00:00So, Gears of War E-Day had its big reveal this week.
00:04They showed off a ton of stuff as part of their Direct.
00:08Honestly, like, so much that it's like,
00:10I feel like you could watch that and probably need to know
00:12everything you need to know about this game.
00:17Nice.
00:18But I did get the chance to talk to some of the developers
00:23behind the game in a little presentation.
00:25They had some nice PowerPoint slides
00:27and showed us some additional little footage and stuff.
00:29And I feel like I learned a couple of new things
00:32that I don't think were mentioned in the Direct.
00:35So I wanted to take the opportunity to give you guys
00:37some little extra information.
00:39So first off, I want to talk about the city of Kelowna,
00:42which is where the entirety of Gears of War E-Day takes place.
00:46Something that they said that I thought was really fascinating
00:49is that they actually, like, built the entire city, like, in the game.
00:55Like, they said that if you were to take, like, the Unreal,
00:58put the game in, like, an Unreal Engine, like, editor and, like, zoom out,
01:01you could actually see the entire city that, like, the game takes place in.
01:06That doesn't mean that it is an open-world game or anything like that.
01:10But what it does mean is that they actually bothered to kind of fully realize this
01:16as, like, a living city with, like, different districts and setups and structures.
01:20And the reason why that's cool is because over the course of the three days this game takes place in,
01:26you will actually be returning to different locations that you were in
01:30and you will, like, see how they have changed over the course of the game.
01:36So, for example, like, a bridge that you cross at one point you might come back to
01:39and now that bridge is on fire or a building is completely gone.
01:43So, they seem to be doing a lot of work to really make sure that the city feels like a
01:50real place.
01:51Another thing they talked about was these sections in the game that they described as wide, linear,
01:57where you actually have, like, a little bit more freedom in how you approach them.
02:02The game is still ultimately a linear game.
02:04You might be thinking about how in Gears 5 they also had these sort of wide, linear sections
02:11where you would, like, you know, go around the desert and there were, like, little side objectives.
02:16They said it's not exactly like that.
02:18That was more giant open spaces.
02:21Instead, this is more like you will have a city block that has just all these different alleyways
02:28and is very dense and you can kind of choose how you traverse this block.
02:34And so, there's, like, a freedom in the space.
02:37The space is larger.
02:39So, it's kind of like they took what they thought worked really well from the ideas of the kind of
02:44open areas from Gears 5
02:46but kind of, like, have more focused and honed it in into this urban environment.
02:50They also said that the game does have a good amount of freedom in terms of how the players themselves
02:55can kind of choose whether they want to stick together or if they want to split up.
02:59That's a very classic Gears mechanic where you would be, like, given the choice.
03:03Do you want to go left or right?
03:04And the co-op partners would split up.
03:06There are specific story missions where that will happen.
03:09But they also said that there's just because the areas are so big that you can just naturally choose at
03:15any point.
03:16Like, hey, I'm going to go in this direction and I'm going to go in this direction.
03:18And given, like, freedom in how you want to approach that.
03:21Okay, let's talk mechanics.
03:22They did mention that they are improving the active reload in applying some new mechanics based on certain weapons.
03:31They did not get into specifics about that.
03:34So, I'm not really sure exactly what that could be.
03:37But I do think that's interesting that they are continuing to kind of evolve the active reload.
03:42The other thing they mentioned that I thought was interesting was that you'll notice in the footage that the active
03:47reload is now kind of like in the bottom center of the screen.
03:50Not in like the top where it was before.
03:53They did say you can go in the settings and you can change the UI to be at the top
03:57if you prefer sort of like that classic gears UI positioning.
04:03Speaking of control changes, they also mentioned that you can tweak the controls in the way like cover works.
04:10Because so like, for example, the way it currently works is when you do things like a slide into cover,
04:15it automatically does it.
04:17It's just kind of they said that felt like the most natural.
04:19But if you're somebody who wants more granular control over like when you go into cover, when you go out
04:24of cover, you can actually change that in the settings.
04:27We're getting real specific here, folks.
04:28Something I also thought was interesting they said is so they showed off the new jump mechanic in the game
04:33like Marcus can jump now.
04:35Incredible. Right.
