Gears of War: E-Day seems to be a real throwback to the old days of Gears, with developer The Coalition channelling what Epic Games did all those years ago in building a dark, gritty third-person shooter. It's a huge pivot away from what the team was building with Gears of War 4 and Gears 5 - and a couple of fresh interviews further detail the gulf between The Coalition's last mainline release and this new effort.
Speaking with IGN, E-Day's Creative Director Matt Searcy says that the team focused on what fans remembered the most from their experiences with Gears of War. Searcy says that "these, kind of dark, almost horror-esque, scary moments" are what players remember most.
"We looked back at what people felt like when they played Gears of War or any of the Gears – Gears 4 included [...] But when people tell you what they remember playing, the things that stood out to them, the feelings, a lot of it is about these, kind of dark, almost horror-esque, scary moments.
So we basically took that feeling, that vision that's in everybody's head, and we're like, ‘That's the game we're going to build.’ We're going to build that game with all the skills we've learned, with all the technology we've built, and sort of go hard at that."
Another shift comes in the form of the game's overall structure. Up to Gears 5, the series was very linear - but the fifth game did introduce some small-scale open-world elements. As per another interview — this time with Game File's Stephen Totilo — Gears of War: E-Day will be linear.
As you can imagine, we're quite pleased about this new direction for Gears. Less than a year ago, we ranted and raved about how much we wanted the series to "return to its horror-themed Mad World roots" - so the fact that The Coalition is doing exactly that has us all giddy for Gears of War: E-Day.