Revision 2

The Gears of War: E-Day campaign covers one city, over three days, as Emergence Day tears it apart. It is not an open world. Missions run from tight linear fights in narrow streets and alleys out into open districts that give the player access to entire neighbourhoods, and the largest arenas carry a couple of storeys of verticality with multiple routes through the same fight.

One City, Three Days

Emergence Day is a planet-wide event, but the campaign deliberately stays in the fictional city of Kalona. The reasoning the team gives is that at global scale the human impact disappears, so the invasion had to be brought close enough to feel.

The three days each carry their own tone.

Acts and Chapters

The campaign is divided into Acts, and each Act is split into Chapters. Only Act 2 has been shown in any detail. The total number of Acts has not been confirmed in official material, though a three-act shape has been described, and the chapter titles read off the preview build give Act 2's first two chapters as Bravo Squad and Hold the Line.

The beats of that stretch run in this order.

Act structure, the chapter titles and the difficulty tiers are collected on Campaign Acts and Chapters.

The Bravo Squad Rule

The story never leaves Bravo Squad. There are no cutaways to other fronts, other units or command rooms; the player sees only what the squad sees and learns only what they learn. The team compares the framing to war dramas where a huge event is happening elsewhere and the camera stays with one group who are not always in the right place at the right time.

All four squad members are playable from the start, so the campaign can be run start to finish as Marcus Fenix, Dominic Santiago, Mags Carter or Lucas Reyes.

Opening Moments

The first weapon Bravo Squad picks up is a Snub taken off a police car, which is where the gameplay demo opens. Marcus and Dom are in a bar in plain clothes when the tremors start. The four Gears happen to be in the same place when the road opens and Wretches pour out; everyone else runs the other way and these four turn and run at it, before they have even met.

Early on the player is underpowered relative to what is happening. You cannot save everyone on that first street. You might shoot a couple of Wretches off civilians while three or four others are eating people beside you.

Encounters and Set Pieces

Several systems shape how fights play out across the city.

• E-holes: emergence holes come in two kinds. Systemic ones open in the middle of a fight and can be shut with a frag grenade. Spectacle ones open, dump enemies into the space, collapse parts of buildings and flood the area with smoke.

• The red rule: red was committed as the E-hole colour during pre-production and is deliberately avoided elsewhere, so red light in this game always reads as an E-hole or as danger.

• Destruction: sinkholes pull down vehicles and entire buildings, while micro-destruction chips away at cover across a range of materials.

• Civilians: they react, adapt and break down in real time, and later in the campaign you can run into groups trying to fight back.

• Bosses: towering bosses appear in the campaign. None has been named, and they are tracked separately on Campaign Bosses

Two campaign moments have been shown in detail. A Corpser rips through the ground when a sky train collapses, which is the first full view of one in the game. Later, at a grocery store, Bravo meets a lone Gear who has been holding the building by himself with a Vulcan and keeps running out of ammunition. That meeting is the first time the squad finds other Gears in the city and starts becoming part of a larger force. Spoken developer commentary renders his name as Maco; no written material has confirmed the spelling. The same sequence carries the reveal of Tai Kaliso and the origin of the chainsaw attachment on the Lancer.

Off the Main Path

The route through a chapter is set, but the wider districts are not just scenery. Act 2 carries an optional side mission where the squad can stop to help another team in need, and taking it is a detour rather than a required objective. Collectibles and other off-path rewards are there for players who go looking.

Navigation has an in-fiction hook to match. At one point the squad grabs a tourist map of Kalona as a makeshift guide, and that pamphlet then becomes the actual in-game map rather than staying a prop.

Presentation

Blood and dirt accumulate on the player character and wash off again across the campaign, so the level rises and falls as you play. Performing an execution covers the performer in blood. Earlier games in the series kept armour permanently clean; here the world marks you.

Kalona is built as one contiguous city in the engine rather than as disconnected levels. The camera can be lifted in the editor to see the whole thing, and when you look at another district from inside a level, that is the real location of that place.

Difficulty, Saves and Assistance

Weapon modification is available in the campaign as well as Horde Siege, and is covered on Mods and Customization. Aim assist affects the campaign and Horde Siege only; it does not apply in Versus.

Difficulty Tiers

Four difficulty tiers appear in the campaign preview build's menus. None of the four names has been printed in official material yet, so treat the labels as observed rather than confirmed.

What Is Not Confirmed

Total campaign length has not been published. Act 1 and Act 3 have not been described at all, so the beats above are the only ones known in any detail, and the overall act count is still unconfirmed. Nothing has been said about which collectibles exist or how many, only that off-path rewards are there to find. Those details stay off this page rather than being estimated.