Gears of War: E-Day Reviews: Marcus and Dom Go Back to the Beginning
The Coalition rewound Gears to the night the Locust attacked, rebuilt everything in Unreal Engine 5 and kept it on Xbox and PC. Critics like it a lot. Here is what E-Day is, how it scored and how many people are playing.
Every Gears of War fan knows the phrase Emergence Day: the night the Locust Horde burst out of the ground on the planet Sera and nearly wiped out humanity. For twenty years it has been backstory, mentioned in dialogue and flashbacks. Gears of War: E-Day finally lets you live through it.
The game launched on October 6, 2026 for Xbox Series X|S and PC, with five days of early access from October 1 for Premium Edition buyers. It arrived on Game Pass on day one and supports Xbox Play Anywhere. Reviews have been strong: 87 on Metacritic for Xbox, 83 on PC, and 92% of critics on OpenCritic recommend it.
Fourteen years before the first game
E-Day is set 14 years before the original Gears of War (2006), shortly after the human conflict known as the Pendulum Wars. It takes place in the city of Kalona during the Locust's first surprise attack.
The leads are a young Marcus Fenix, voiced again by John DiMaggio, and Dominic "Dom" Santiago, voiced by Carlos Ferro. Together with Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes, they form Bravo Squad.
A full rebuild in Unreal Engine 5
The Coalition developed E-Day with the Polish studio People Can Fly, plus support from Behaviour Interactive and Virtuos. Director Matt Searcy led the project.
It runs on Unreal Engine 5, using Nanite and MegaLights, and the team says it reused no assets from earlier games. Characters each have more than 350 facial shapes. On Xbox Series X, the campaign targets 60fps, while multiplayer can run at up to 120fps.
The campaign runs past 20 hours and supports four-player online co-op and two-player split-screen on consoles. Multiplayer includes 4v4 competitive modes and Horde Siege, a new 12-player Horde mode with three squads of four.
Exclusive after all
There was a twist before launch. A PEGI age rating briefly listed a PS5 version, after several Xbox games had gone multiplatform. But at the Xbox Games Showcase 2026, Xbox chief executive Asha Sharma confirmed that E-Day would be an Xbox console exclusive, releasing on Xbox Series X|S and Windows only.
That makes it one of a shrinking number of Xbox-only blockbusters, and a test of how many people still buy a game when it is also on Game Pass.
How it is doing
Early estimates from Alinea Analytics suggest about 230,000 copies sold across Xbox and PC in the first week, and about 1.7 million people playing through Game Pass. Those numbers are hard to compare with a traditional launch: for a Game Pass title, engagement matters as much as sales.
Critics praised the scale of the campaign, the visual leap and the return to Gears' roots. Game Informer gave it 9.5/10, IGN 9/10 and Pure Xbox 10/10. The cooler reviews, including PC Gamer at 77/100 and The Guardian at 3/5, felt it played safe.
Why it matters
E-Day is the first new mainline Gears game since Gears 5 in 2019, and it lands in a crowded autumn opposite Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. For Xbox, it is proof that its classic franchises still have big new entries in them.
WGC's take: this is the most cinematic Gears ever made, and playing it in split-screen with a friend is still one of the great console experiences. If you are on Game Pass, it is an easy download; if you are not, the campaign alone is worth the price. For the other big shooters this autumn, read our shooter war feature.