Gears E-Day Tech Breakdown - Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:05] one of the most exciting releases of the year, and I finally had a chance to take a look at the game's campaign in a sampler provided by the Coalition. This preview covers roughly an hour or so of gameplay in the first part of Act 2, and

[00:18] should provide a good indication of the game's current technical shape in single-player content. So, how does E-Day fare in this early single-player >> This video is sponsored by MSI. To mark the launch of Onimusha: Warlords, MSI

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[01:51] multiplayer beta a couple of weeks ago, I lamented the fact that our first capture opportunity with E-Day was in multiplayer. Games tend to look best in their single-player outings, where developers have more control over

[02:03] rendering load, and can design artwork to look good from the player's likely viewpoint. In Gears' case, I do think the campaign preview looks significantly better than its multiplayer. Part of that comes down to artwork diversity. To

[02:17] me, the Gears multiplayer beta looked a bit sandy, with levels that didn't showcase a lot of variety. The colorful heights of Gears 5 were traded for a low-contrast desaturated palette that didn't really excite me. But, I can

[02:29] report that the campaign doesn't really suffer from this issue, with obvious visual progression between gameplay areas. Eday still hues more towards classic Gears than recent series entries, so don't expect some

[02:42] globe-trotting vibrant adventure, but each area has an interesting visual bridges, car dealerships, convenience stores, railway stations, and sports stadiums, all depicted in Gears' signature European gothic pastiche. It

[02:56] helps that each area has an evocative lighting character. This hazy volumetric sands roadway captures a bit of an eerie vibe, while this brightly lit city shot demonstrates the destruction on Sera after the break of day. An indirectly

[03:09] lit underpass showcases soft contrast and diffuse shadows as light spills in from all sides. A rail station is replete with backside illuminated signage, which spill soft emissive lighting onto characters and the

[03:22] environment. Hardware lumen is to thank to a large degree for many of these ray-tracing-based indirect lighting system for diffuse and specular GI, and virtual shadow maps seem to supply a lot of the direct lighting detail, handling

[03:36] But, there are some elements that seem to show off some genuinely new rendering features. For instance, when I fire the player weapon in this enclosed dark space, notice how the muzzle flash casts shadows onto the surrounding

[03:49] environment. This may be cost-prohibitive with VSMs because muscle flash shadows occupy a lot of the screen and don't cache effectively. Also note the variable sharpness in the shadows in these shots. Virtual shadow

[04:02] maps can depict this phenomenon to some degree, but not to this extent and not in shots that are lit with light that is emitted from a large area instead of source. This is evidence of Epic's Megalights

[04:15] technology, which was originally demoed in 2024 and has reached production-ready status in recent versions of UE5. Megalights is essentially a new direct lighting system for scenes containing a large number of lights, including

[04:28] dynamic lights and area lights. In Eday, I think certain indoor spaces provide the clearest examples of this new system at work. The Coalition has confirmed that Megalights is indeed in use in Eday, and I expect many other UE5

[04:41] developers will soon follow. Megalights helps tackle a lot of the difficult lighting problems that remain in high-end games, enabling artists to depict artificially lit spaces with the same lighting fidelity that we'd expect

[04:53] in areas primarily lit by sunlight. It's especially impressive because Megalights was originally shown running on console hardware with a 30 FPS target, but Gears is running at 60 FPS on Series X in the footage I'm showing now. The noise and

[05:08] techniques has become a flashpoint in modern game rendering discourse. With visually problematic because of the stochastic breakup and latency often associated with RT. And we do see a bit of that with Megalights. Expect to see a

[05:24] bit of lag in the update of some shadow detail as it takes a number of frames to correctly cohere. I think Lumen itself is probably a bigger offender in this title because the polka dot pattern of ray tracing noise can become obvious in

[05:36] The roof of this car dealership is a good example or the underside of this rail platform. If you're someone who is really bothered by Lumen noise in big budget games, I feel like Eday may pose problems for you at least in its current

[05:50] state. This could change or improve by release, of course, and I'd still maintain that areas where Lumen feels especially problematic are few compared to the areas where Lumen is relatively stable. Lumen also handles specular GI,

[06:03] so Sarah's glossy surfaces, like puddles or cars, reflect a pleasing impression of the environment. Because Gears uses hardware RT, don't expect to find the blobby shapes characteristic of software Lumen, but detail in reflections is

[06:17] simplified, resolution is cut, and dynamic shadows update only In performance mode on Series X as I'm testing here, transparent surfaces also lack Lumen reflection coverage. In its place, you get a very blurred impression

[06:32] derived from diffuse Lumen GI information, plus sharp but imprecise which usually just show a rough silhouette of the player character.

