Gears of War: E-Day

Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel to the original Gears series and is set 14 years before the first Gears of War. Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago experience the first hours of Emergence Day, when the Locust burst out from underground and plunge the city of Kalona into chaos within a few days.

The Coalition deliberately returns to the series' roots: heavy third-person combat from cover, a tightly told campaign and a much stronger horror tone. At the same time, the game was technically rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5.

Gears of War: E-Day has been available worldwide since October 6, 2026. The regular launch covers PC and Xbox Series X|S; on PC, the game is available through Steam and Xbox on PC. Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass have included E-Day since the regular release.

The Premium Edition already started in Early Access on October 1, 2026. Pre-install began on September 29, after The Coalition confirmed Gold status on September 17.

At launch, E-Day came out natively for PC and Xbox Series X|S. On PC, the game is sold through Steam and Xbox on PC. Xbox Play Anywhere is supported, and E-Day has been included in Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass since day one.

A PlayStation 5 or Nintendo Switch 2 version has not been announced so far.

The campaign builds on the familiar cover shooter framework but adds smoother transitions, lower cover, slides and, for the first time, jumps. This creates more vertical combat arenas where flanks and different heights matter more.

Beyond the campaign, Versus returns as focused 4-vs-4 PvP. Horde Siege reinvents the classic Horde mode: four-player squads choose classes such as Assault, Marksman, Medic or Breacher and fight on larger maps against Locust waves, shared objectives and world bosses.

The campaign can be played alone, on console in local two-player split screen, or online in co-op. Online, E-Day supports up to four players across campaign, Horde Siege and Versus.

The gameplay sandbox was rebuilt for E-Day and is shared across campaign, PvE and PvP. For hip fire, the game combines camera direction and weapon position for the first time to show the aim direction more consistently.

The combat presentation also includes a dynamic blood and grime system. After executions and particularly brutal hits, visible marks build up on Marcus Fenix, and their intensity changes again over the course of play. The Coalition describes this as part of a stronger interaction between character and environment. Blood, gore and destruction effects were also rebuilt from the ground up for E-Day.

The final PC requirements already target 1080p at 60 FPS in the minimum profile. For this, The Coalition lists, among others, a GeForce RTX 2060 or RTX 5050 or a Radeon RX 6600 or RX 9060, plus 12 GB RAM and 6 GB VRAM.

The recommended profile is designed for 1440p at 60+ FPS and requires 16 GB RAM and 8 GB VRAM. For the Ultra profile at 4K and 60+ FPS, a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti or Radeon RX 7900 XT, 12 GB VRAM and a Ryzen 7 7800X3D or Core i7-14700K are listed. All profiles require 115 GB on an SSD.

PC features include DLSS 4.5, FSR 4, XeSS 3.0, hardware-accelerated ray-traced reflections, shadows and global illumination, HDR, ultrawide support and a built-in benchmark.

Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) is also part of the PC version. For compatible hardware, Windows ships precompiled shaders with the game to reduce shader compilation and the stuttering that comes with it on first launch. Microsoft is using E-Day as the first game for the broader ASD rollout on Windows 11. Hardware support is being rolled out gradually across AMD, Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia.

At least five seasons are announced for the multiplayer part. The first season runs from October 1 to December 1, 2026. The second is dedicated to the series' 20th anniversary. Other confirmed season names are Infiltration, Pendulum and Devotion.