Why Gears of War: E-Day Is The Most Co-Op-Centric Entry Yet: "How Do You Wanna Have Fun?"

Published Oct 1, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT

Chris is a Gaming Editor at ScreenRant. He has been a professional writer since 2009, and has written for top TV, comics, movie, and video game outlets like Engadget, Polygon, Destructoid, and more. He brings with him an expertise in every game genre, no matter how niche or mainstream.

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Gears of War: E-Day isn't a relaunch of the franchise by any stretch, but as a prequel that showcases the literal "Emergence Day" the entire series is built around, it's a massive moment for the series. A lot is riding on it, both from a gameplay and lore perspective, as newcomers and hardcore fans alike will be checking it out.

Given Gears' lengthy 20-year history, there's a ton of ground to cover, but co-developers The Coalition and People Can Fly seem up to the task. We sat down with Matt Searcy (Studio Creative Director), Aryan Hanbeck (Studio Art Director), and Nicole Fawcette (Studio Brand Director) to talk all things Gears of War: E-Day, especially how co-op will have an even bigger impact on the game this time around.

Bravo Squad Comes Alive

Co-op is an important aspect of Gears of War, but with E-Day, things are going to be a little different. One of the first things I noticed when picking the game up for the first time was the four-player squad baked into the campaign, and how different it felt to move and work in concert with a team (even if they're AI allies).

We wanted to know how the squad-based focus came about, and Searcy kicked things off:

"When we started, before we even picked a game, we were talking about what makes Gears special and trying to figure out how we would build a game around all the core pillars of Gears. And I remember in very early [builds], we had an entire slide about the squad. And just saying, this is like a Gears fundamental. If it's a book, a comic, a Horde mode, a campaign, like this is what we have. Marcus Fenix doesn't jump into a battle dual wielding Lancers, like some sort of crazy, you know, army ninja guy who can kill everything. It's always about the ties to the themes of brotherhood and holding the line and burden. So we have like a unique thing, which is that the squad is part of our gameplay pillars. It's part of our story pillars.

Fom the very beginning, we set out to tell a story about a squad of four soldiers and how they came together during the night. We knew we could tell Dom and Marcus' story inside that squad story. And then everything just kind of flowed from there. Like we ended up realizing, great, four-player co-op, we're doing it, which...not every Gears game has... but it's so fundamental to our brand. We went, great, let's take that into Horde, and we did a four-player squad in Horde, and then we added two more. So we have three, four-player squads, and we made all our PVP maps [with that in mind].

We wanted it all to revolve around that feeling. So yeah, it does change everything. It changes how you build your levels to always accommodate for four characters. It changes your storytelling. We are always with the squad."

Of course, when they're split up, we'll get more personal stories between squadmates: "We, you know, we split them up occasionally into pairs so we can get little intimate moments. But it's very much where you're traveling with a squad through a larger battle. So yeah, it really came all from the idea that the squad is sort of really the heart of Gears."

Fawcette notes that this is baked into the DNA of Gears: "We always say that Gears is not like the hero's journey. It's like a collective journey. That's not the archetype, the story that we tell in Gears. And that's not what Gears 1 was. You had Baird and Cole, and with [current console] technology, you can have all four squad members playable."

Split-Screen Is In, And It Was Work

Given my lifelong fascination with co-op games, I was curious how difficult it was to get everything in shape for E-Day. It's not just about the co-op campaign; there's also Sieges, an expansive multiplayer element beyond the story.

Searcy explains: "I don't know if I have a short answer for that. It's work. All of it is work. Like building an online co-op game is work. Building a 4-player co-op is work. Getting squads to work across the whole thing and doing split-screen. I don't have a short answer for you because we made that decision so early in this project. It's important for us to have those moments be part of what people experience, that it gets baked into our work from the very, very beginning. Like from the time we started rebuilding the game on UE5, we knew we were going to have couch co-op on console."

He continues: "We knew we were going to have to build all of our modes to support co-op. A high-end, cinematic storyline with co-op gameplay, which adds a whole bunch more layers to the design and technical challenges. How hard was that? I don't have a number, but it's hard, and everyone on the team tackles it from day one. Whether it's how you design the game, how you design the gameplay mechanics, how we build our technical foundations, how we expect to have to tackle and optimize the game as we come into [the launch]. It just adds another sort of checkbox for us to check every single time we go through a gate."

We split them up occasionally into pairs so we can get little intimate moments.

In the end, based on our impressions, the team delivered. Searcy says it was a long journey: "I think we managed to get it to a really awesome place in split screen in terms of how we managed to hold up visuals and content and also how much of the screen real estate you get and all that stuff."

As for how Unreal Engine 5 impacted the development of Gears, Hanbeck had a thoughtful response: "The short answer is yes. Everything's gotten easier with Unreal 5 as far as, easier is not the right word, but everything's gotten possible as far as bigger maps and like the density of stuff within those maps, how we light those maps, you know, all those things used to be real, real sore spots when you start getting things that are bigger, especially if you have a big map with lots of AI running on it, lots of players"

Sieges Are A Long-Term Mode

When Gears E-Day launches, players will have 30 levels of progression to sift through, plus multiple classes and two distinct modes: Blitz (short missions that are 15-20 minutes) and Sieges (longer missions with bigger squads, lasting 20-40 minutes).

So how did Sieges come to be? Searcy digs in and shares the moment they knew everything came together:

"It was really early. I think even in concept we were talking about how it's a cool place to play and experiment. So I think we had a bunch of prototypes. We actually started prototyping the Gears 5 codebase right away because it took a while, right? As we moved into Unreal 5, there's a period of time where [objects] are not built, and it takes a while to get back to the number of enemies you need to even prototype a Horde mode and the weapons you have, and obviously our new mechanics, and figuring out a map."

"So very early on, we were playing with all sorts of versions of PVE that had multiple squads and objective types and all sorts of things. And so from the very beginning, maybe it wasn't called Horde Siege, and maybe it wasn't exactly the product that everybody's playing today, but there were a bunch of elements [that came together]. And super early on, we had a couple moments that were Eureka moments, like spawning a giant Brumak on the map and having multiple squads be like, oh ****, and come together for that."

Everything's gotten easier with Unreal 5.

Apparently, it was a massive hit internally: "During a playtest we actually had the recording of all the people talking to each other and freaking out and trying to coordinate who was going to do what. At that moment, we were like, okay, that's the thing we're going to chase in this mode, even if it's not going to happen every single time you play, but that's going to be sort of this high point. That's different from what we've had in past Horde mode. You asked earlier about difficulty [developing the game]. From there, we just went, we know what Horde needs in terms of pacing and intensity, and we know that there will be some limitations when we add squads, we add the number of enemies we want, and we add the map."

Player Choice Is Paramount

Searcy explains that, in the end, player choice is the goal: "Yeah, for sure. I think we try to offer choice. Like, how do you wanna come have fun? We don't wanna build 20 modes for this game, right? Blitz, Siege, and Horde are all subsections of this mode. They can kind of work together because we didn't want to build 20 different modes... it actually bisects the game way too much."

If you're into any of this, Gears of War: E-Day is banking on co-op fans flocking to it. Based on what we've seen, it's even more ambitious than expected.

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