Details are slowly surfacing about Gears of War: E-Day, and one feature confirmed by developer The Coalition is the inclusion of ray-traced lighting, shadows, and reflections in the game. These early signs point towards this tent-pole Microsoft exclusive being a much prettier visual experience on PC than on console.
The recent Gears of War: E-Day reveal was a complete surprise, with many believing the next game in the series would be the hotly anticipated Gears of War 6. Instead, we have a prequel story letting us see the events that built up to the other games in the Gears franchise. More surprising is the fact that the inclusion of ray-tracing support is the only real detail we have about the game so far.
Any time that ray tracing is confirmed for a game, it’s a sure sign that you’ll need the best graphics card possible to get the best visual quality at a high frame rate. Although by the time Gears of War: E-Day is out, that may very well be the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090.
While no extra gameplay footage has been released alongside this ray tracing announcement, we do have confirmation that the teaser, which makes a remarkable call back to the iconic Mad World trailer, was created in-engine, which gives us some indication of how the final product will look.
Gears of War: E-Day is also being developed using Unreal Engine 5, and as we recently learned, this engine struggles to run games natively in 4K, often relying heavily on scaling tools. While this is likely to have little impact on the average player’s time with the game, it’s a factor to consider if you are planning to play it at 4K.
Microsoft will be hoping Gears of War: E-Day is a huge launch for its first-party lineup because, elsewhere in its portfolio, Starfield is currently under fire for launching paid mods, a decision that has not sat well with the struggling game’s audience.