[06:45] also highly impressive. There's incredible detail sculpted into every asset, including tertiary NPCs. Even at extreme close angles, the subtle details on the soldiers' pouches, armor plates, and rifle all hold up. The apparent

[06:59] geometric density of Eday is quite impressive, and that geometric density is properly relieved and revealed by VSMs and screen-space shadows. Character models and gameplay look great, but cutscenes take things to the next level.

[07:14] I always thought Gears 5 had excellent cutscene sequences, and Eday pushes superior subsurface scattering, skin shaders, and facial detail. Characters still have that classic Gears bulkiness and don't aim for photorealism, but they

[07:27] sit more plausibly in any given shot. Eday usually looks much better on a generationally improved lighting technology and greater environmental and character detail. Where Gears 5 likely beats Eday is in the scope of some of

[07:42] the more open vehicle driven gameplay spaces and in the sheer variety of its environments. But Eday is trying to capture more of the grounded gritty industrial feel of Gears 1 and 2, which is a respectable aim even if it's less

[07:56] is a respectable aim even if it's less superficially engaging.

[08:08] as a preview and the coalition has indicated that performance is still a work in progress. So I don't want to delve too deeply into mode comparisons or performance analytics. As far as I can tell the basic structure of the

[08:20] game's modes is the same as the multiplayer beta. As the menus flag four main modes on Series X, in the campaign you can use performance, balanced, or quality modes while the performance plus mode seems to be locked to the game's

[08:33] versus multiplayer outings. The mode comparison here isn't that striking. All the main modes accessible in the campaign have similar features with the specific exception of lumen reflections on transparent surfaces, which only

[08:46] appear in the quality mode. In performance and balanced modes, these reflections are absent though reflections on opaque surfaces remain. differences between the modes as well, but I think they tend to look mostly

[08:59] quite similar. Internally, resolutions around 900p to 1000p are common in performance mode with balanced mode at about 1080p typically and quality mode pegged to about 1152p on average at least in my

[09:13] counts in the campaign. Chromatic aberration and film grain do appear to be forced on in the tested console build just like in the multiplayer beta. I don't mind these effects too much, but for players who do, I think toggles

[09:26] should be available. Performance is pretty good across the tested modes even in this preview state. Quality and balanced modes both run at a virtually locked 30 FPS and 40 FPS update respectively. I wouldn't expect to see

[09:39] any major frame rate drops in these modes, at least during the vast majority of campaign content. Performance mode is a little shakier. Now, most of my gameplay still hits a solid 60 FPS update, especially through the first 40

[09:52] minutes or so of the tested content. But the last third of the playable material here hit some snags with little stutters and more pronounced dips in the more intense daytime city fighting. I also believe I ran into some more significant

[10:05] frame rate wobbles during my first playthrough, but I don't have frame rate pre-release software though, so the frame rate situation may be improved in rate level in the tested campaign content is still better than in the

[10:20] multiplayer beta, which exhibited prolonged frame rate dips in busy horde mode encounters. It's important not to judge anything too harshly [music] at this stage, but even still, I'm not seeing any major problems at the moment.

[10:32] Unfortunately, I can't show capture of a Series S version at the moment due to embargo restrictions. So, we'll have to touch on that version of the game in future coverage. The build we tested is specifically marked as being

[10:45] appropriately optimized for Series X and for PCs that meet a certain spec. I'm generally quite happy with the E-Day campaign preview. This is a bit of a back-to-basics Gears experience, and that's reflected in the game's visual

[10:58] stylings, story, and gameplay structure. The roughly 1 hour of single-player content on display here felt like a fun romp, even if a more adventurous campaign in the style of Gears 5 might have been more interesting to me.

[11:12] Visually, this game is a treat, of course, with the latest UE5 features of evocative artwork and beautiful lighting. Like some other UE5 titles, some aspects of image quality aren't perfect, and performance could use a bit

[11:24] of polish at this stage. But even in this preview state, the visual turnout is quite impressive. I think this game will be a real visual highlight when it If you enjoyed this video, please like, subscribe, and press the bell for

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