Previewing Gears of War E-Day

Kalona on Sera. It's a beautiful day, people are strolling through the city center, a couple is having lunch in the plaza. Suddenly the ground shakes, entire buildings collapse, a gigantic worm shoots through the shopping center right in front of the restaurant and cuts it in half. The E-Days begin: the Emergence Days, the Locust's war of annihilation. Thousands of Riftworms, worms several kilometers long, work their way through the earth and attack all of Sera's major cities simultaneously - millions die, 25 percent of the population is wiped out in just one day.

Gears of War: E-Day - Back to the good old times with Marcus Fenix

Yes, Gears of War: E-Day tells the prequel story to the biggest Xbox brand of all time - Gears of War. And it doesn't hold back. It goes all in. Gears of War used to be as massive as Halo - and Xbox wants to go back to those glory days with Marcus Fenix and his brother in arms Dominic Santiago revving up the chainsaw.

Destruction is front and center here - as half the metropolis is undermined, skyscrapers collapse like in the good old days of Call of Duty and gigantic Corpses monsters throw tanks around like tennis balls.

Gears of War: E-Day - Back to the good old times with Marcus Fenix

Marcus isn’t a COG Commando, who loves death in the face. He isn’t the Rambo type who drinks his steroid milk in the morning, beheads a few Locusts with his Lancer at lunchtime and faces the bosses of the underworld when dawn comes.

In Gears of War: E-Day, we experience a Marcus who still has a lot to learn. Shocked by the horror of the Locust. By these machines made of flesh and blood that are much stronger than he is. Who destroy half his hometown before his eyes. It hits the feeling home that we had in 2006, when Gears of War was the biggest game in Xbox town and wowed everyone with its brutality and cinematic violence.

This feels personal: Marcus is a big dude with arms like trees and the strength of Arnold Schwarzenegger. But for a Locust he is a toy to play with…

It is night, only the flashlight on his armor brings light into the darkness in this apartment complex. He wields a retro Lancer, his armor bearing the Skull Omen logo - the iconic star with a skeleton skull that stands for the old COG armor. Gears of War: E-Day aims to get back to the roots of the series: Playing more linear again, more cinematic, more gripping - the open-world of Gears 5 often lacked this pressure in the staging.

This pressure can also be found in this man-to-man combat, Marcus Fenix against hisf first Locust. It's not a boss, just alien infantry, but Fenix has never fought a monster like this before - he's easily a meter taller than our protagonist, and even Marcus - who mind you has arms like a tree and is strong like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but here he looks like a toy figure that the Locust is playing around with...