Seven years after Gears 5, Gears of War: E-Day is just around the corner and The Coalition is taking players back to the past to experience a truly bombastic prequel. After two sequels, the studio is adapting the series’ most iconic piece of lore with the arrival of the Locusts during the titular “Emergence Day”.
While original trilogy devs are proud of E-Day’s return to the first game’s horror focus, fans are excited to finally explore the series’ most iconic event. Gears has released prequels before, such as Gears of War: Judgement and RAAM’s Shadow, but this is the first time that E-Day has been truly touched in game form.
In an interview with FRVR, former narrative director Armanda Troisi, who worked on the franchise during The Coalition’s formation, explained that the studio created a “bubble” around E-Day, forbidding themselves from touching it as they took over the franchise from Epic Games.
“I was working with the studio heads at the time to try and figure that out,” Troisi told us. “Our job was really just to try and untangle Gears of War and try to give it a cohesive structure. And we were going through the books and invalidating stuff and going: ‘this is canon, this is not-canon, we’re going to retcon that and here’s how we’re going to play that note.’”
Troisi explained that the studio worked to create a “giant database” of lore that anyone at the studio can look at, pull from, and use to keep everything true to the Gears of War canon. This also saw the team lock off certain events from being touched, altered, or manipulated in any way with Emergence Day being an untouchable North Star for the studio.
“I remember E-Day being something that we sort of put a bubble around really early on and going, ‘Okay. Nothing happens here.’” Troisi told us. “We don’t write books about it. We keep it as this kind of box because it’s out most valuable asset in terms of the canon of the world.”
The reality is that picking up the franchise and immediately jumping to E-Day, the series’ most well-known bit of lore, would have been an easy choice, especially as it would’ve allowed the team to continue using most of the series’ beloved cast. However, it also would have been easy to mess up, and Troisi is happy the team took their time before jumping straight into the event. “I’m glad they sort of took their time with it and didn’t, sort of, spin it off to Dark Horse or something,” he said.
“It’s origin story stuff, it’s the before-and-after,” Troisi continued. “There’s great visuals you can play with. You know, how do we get it to this destroyed beauty aesthetic. Where do we come from? So it arcs, you know? It’s contrast. So, we knew from an artistic [point-of-view] seeing the world before, who these characters were before, it gives you a lot of juice. We knew that it was an important piece of the canon so definitely we something talked about always protecting.”
The creation of Gears of War: E-Day then is one about growth. The Coalition has undoubtedly made their stamp on Gears, and the studio has earned the right to pop the protective bubble around Emergence Day and play within that toy box. As the studio has continued to mould Gears and grow, E-Day is not just a story that can be told, but should be.
Gears of War: E-Day releases on Xbox Series and PC on October 6, 2026. The game will be available on release through Xbox Game Pass.
