(Image credit: The Coalition / Xbox)
It's been 12 years since The Coalition took the reins of the Gears of War franchise. After Microsoft acquired the rights to the series from Epic Games in 2014, the team was formed and tasked with remastering the original Gears of War in 2015.It’s also been a decade since the studio’s first original title, Gears of War 4, and seven years since the studio's last game, Gears 5. Fans were eagerly awaiting the continuation of this story, but instead, The Coalition sought Gears of War: E-Day as a return to the gritty roots of the series. But why?At Summer Game Fest 2026, Space got a hands-off preview for Gears of War E-Day and sat in a group Q&A with developer The Coalition about the game. We spoke to brand director Nicole Fawcette, creative director Matt Searcy, and art director Aryan Hanbeck about how some of the Gears of War novels were integrated, new gameplay mechanics, and bringing in new characters.“We did not port any assets. All the animations and movement models were built from scratch, “ Searcy explained. “So this is a game built around the pillars of the original Gears game, but built in 2026.”According to the team, they wanted to replicate the dark atmosphere that the first three games had, and make a prequel focusing on E-Day, the planet Sera’s darkest moment.The footage of Gears of War: E-Day starts with series protagonist Marcus Fenix and his best friend Dominic Santiago, 14 years before the events of the first game. In plain clothes, they grab guns to fight off the emerging Locust alien threat, who are bursting out from the ground and slaughtering civilians. The chaos reminded me of the opening hours of The Last of Us, where protagonist Joel has to navigate around town, avoiding the infected as they turn into violent creatures.Marcus and Dom are younger-looking, but they’re still built like trucks, with massively thick necks and biceps that put Superman to shame. Hanbeck briefly touched on the art style, saying. “Marcus and Dom are quite stylized in their proportions, so we had to work in pre-production quite a bit of back and forth to try to get them to be believable.”
