Preview Playing Gears of War: E-Day's Campaign Confirms Its Technical Excellence, Despite a Few Minor Flaws

Gears of War: E-Day is a landmark release for The Coalition, a reboot of sorts that also serves as a late-generation showcase for Unreal Engine 5 tech. After going hands-on in a recent campaign preview, covering roughly an hour of gameplay from the start of Act 2, we can safely say that the single-player experience here is in excellent technical shape. While the earlier multiplayer beta left some fans wanting more visual variety, the campaign delivers a broader range of environments, from bridges and railway stations to sports stadiums, all rendered in the series' signature European Gothic style.

Visually, the campaign is a significant step up from the multiplayer outings. By having greater control over the player's viewpoint and rendering load, the developers have crafted artwork that feels significantly more detailed and polished. Unlike the desaturated palette of the beta, the campaign showcases clear visual progression between areas, ensuring that each gameplay segment has an interesting and unique signature. This grounded, gritty aesthetic aims to capture the evocative atmosphere of the original Gears of War titles while leveraging modern rendering techniques.

One of the most impressive aspects of E-Day is its evocative lighting. The game uses Lumen for ray-traced indirect lighting, which provides highly realistic diffuse and specular global illumination, complemented by virtual shadow maps (VSMs) for direct shadows in sunlight. Whether navigating a hazy, volumetrics-dense roadway or an indirectly-lit underpass with soft contrast, the lighting feels physically plausible and enhances the eerie, war-torn vibes.

While Lumen and Nanite have been part of UE5 since the beginning, MegaLights tech is a later inclusion used to great effect here. The system allows for a vast number of dynamic area lights without the typical performance overhead associated with traditional shadow maps. This is particularly noticeable during weapon fire in dark spaces, where muzzle flashes cast complex shadows on the environment. MegaLights enables a level of lighting fidelity in artificially-lit spaces that matches the quality of sunlit areas, which is especially impressive given the game's 60fps target on Series X.

Despite these advancements, some typical Unreal Engine 5 artefacts remain. Polka-dot pattern RT noise can become visible in certain indirectly-lit spaces like car dealership roofs or railway platforms. Additionally, there can be a slight temporal lag as shadow details cohere over several frames. While these issues may bother players sensitive to Lumen noise, the overall stability of the lighting system is high enough, and reflections on glossy surfaces like puddles and cars provide a pleasing, realistic impression of the world.

The character modelling in E-Day is equally impressive, with incredible detail sculpted into every asset. Tertiary NPCs and primary characters alike benefit from high geometric density, which is further enhanced by VSMs and screen-space shadows. Cutscenes push these visuals even further, using excellent subsurface scattering and advanced skin shaders to create characters that sit plausibly within their environments. While characters' classic Gears physiques are maintained, the facial detail and material work represent a generational leap over Gears 5.

In terms of performance on the Xbox Series X, the campaign preview build offers three primary modes: quality, balanced, and performance. Quality mode targets a higher internal resolution (~1152p) and includes Lumen reflections on transparent surfaces. Balanced mode averages ~1080p, while performance mode hovers from ~900p to ~1000p, with both only featuring Lumen reflections on opaque surfaces. Notably, chromatic aberration and film grain appear to be forced on in this build, with no toggles whatsoever.

Performance is in a good place for a pre-release build too. Both the quality and balanced modes deliver virtually locked updates at 30fps and 40fps, respectively, with consistent performance. The 60fps performance mode is generally solid too, though it does encounter occasional stutters and dips during intense city combat sequences. However, these frame-rate wobbles are less pronounced than those seen in the earlier multiplayer beta, and improvements for the launch code may be forthcoming.

Ultimately, the E-Day campaign preview reveals a game that is both a promising engine showcase and a respectful return to the franchise's atmospheric beginnings. While it may lack the globe-trotting variety of Gears 5, E-Day's focus on grounded industrial horror and cutting-edge rendering features look promising - and if this small slice is representative of the full game, E-Day could earn a place in our year-end game graphics awards.