Terrifying enemies on a chaotic battlefield, in situations that are often underlined with desperation thanks to a narrative that makes that tension sink into the very foundations of every fight. That’s the best way we can describe our memories of the original Gears of War trilogy.
The Locusts were formidable foes back in the day, a terrifying new threat that Epic Games presented us with in Gears 1 before cementing them as more than just hordes of mindless enemies in subsequent titles. Gears 2 and 3 took things to new levels, with the story raising the stakes to sell the spectacle and emotional highs and lows of a trilogy that we had a very good time with back in the day.
But with The Coalition taking the franchise back to the very beginning of the COG’s conflict with the Locust hordes, can Gears of War: E-Day use the credible route it has towards everything that made the original trilogy great to give us a prequel that justifies its presence? It’s certainly possible from what the developers have shown, but there are things to consider.
We’re jumping in, and we’re quite happy to examine a title that we’re pretty excited about.
A Blend Of Fear And Awe
It’s a good idea to think back to our first encounters with The Locust in Gears 1, a chapter of the story we were quite happy to visit when it marked the franchise’s first PlayStation release. Diving back into the beginning of our time with Marcus reminded us of how The Locust was presented as a threat, and of how that game had condensed desperate battles that often pitted us against impossible odds and expected us to come out on top of them.
Its level design was built around controlled spaces, and a battle to make those spaces work in your favor. The story was more focused too, centered around Marcus’s return to Delta Squad’s ranks; the reasons for his incarceration at the start of the story kept a mystery that only made him more compelling as a character, while adding a layer of intrigue to how he commanded the respect of his comrades so easily.
Of course, the following two games turned up the spectacle by quite a significant margin, with a story that expanded quite well into the franchise we know and love today. Marcus and Dom carried those narratives quite well, helped along by a memorable cast of characters, and a growing lore that quickly expanded the size and scale of the COG’s fight against the Locust and Lambent.
Throughout it all, every battle we were in carried that sense of desperation that only comes when you know the odds are stacked against you, but look at that as an opportunity to do your finest work. The original Gears trilogy understood that sentiment well, and incorporated it very well into the skeletons of its games.
Blasts In The Past
The story of the Gears franchise has certainly moved forward since those heady days, and has since added other protagonists and a lot of context to Marcus’s issues with authority, and of course, that complicated relationship with Adam that he nurses over the course of his character arc.
With all of that knowledge now in our heads, it’s easy to see E-Day as a sensible choice, as it is a chance to give the franchise’s lore even more context before the story picks up from a rather explosive reveal at the end of the last game. For starters, it’s going to be very insightful to see how Marcus and Dom respond to the Locust invasion at the very beginning, before anyone on Sera could get a handle on how they operate, and how the hell they could be taken down.
That’s a great way to bring back that sense of desperation to a combat system that has since made us feel like confident, seasoned veterans among the COG’s ranks. The Coalition has since stated that it wants Drones to feel threatening again, and going back to a time when the cast was relatively inexperienced against Locusts is a great way to make us feel like we’re fighting while on the back foot again.
Kalona’s a perfect stage for the effort, giving us a look at a city that’s collapsing in front of us under the tremendous strain that the Locusts’ numerical advantage places on its defenses. Marcus and his team thus feel vulnerable again, and that’s something that could gel very well with the combat system on offer.
Fighting For The Future
The story might be turning back the clock, but E-Day’s combat cannot afford to take things back to a time when things were simpler for the franchise. We’ve spoken about our time with a preview build, where we felt the combat was definitely great at conveying a sense of urgency to everything that was happening in front of us, while the campaign pushed us from fight to fight with an understanding of the dire circumstances that the corner of Kalona we were going to was currently facing.
The Drones were certainly aggressive, while Marcus moved with new agility and found a lot of opportunities to make use of a new and improved cover system to turn the tide of battle against enemies in the early game. His weapons, and what you can do with them off the field to empower them, are certainly important to the experience, while the beings you’re shooting them with managed to have us on edge in the glimpse of the story we played.
Of course, that tension needs to be palpable and constant throughout the campaign for the combat to land as well as the games that have come before E-Day, and we must factor in expectations that come with a franchise entry that’s been a long time coming.
Can Marcus and Dom manage to carry those expectations on their capable shoulders? We’d say yes.
The Ties That Bind
Yes, Marcus and Dom share the grief of Carlos in E-Day’s story, but their bond isn’t the unbreakable one that’s forged over shared experiences in the field and moments of camaraderie that are earned, not freely given. The story on offer must then serve that budding friendship and allow it the room to breathe enough for the bond that it ends in to be believable.
Kalona must act as the forge through which Marcus and Dom’s early days of mutual respect pass through the flames of war to become a bond that’s able to withstand what comes after Kalona, a story that we’re all too familiar with at this point in time.
Indeed, that familiarity with the two soldiers is something The Coalition must account for, allowing the story to play on what we already know while fleshing them out enough to make any new lore it provides feel organic, designed to evolve the story instead of merely giving it a little more nuance.
It’s great, then, that Kalone gives you and Bravo Squad opportunities to shine in a literal warzone where you’re definitely on the losing side. Opportunities to help civilians, or places where the devastation that the Locusts brought to the city, are all indicators of an unfolding conflict in which one side is almost certainly desperate for answers and a strategy.
Set-pieces and changing locations could then become ways to present the consequences of that conflict, and showcase the price the COG is paying to keep its defences alive, all of which could feed into the narrative tension, combat, and character development angles to make the city itself a pulsing thread that connects the game’s core pillars and presents them as a unified front.
Different Definitions Of Success
While E-Day is looking like it could pull off a campaign worthy of the stories before it in a long line of great titles in the franchise, there are risks to its ambitions. Weapon mods, tactical gear can create an imbalance that negates the threat that the Locust are meant to present in this specific campaign.
Bravo Squad’s supposed to be on the back foot, which isn’t going to be immersive if you’re running a build that makes Marcus a threat that even the deadliest Locust fall to fairly quickly. Those systems needed to deepen the combat instead of trivializing it, which can become too fine a line to balance reliably for any title.
But irrespective of whether the game’s combat systems can manage to sustain a feeling of being overwhelmed throughout the campaign, it’s clear that Gears of War: E-Day doesn’t need to recreate the original trilogy scene for scene.
There’s enough meat on its bones to tell a fully original story, one that must suitably serve the weight of the events it aims to tackle, and factor in their significance to a story that its players are certainly immersed in. It needs to make you feel like you’re privy to the loss of a major city for the COG.
Yes, what has been officially revealed so far is good news, but E-Day must sustain that over the course of its campaign for it to be a prequel that’s worth the time and effort. We remain ever optimistic about Marcus’s chances at another successful outing, though, and await our first batch of orders from the COG with patience and more than a little excitement to take on the Locust again.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