04:36But they did want to stress that it's more about like providing alternatives in a combat space and, you know,
04:44like things like flanking and that like the game isn't suddenly turning into like a platformer, for example.
04:50In the direct, they showed off all of the like classic gears enemies and, you know, a lot of them
04:56have kind of been retooled and changed.
04:59As a specific example, they showed off the wretches and the wretches in E-Day, they don't have like that
05:07big bulky armor on them and they're a lot lankier and they're a lot paler.
05:10And apparently like there's like a lore reason where the locusts like would like intentionally like put these wretches in
05:17cages and like starve them so that when they release them upon Sarah, they would just like go feral and
05:24nuts and like kill as many people as possible, which is so gross.
05:28This game is apparently the most violent Gears of War game they've ever made.
05:32They said so many people die in this game, so I expect this game to be a lot.
05:41As far as other enemy stuff, they did say that there are new enemy types, but we didn't get a
05:48chance to see what those are.
05:50But there will be new locusts that we have not seen in previous games.
05:56If you're like a lore junkie and you're like, well, hold on, how can there be new enemies if they
06:01weren't in the later games?
06:03And they kind of just, you know, like the excuses that, well, it's, you know, 15 years between.
06:08And it's not far of a stretch to imagine that there would have been like certain locust enemy types that
06:14would have appeared 15 years ago that maybe just didn't happen to be around, you know, in the later games.
06:19Which I think is fine. It's a video game. You want new things in it, right?
06:22One thing they said that I thought was interesting is, so the Reavers are in this game.
06:27And in Gears of War, the other Gears of War games, Reavers were a little more like scripted when they
06:33would show up and that, you know, they land on the ground and you would just kind of shoot them.
06:36In this, Reavers actually also kind of operate in a similar fashion to the emergence holes where they can like
06:44land on the ground and like drop off a bunch of troops and then go back up in the air.
06:48So like there's like this other way in which they can like deliver more enemies into the battlefield.
06:52Other thing I learned, cog tags are a thing again. They said there are the most collectibles in this game
06:58out of any game they've made.
06:59And then the cog tags actually have more story significance because a lot of the cog tags will have names
07:04associated with them.
07:06And they will often be names of people that you actually have like seen in the game because this is
07:11like the first time that the locusts are showing up.
07:14So you will like fight with a soldier and then that soldier will die and then later you will like
07:19collect their dog tags.
07:20So it's this little way of trying to sort of like fill out the world and make like all of
07:25these little smaller characters around you like feel important.
07:29And you're like feeling the weight of the impact of what is happening.
07:32Obviously, the original voices for Marcus and Dom are back. They did say that Ty was recast. I think his
07:40new voice actor sounds pretty good.
07:42They also confirmed that fan favorites like Cole and Baird will not appear in this game.
07:48That is because this game takes place entirely from the perspective of Marcus and Dom and Marcus and Dom did
07:53not meet Cole and Baird until Gears of War 1.
07:56So they will not be showing up. Although Cole is a very famous person in the Gears of War universe.
08:01So I wouldn't be surprised if he makes an appearance in some other fashion.
08:05As far as the length of the game goes, they did say this is the longest Gears of War game
08:10they've ever made and that it's about over 14 hours, which that sounds pretty meaty.
08:16Okay, last couple really quick things. They said that they developed this with Xbox handhelds in mind.
08:22So that means it should probably run pretty good on like an Xbox ROG Ally.
08:27It is also on Steam, so hopefully it runs okay on a Steam Deck if that's what you have. That's
08:33my handheld of choice.
08:35And speaking of Steam, they did confirm the game has cross-play, the game has cross-saves, and the game
08:40has cross-progression between those versions.
08:43So if you play the game on Steam or on Xbox or on Windows PC, you'll be able to play
08:48it with anyone else who has a copy.
08:50So those are all the little tidbits that I learned from my time talking with the developers of Gears of
08:55War E-Day.
08:55Hopefully you learned something new that you didn't know before.
08:59I am excited to get my hands on and actually like try the game out for myself.
09:04I think it looks excellent. I love Gears of War and I actually like genuinely I think this game looks
09:11incredibly impressive.
09:12So I am looking forward to checking it out.
09:14And if you are looking forward to checking it out, you should stay here at GameSpot because guess what?
09:20Can you save this place?
09:20I think it's a poodle and I'm
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