Gears of War: E-Day launched on October 6 on Xbox Series X|S and PC, through the Xbox app and on Steam, and in Game Pass from day one. Premium Edition owners have been playing since October 1. Critics gave it an 87 on Metacritic, the series' best result since Gears of War 3. And on PC it has one hard condition: without a graphics card with hardware ray tracing, the game is not supported.
E-Day is a prequel, the story of Emergence Day, the night the Locust burst out of the ground. Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago spend three days and three nights trying to survive in the city of Kalona. On Steam the game costs 69.99 dollars, and with Xbox Play Anywhere one purchase works on both console and PC.
Reviews and the first reception
- Critics. 87 on Metacritic from 68 reviews. That is higher than Gears of War 4 and Gears 5 (84 each), but below the original trilogy's 94, 93 and 91.
- Campaign only. Multiplayer, the Horde Siege mode and ranked matches were locked when reviews went out, so the scores cover the story for now.
- Players on Steam. "Mostly Positive", 76 percent of 5,235 reviews as of October 7. Steam concurrent players that evening were around 19,700, but that excludes Game Pass, where the game is also available.
Tech on Xbox: Unreal Engine 5 and 60 fps at the cost of resolution
The game was built on Unreal Engine 5, and Microsoft promises 4K and up to 60 fps. In practice, 4K is the output resolution after TSR upscaling. According to Digital Foundry's analysis, as summarized by PureXbox, Series X has three modes: 1152p at 30 fps, 1000p at 40 and 936p at 60. Series S has the same three modes, but from 729p down to 576p. In linear levels the frame rate holds steady, in large open districts it dips, and the 60 fps mode on Series S drops often, with only a 120 Hz VRR TV coming to the rescue. Even so, Digital Foundry calls E-Day one of the best-looking Unreal games ever.
Tech on PC: ray tracing required, DLSS 4.5 and Mega Geometry
- Hardware ray tracing is mandatory. The minimum is a GeForce RTX 2060, RTX 5050, Radeon RX 6600 or RX 9060. Cards like the GTX 1060 and RX 580 are not supported. We covered the full requirements table separately.
- A choice of upscalers. DLSS 4.5, FSR 4, XeSS 3.0 and the engine's own TSR. DLSS 4.5 brings frame generation, dynamic multi frame generation and ray reconstruction.
- RTX Mega Geometry. NVIDIA technology that lets ray tracing work with the very dense geometry Unreal Engine 5 builds with Nanite. In E-Day NVIDIA showed a new evolution of it, the technology first appeared in Alan Wake 2. According to NVIDIA, the approach will become part of the DirectX Raytracing 2.0 standard, so over time it will not be limited to GeForce.
NVIDIA's numbers deserve a grain of salt. "7.5X faster at 4K" and 410 fps on an RTX 5090 come with dynamic frame generation, on the Ultra preset with ray tracing and Mega Geometry. In other words, most of those frames are generated by a neural network, and that has nothing to do with how responsive the controls feel. Independent measurements across different cards are still scarce, and we are waiting for them from outlets that test for themselves.
Sources
Release date, platforms and early access: The Coalition's Steam posts from October 1 and 6, 2026, and Xbox Wire. The 87 from 68 reviews: Metacritic, October 8. Comparison with earlier games and the note that multiplayer was not reviewed: GamesRadar+ and TechTimes. Reviews and player count: Steam, October 7. Series X and Series S modes: Digital Foundry via PureXbox. PC tech, DLSS 4.5 and RTX Mega Geometry, "7.5X" and 410 fps: NVIDIA, October 6, 2026. Price and requirements: the game's Steam page.
Images: Gears of War: E-Day, official Steam screenshots. Video: the official Xbox channel.
