What is the Gears of War E-Day release date? The Coalition surprised us all by announcing a prequel to one of gaming’s most iconic stories at 2024’s Xbox Games Showcase. While most expected Gears 6 to be on the cards, we’re instead heading back to the day it all began for Marcus Fenix and co – Emergence Day.
Set 14 years before the original Gears of War, Gears of War E-Day will take us on a journey through the most important day in GoW lore. With Marcus and Dom set to star, we already know the new PC game is going to be an emotional one. To find out more about the upcoming multiplayer game, as well as when we reckon it could finally reach devices, read on.
Gears of War E-Day release date estimate
We expect Gears of War E-Day to be released sometime around late September or early October 2025. Considering the release cadence for Gears 4 (October 2016) and Gears 5 (September 2019), it’s most likely that The Coalition will target a similar launch window for E-Day.
The Verge’s Tom Warren previously reported that Microsoft was “targeting a release in 2025” for E-Day. Warren’s report further suggests that E-Day will arrive ahead of Fable, which is expected to be released between October and December next year. Of course, if Fable is confirmed for the back end of that window then it still offers up November as a possibility.
Considering the subject matter of E-Day, and the fact the first two Gears games arrived on November 7, the studio could opt for a throwback in more ways than one. However, we’re more inclined to believe it will continue to follow current conventions.
Gears of War E-Day trailer
So far the only trailer we’ve had for Gears of War E-Day is the official announcement trailer from the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase. The Coalition is famed for its work with Unreal Engine, and the in-engine trailer presented in Unreal Engine 5 is a testament to its craft – it’s simply stunning.
The trailer opens with a young Marcus Fenix being sent flying through a wall by a Locust drone, which stamps on his arm as he attempts to grab his Lancer. As a new rendition of Tears For Fears’ ‘Mad World’ – the Gary Jules version of which featured in the iconic trailer for the first Gears game – begins to swell, Marcus is continuously overpowered by the raw power of his assailant.
After getting a clean hit in with a nearby TV set, Marcus slides across the floor and finally manages to retrieve his weapon. Here we can see a bayonet attached – a further indicator that we’re in the pre-chainsaw era. However, Marcus can’t finish the kill, and the drone lifts him with ease, smashing him into the ceiling before pushing him back into another wall.
Fortunately, the clear difference in combat experience comes into play, as Marcus wedges the bayonet into a wall, lands a clean hit on the drone to make it recoil, and proceeds to blow its head off – dark, gritty Gears is back on the menu, it seems.
Before he can recover from the ordeal, an emergence hole opens up below Marcus, who has to grasp onto a piece of pipe to prevent himself from falling into it. He can’t hold on forever, though, and begins to fall – but not before an arm reaches down and grabs him. As he’s raised from the E-hole – Mad World piano melody now playing – the camera tilts up to reveal Dom. We cried, you cried, everyone cried.
The trailer ends with a pull out from the pair, revealing the sheer chaos and destruction befalling the city of Kalona – complete with huge E-Holes and a load of Corpsers. The Corpsers represent another symmetry between the E-Day trailer and the Gears 1 trailer (seen below), as at the end of the latter Marcus can be seen fighting one. Intended or not, we appreciate it nonetheless.
Gears of War E-Day story
Gears of War E-Day recounts the response to Emergence Day – the day when the Locust horde appeared from beneath the surface of the planet Sera, wiping out over a quarter of the human population in the first 26 hours as it sought to colonize the overworld. The denizens of Sera itself had barely begun to recover from the Pendulum Wars – a bitter, 80-year-long power struggle over the planet’s fuel source, Imulsion – which had ended just six months earlier. We can’t imagine a worse year, to be honest.
As creative director Matt Searcy tells Xbox Wire in a June 2024 interview, The Coalition opted to go back to E-Day because it’s “the moment it all comes together. It’s the heart of the Gears universe. Everything that happens is shaped by this day.”
While mowing down drones has historically been simple work in Gears, we can see from both the trailer and lore depictions that even the bottom of the Locust food chain were terrifying entities at first. In E-Day, the “Locust are the ‘monsters under the bed,’” Searcy explains. “What would happen to the people of Sera in seeing this overwhelming army of monsters and trying to figure out… what are you going to do?”
If you’re expecting any sort of happiness during E-Day… don’t. Having quickly established dominance over Sera’s major cities, the Locust made organizing resistance incredibly difficult. For over a year after the initial invasion, the Locust won battle after battle, stockpiling equipment as they conquered. That was until they (as well as millions of civilians who couldn’t make it to the city of Jacinto) got orbitally blasted by the mass Hammer of Dawn strikes ordered by Chairman Prescott.
While specific story beats for the game haven’t been confirmed, there’s plenty from the body of published works out there as well as in-game lore drops to go off of. Our current bet is that E-Day will begin with the major battle in Kalona, and will conclude with the Hammer of Dawn strikes that began to turn the tides at a horrific cost. Should this be the case, then we can imagine there’ll be time skips here and there throughout the first year post-E-Day, offering up snapshots as humanity struggles to find a way to survive.
And that’s all you need to know for now about the Gears of War E-Day release date, as well as all the important lore and trailers you need to familiarize yourself with. Be sure to bookmark this page as we’ll be sure to keep it updated with the latest news on the game as it drops. While you’re (im)patiently waiting for E-Day, be sure to check out our best PC games list for more iconic bangers to enjoy in the meantime.