Gears of War: E-Day Could Be the First UE5 Game to Fulfil the Engine’s Promise

Microsoft took to the stage earlier this week for the Xbox Games Showcase, with Gears of War: E-Day taking the headline spot. This is a game that we’re excited about, as it might just be the first to truly fulfil the promise of Unreal Engine 5: large-scale, varied and detailed environments without pop-in, crisp image quality and extensive ray-traced lighting via hardware Lumen. Add on long view distances, prominent environmental damage and a 60fps target, and it’s clear why developers The Coalition are known as masters of Unreal Engine.

The past two Gears of War titles reportedly didn’t sell to expectations, so E-Day is an important reset for the series – and The Coalition has had seven years since the last mainline entry, despite a more recent remaster. That generous time period has allowed – or enforced – a major technical reset, with the studio essentially starting from an empty hard drive for this entry. Thus far, that approach looks to have borne fruit based on what’s been shown.

Still, with a non-specific “in-game footage” disclaimer rather than one tied to a specific Xbox console, it’s also possible that we’re looking at PC footage, so it’ll be interesting to see how the game looks on console when the game hits its 6th October release date. Performance in the initial night-time showing looked like a solid 60fps, while later footage seemed a bit shakier and more aliased, suggesting a possible console capture, but ultimately we’ll have to wait and see about this new Xbox exclusive.

Halo: Campaign Evolved is coming a little sooner and is another UE5 title with visual promise, as it takes a noticeable step beyond what 343 Industries (now Halo Studios) achieved with Halo Infinite back in 2021 on their bespoke Slipspace Engine. Its vivid visuals echo the saturated look of the original game, as is right and proper, while materials, lighting and cinematics have all received intensive overhauls to match modern rendering techniques. It’s also nice to see more substantive gameplay and content changes, with new missions, redesigned spaces, extra weapons and more mechanics. Performance also looks to have improved markedly since its first showing in October. The game’s set to be released on July 26th for Xbox and PlayStation consoles plus PC.

The Xbox summer showcase contained plenty more interesting footage that we discussed in the DF Direct special show embedded above – including from games like Clockwork Revolution, Persona 6, a new Senua, Metro 2039 and Crazy Taxi – but I want to jump to the new Xbox hardware now. The “Xbox Series X25 Limited Edition” is a tremendous bit of fan service, especially for long-time Xbox players familiar with the original console, but it’s also a showcase of the hardware engineering that went into the original Series X.

The translucent green shell is key here, as it provides a novel look at the console’s internals that you would have only seen online or by physically taking apart your Xbox. The layout is laid bare, with elements of the cooling system, the optical drive and power delivery all visible. The same trick applies to the controller, which ought to have visibly vibrating motors in the handles and triggers. It’s a shame that the anniversary model doesn’t include 2TB of storage, matching the Galaxy Black edition, but given the huge increase in flash memory prices it’s also understandable.

As a show, the Xbox Showcase was certainly up there in what has been an energising series of “E3 season” announcements, though it still doesn’t quite answer the question of what Microsoft is aiming for with their new, confusing approach to game exclusivity. Still, if the objective was just to show footage of exciting upcoming games, consider the box ticked.