trilogy, all in pursuit of gain the necessary experience with Unreal Engine 5 so that this Gears 6 turns out as best as possible.
For now There is no specific release date for Gears of War: E-Day. We will have to be aware of any news in this regard to know when it will be for sale This new video game from The Coalition, the studio that took over the Gears of War saga when Microsoft bought the intellectual property from Epic Games, its original developer.
