The upcoming launch of Gears of War: E-Day has set some pretty high expectations for fans of the longstanding franchise. After so many years of relative silence, the Microsoft IP is taking things back to the roots of the series with an ambitious prequel to the mainline story that players know and love. Of course, another massive Gears title is set to release before E-Day, with the Gears of War: Reloaded remaster launching on August 26.
Gears of War: E-Day has largely drawn so much excitement thanks to its nature as a prequel, taking things back long before any other title that the franchise has seen. Not only will E-Day offer a more raw and vulnerable glimpse at iconic franchise characters like Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, but it will also shine a spotlight on the series’ most important event. E-Day will finally put humanity’s devastating losses on Emergence Day on screens, and PlayStation’s Horizon franchise features a similar overarching narrative that could do well with its own cataclysmic prequel.
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Gears of War and Horizon Both Feature Massive Humanity-Threatening Events
The entire Gears of War franchise takes place after humanity’s bloody war against the Locust hordes. In the series, humanity lives on an Earth-like planet known as Sera, with a subterranean race of genetically altered humans bursting their way through to the surface. This catastrophic event was known as Emergence Day, with all major Sera cities being attacked simultaneously, leading to millions of deaths and widespread destruction.
The first Gears of War game takes place a staggering 14 years after the events of E-Day, meaning humanity and the COG forces are hardened against the nature of the Locust and the damage done to Sera. The upcoming E-Day will crucially peak behind this steely curtain, giving huge amounts of context to what is arguably the most fateful and important event to occur.
Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago will both be 22 years old in the events of E-Day, giving an insight into just how unique their portrayals may be compared to what fans have seen before.
The rich lore of Gears of War, even beyond the games themselves, is deserving of such an entry. Many other franchises employ the same narrative premise of a catastrophic event happening years before the mainline story. PlayStation’s Horizon franchise fits this bill quite well, with much of humanity being wiped out by Faro Plague around 1000 years before the events of Horizon Zero Dawn. Both of these franchises’ apocalyptic events were caused by human experimentation, which is another example of the interesting overlap between both series.
Character Callbacks Could Still Appear in a Horizon Prequel While Maintaining a Lot of Originality
Of course, Gears of War: E-Day has the benefit of being able to feature a range of fan-favorite characters as part of its origin story, something that is not as feasible in a Horizon game that focuses on the beginnings of the Faro Plague. This kind of Horizon prequel could feature Dr. Elisebet Sobeck, however, and give more of a direct view of the origins of the Zero Dawn program and the sacrifices that were necessary for its completion.
Some players argue that Forbidden West was too similar to Zero Dawn in terms of its gameplay loop, and a prequel that takes things back 1000 years to the fall of humanity would surely avoid repeating these criticisms. The excitement surrounding E-Day speaks for itself, and while the Gears franchise has had more time to flesh out a prequel, Horizon‘s narrative backstory is rich enough to warrant its own fascinating origin spin-off somewhere down the line.
Gears of War: E-Day
- Released
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2025
- ESRB
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m
- Publisher(s)
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Xbox Game Studios
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5
- Franchise
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Gears of War
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