Kalona is the fictional city where the whole of Gears of War: E-Day takes place. The campaign, every Horde Siege map and all six Versus maps are set in or around it. Narrowing a planet-wide catastrophe down to one place was a deliberate early decision: at global scale the human impact stops registering.
Built as One City
Kalona is not a series of disconnected levels. It is built as a single integrated city in the engine, and the camera can be lifted in the editor to see the whole thing at once. The practical consequence is that when you look at another district from inside a level, you are looking at the real location of that place rather than at a painted backdrop.
That continuity is what makes the destruction land. You revisit areas that were intact and find them smoking ruins. The studio set out to make the city feel like another character in the story, so that losing it registers as a loss rather than as scenery changing.
Confirmed Locations
Location | What is known |
|---|---|
Downtown Kalona | The city core. Two Versus maps are described as overlooking or sitting on the coast of it. |
Golden Quarter | The historic district. It was the Horde Siege map used during the Open Beta, set in the aftermath of the battle for it. |
Kalona Police Department | A police station, and the setting of the Versus map Precinct the day after it was decimated. It also appears in the campaign, where the squad goes looking for help on the first night. |
Kalona Public Market | A seaside market, and the setting of the Versus map Market. |
Imulsion Refinery | Where Mags Carter works when the invasion starts. Residential neighbourhoods are stacked around the refineries that sustain them. |
Coastal park and zoo | A park built around a zoo on the coast of downtown, and the setting of the Versus map Park. |
Shipyard and waterfront | An industrial working waterfront, with a wartime vessel in post-war deconstruction serving as the Versus map Battleship. |
Sports stadium | Named as part of the city's skyline. |
Airfield | At the city's edge. |
Military camp | An abandoned camp overlooking downtown with a training facility attached, serving as the Versus map Outpost. |
Rooftops | The interconnected roofs above the city, used for the Versus map Skyward. |
Individual campaign settings named so far include a bar, a grocery store, a pharmacy, a subway and a sky train. Full map descriptions are on Versus Maps.
Design References
The studio is based in downtown Vancouver, between the stadium district and Yaletown, looking out over a stadium, a working waterfront and the mountains behind it. Kalona is fictional, but its geography was drawn from what the team sees out of the windows. For the era, the reference was 1970s New York, which is where the city's slightly older and clunkier feel comes from.
The Retro-Tech Rule
The city sits before anything the series has previously shown, so the technology is deliberately dated. There are no flat panel displays anywhere: televisions are cathode-ray sets with wood panelling, cash registers are mechanical, vending machines are period-appropriate. Cars are blocky 1970s shapes, which also makes them useful cover, and the team refers to the whole aesthetic as retro tech.
A City at Peace
Kalona is shown alive before it is destroyed, which no earlier game in the series has done. Peacetime signage is scattered everywhere: victory celebrations, peace time discounts in the grocery store, veteran centres and recruiting centres. The game does not spend hours walking around in peacetime, but the echoes are visible throughout the first night.
Building a living city was also the harder technical problem. Earlier games in the series began after everything had already been destroyed, which is easier to construct. Here the detail had to be dense enough for the city to read as inhabited before it could credibly be torn apart.
The City Under Attack
Kalona is where cover comes from, and the variety is the point: cars, buildings, planters, trains and the organic shapes left when the ground is ripped up. Sinkholes swallow vehicles and whole buildings, and micro-destruction chips away at cover across a range of materials. Emergence holes can open anywhere and flood the space with red light. Beneath the streets, Locust tunnels are extensive enough that the COG has to map them, which is the entire premise of the R.I.G. devices in Horde Siege.
Unconfirmed Geography
Wider geography for the city and its region circulates from other sources with no support in official material for this game. Only the locations listed above are recorded here.