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Here's a truth about Gears of War that has persisted since 2006: The folks that love the series' particular style of skittish multiplayer really love it, and everyone else thinks it's a sweaty killing field. I was there for the Xbox Live outages on day one, and have played every instalment since – it's exceptionally rare to find a player who resides on neutral ground. The Marmite effect that Gears multiplayer has is a direct result of design decisions that were cemented into the foundations of the franchise; there has been no solution to the chaotic combination of overpowered shotguns and manipulated cover mechanics.
I suspect that The Coalition is looking to change all that with Gears of War: E-Day. The studio hasn't been afraid to signal that it's making massive alterations to core elements of the series, shifting the position of the Active Reload bar is just the tip of a blood-stained iceberg.
When The Coalition began production of E-Day in Unreal Engine 5, it made the unusual decision to start from an "empty harddrive", as creative director Matt Searcy puts it. Every animation, asset, mechanic, and system has been rebuilt from scratch – giving the studio the excuse it needed to modernize Gears' movement.
"Gears plays best in a city, and Kalona is the ultimate battlefield. Its density, tight streets, mixed with more open spaces let us rethink how a Gear moves through the world. And it created a greater stage for more scale and verticality in combat. Our soldiers are basically giant tanks in armor, they slam into cars while weaving through hails of bullets. We wanted to keep that heaviness but add more fluidity with how you move through the battlefield," says Matt Searcy, creative director.
These changes operate at different scales. Searcy tells me that a subtle change is that "the sprint camera no longer pushes in when you're on a run", with a wider view "helping with the player's ability to move through the world and use a lot more of the entire battlefield." It's easy to understand how having improved readability of combat spaces will impact PvP multiplayer – which Searcy says will comprise "a collection of 4v4 modes and all-new maps set in locations in and around the worn-torn city of Kalona."
The studio has largely demonstrated these changes to core systems and mechanics through the lens of the campaign, a prequel that charts Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago's budding bromance on the days following the first emergence of the Locust Horde.
You're now able to jump and slide, opening up new opportunities to escape enemies and discover flanking routes; new cover mechanics are designed to increase your mobility and lethality in equal measure. It's exceptionally likely that these additions and alterations will be present and accounted for in multiplayer – and that means change is coming to the upcoming Xbox Series X game.
Change Is Good
"We've completely rebuilt our cover and movement systems. There are smoother transitions with a bigger range of cover heights and shapes, including new low-ground cover," he continues. "From sprint you can now slide, which lets you quickly get under objects, slide around corners, and transition more smoothly into cover from a run."
The increased fluidity and mobility at the heart of Gears of War: E-Day's movement has the potential to fundamentally reshape the way we play multiplayer, particularly as Searcy confirms that you won't be able to wall cancel and bounce "the way you've done it in the past."
The creative director is keen to stress that "your relationship with cover, and how you move between it, is still the most important thing to us – cover is life in Gears of War" but it's clear that heightened fluidity will fundamentally alter familiar multiplayer rhythms. The ability to hit low cover and high mantle around more vertical spaces will open more tactical flanking routes, while the ability to more quickly slide under objects and around corners could increase the pace of combat dramatically.
There's also increased destruction, "more than we've ever put into a Gears game" which sees hiding points chip away more dynamically while under concentrated fire. Again, it's unclear if this will transition to multiplayer, but if it does we should be battling in more organic and shifting playspaces.
And then there's the addition of jump, a mechanic introduced to "make the battlefields feel like they have more options and ways to get to a flanking route," Searcy says. "Think of all of this as us taking that classic Gears formula and adding new layers of strategy and traversal to it."
The Coalition is yet to reveal its plans for Gears of War: E-Day multiplayer beyond stressing that Versus will remain "sweaty squad-based PvP" and that the studio plans to support a "seasonal roadmap of killer combat, most of which you can just earn by playing the game – completing in-game challenges, events, and achievements."
All of that sounds great, but it's the way these enhanced movement mechanics intersect with the classic Gears multiplayer experience that has gotten me truly excited. We won't need to wait all that much longer to find out for certain, as Xbox has confirmed that Gears of War: E-Day will run a multiplayer beta split across two weekends, starting on August 6.
Have Your Say: How are you feeling about Gears of War: E-Day now that Xbox Game Studios has announced that it'll be a console exclusive? Vote in our poll, and let us know what you think about the biggest Gears changes in the comments section below.
