Gears of War E-Day Campaign Changes — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Despite being a prequel, Gears of War E-Day's campaign has a ton of new stuff to offer when compared to the previous games. From new weapons, to new enemies, and even movement options, let's break down the additions to this long-running series that are present in the new entry.

[00:19] The A button always did some pretty heavy lifting throughout the Gears of War series. You hold it to run, press it to roll, press it near a wall or a piece of cover to flatten up against it, press left or right while in cover to move to a different piece of cover,

[00:32] or hold the left stick forward and press it to vault over the cover. In Gears of War E-Day, the default control scheme is changing to take some of that burden off your little green friend. Now there's a more traditional sprint button tied to clicking in the left stick, and vaulting

[00:45] over cover is done by pressing the Y button. This sticks from getting used to, as now if you have to want to exit cover and start sprinting immediately, you have to hold forward and click in the left stick. It may take some time for veterans to break muscle memory and adjust,

[00:58] but if you prefer the old legacy control scheme, you can swap it in the controls menu, along with several other control types to suit your preferences. Another new element of movement in Gears of War E-Day is the ability to freely jump whenever you want.

[01:12] Marcus and friends previously could only jump contextually to cross over gaps or pull themselves up to a higher platform, but in E-Day, all jumping is now handled manually. This isn't a huge change when it comes to the campaign, outside of there being more

[01:25] opportunities for you to fall to your death, but it does line up with a new focus on verticality in the level design, which we'll get to later. Historically, Gears has had two different kinds of cover animations, either flat up

[01:38] against the wall, or behind a waist-high barricade or other piece of cover that forces you to crouch up against it. In Gears E Day, a new type of cover animation lets you basically slide behind a very low piece of cover with your back on the ground. Cover can eventually degrade from one to the other,

[01:53] giving you a better idea of how long you have behind a piece of cover before it's eventually destroyed. Another new bit of movement tech you can now go directly from a sprint into a low to the ground slide and ride that slide all the way into a piece of cover Not only that but the slide can also work as a quick way to slide underneath obstacles rather than having to wait for the prop to pop

[02:16] up before you're able to get underneath it. Just hit A while you're sprinting to initiate a slide. In prior Gears games, usually you had to look for a sort of stepladder of obstacles

[02:28] in order to reach a higher platform. In E-Day, however, a lot of objects in the environment that seem climbable actually are, and without needing any sort of prompt. This is especially helpful in areas with lots of vehicles or containers,

[02:40] or specifically in the supermarket section where you can surprise Grub by just jumping over the shelves and blasting them from behind. Gears 5 introduced large free-roaming levels in its campaign

[02:57] with multiple objectives strewn around a huge open map, even going so far as giving the skiff to speed up the travel time between points of interest. EA continued this approach to its campaign by offering up both traditional linear levels

[03:10] and the more exploration-driven wide free-roaming type levels, but expands upon them by also offering up new side quest opportunities. Occasionally, while exploring the free roaming levels, you'll come across civilians in need of help

[03:22] and can start a quick side mission involving defending a certain point, escorting a group from point A to point B, or simply clearing a building of nasty grubs. These side missions are well worth doing, as they reward you with one of E-Day's next biggest additions.

[03:39] Your arsenal of weaponry in Gears of War E-Day is more customizable than ever before, thanks to the addition of weapon mods. Once they're introduced in Act 2, Chapter 2, they can be found all throughout each of the levels, located inside hard cases,

[03:52] or as I just mentioned, as rewards for completing side quests. To equip a mod, you'll need to locate a supply cache, denoted by these large cog icons on the map. Hover over a weapon, and press X to bring up the mod menu.

[04:05] The first mod slot for each weapon is the Perfect Reload mod, which affects what buffs and bonuses you get when you hit a perfectly timed active reload After that you have three slots for general mods but only one is unlocked from the start The rest must be unlocked by finding them in hard cases

[04:26] Even though E-Day takes place in the past, there are several new weapons in this prequel. Here's just a few of them. The Gut Clencher is a weapon that acts as a manually detonated grenade launcher. Hold the trigger when firing and as soon as you let go it'll explode.

[04:40] You'll see a net pattern on the explosion radius before releasing. The incinerator is a shotgun that shoots emulsion and burns enemies. The heavy boom shot is just as it sounds. The real big boom

[04:59] shot you can pick off off larger enemies or sometimes around fortified areas. Both the Nasher and the Breach shot are now loaded one shell or bullet at a time,

[05:14] and you can stop the reload in progress to fire with what's already been loaded. Of course, you can still wait for the full sequence to play out to fully load your clip or go for a perfect reload. You might have thought you'd seen everything the Lunker

[05:27] pretend to offer over the course of six mainline Gears games, but as it turns out, there were a couple of baddies that fought on emergency, and then were never seen again. Enemies like this vile frog. It's... a big frog, that shoots corrosive vile at you. Well named.

[05:43] It's also very funny when you kill it right as it begins to hop. Then there's... whatever this is. These flying balloon-like nut sack enemies float around

[05:55] and spawns fours that will linger in the air and pelt you with weak, but annoying needles that eventually add up to a lot of damage, should you ignore them and let their numbers get too great. And of course, don't forget the boss battles, like this dude who swings

[06:08] a giant chain at you. That's nice. While Gears 5 introduced Jack as an upgradeable combat companion with powerful abilities that could aid the player in combat Gears E instead adds a new mechanic called Tactical Gear These are powerful abilities tied to a lengthy cooldown

[06:27] that are designed to seriously turn the tide of battle in your favor. The first ability you get, Adrenaline Injector, instantly refills your health and pumps you full of adrenaline, which reduces damage taken and increases damage dealt for a short amount of time.

[06:41] Or you could instead opt for the Sonic Disruptor, which stuns the standard drone enemies and disrupts the larger baddies in a large radius just to name a few.

[06:58] While the new origin story is of course headlined by returning characters Marcus Phoenix and Dom Santiago, they're joined by two fresh faces in Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes. Mags is a battle-hardened veteran who for one reason or another was discharged from the army despite her decorated military service.

[07:14] Lucas, on the flip side of that, is about as green as green can be. Now why don't you come talk to me when your balls are off? He's a brand new cadet with a ton of knowledge, but not a lot of actual combat experience.

[07:28] Holy fuck! The latter two actually have a pretty fun dynamic. Mind if I take the window seat? Oh yeah, you mean the get-out-first seat? All yours, then.

[07:44] While four-player co-op isn't unprecedented in the Gears games, Gears of War 3 had it in 2011, the more recent games in the series scaled it back to just two players. E-Day brings it back in a big way by having four-player co-ops throughout the entire campaign,

[07:58] with each player taking control of either Marcus, Dom, Mags, or Lucas. We! I thought I recognized you! While by no means exhaustive, those are the biggest changes you'll find in the campaign for Gears of War E-Day.

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