Microsoft had a surprisingly decent showing at Summer Game Fest recently, dropping trailers for a number of unexpected games such as Perfect Dark and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The most hype announcement, though, had to be Gears of War: E-Day. The series hadn’t really been mentioned sinceGears 5,after all.
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Going back to E-Day is a great way for Gears of War to return to form, too. It’s a day that’s often been mentioned in past games but almost never shown, making it instantly fascinating. It’ll likely also offer a different kind of war, one with a monstrously strong Locust Horde to fight against. So, here are a few refreshers on what was going on.
Everyone was hoping for a break; they got Emergence Day instead.
For about eighty years prior to the emergence of the Locust Horde, the planet of Sera was engulfed in a series of conflicts known together as the Pendulum Wars, named so because the advantage constantly swung back and forth between the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) and the Union of Independent Republics (UIR).
It was a conflict that, despite most residents of Sera desiring peace, was inevitable due to both sides needing energy resources and only one of them controlling most of said resources. Need really is at the heart of many a tragedy, isn’t it?
9Marcus Fenix Was Already a War Hero
The man was a born soldier through and through.
Marcus Fenix was always going to be a Gear, having admired them ever since he was a child because of his father. This isn’t necessarily something Adam Fenix wanted for his son, though he apparently at least hoped Marcus would serve as an officer. Instead, Marcus joined the COG armed force as a regular enlisted man, a decision Adam tried his hardest to talk him out of.
Despite suffering several personal losses, his best friend Carlos Santiago in particular, Marcus would serve with distinction in the Pendulum Wars. His actions even indirectly contributed to the COG’s ultimate victory, for which he received the COG’s highest honor: the Embry Star.
They were on the run from something worse.
Due to their origin, the Locust were never terribly fond of humans, but thanks to the efforts of men like Adam Fenix, they might have tolerated staying in their underground domain. Unfortunately, the Locust weren’t the only creatures living beneath the surface, and they weren’t even the strongest ones at that.
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If the Horde was going to survive, it would eventually have to move to the surface, giving the Horde the perfect reason to destroy the humans it so loathed. What made E-Day inevitable was the Lambent, former Locust infected with a kind of fungal life-form that mutated its victims and forced them to spread that infection.
7Humanity Created Its Own Greatest Enemy
Someone really needs to keep those sci-fi scientists on shorter leashes.
It’s amazing how often good-hearted intentions result in the greatest evils. In the case of Gears of War, research originally meant to treat a deadly disease eventually resulted in the creation of the Locust. The man most responsible, Dr. Niles Samson, just couldn’t help himself when he saw the potential of his Imulsion research, going so far as to continue even after being ordered to shut it all down.
Samson and his team not only created the several thousand Locust, but also gave them every reason to hate humanity by subjecting them to confinement and horrific experimentation. They even made the Locust Queen think that they’d accidentally killed her daughter, which led directly to the Locust’s rebellion, escape and eventually E-Day.
6Imulsion is The Root of Everyone’s Pain
Turning it into an energy source was the worst possible idea.
The humans of Sera discovered Imulsion almost by accident, thanks to an ever-growing energy crisis. After discovering that it could be refined and made into a cheap and plentiful fuel, the race was on for everyone to acquire as much of it as possible. This, of course, had many unforeseen consequences.
First was the Pendulum Wars for control of deposits of the fungal fluid, then came the creation of the Locust through Imulsion experimentation. Industrial use accelerated its evolution and caused its spread underground, forcing the Locust to emerge and wipe out most of humanity. It’s too bad no one stopped to properly study this stuff before rushing to exploit it, eh?
5Adam Fenix Tried to Stop the War Before It Started
Adam Fenix was one of, if not the most, forward-thinking people on Sera during his lifetime. He was a loyal soldier, father and the genius physicist who completed the research on the Hammer of Dawn and made it a reality. He also discovered the Locust before Emergence Day and agreed to help them combat the Lambent, despite them having killed his wife years earlier.
Had the man been allowed to carry out his efforts to cure or stop the Lambent uninterrupted, perhaps events could have played out differently. Adam was an important figure throughout the Locust War, so it’s likely players will be seeing a lot of him in E-Day too.
4The Locust Attacked Everywhere at Once
Nowhere was safe from the Locust Horde.
The Locust Horde was, if nothing else, well led. Thanks to Myrrah, its queen, and her psychic connection to all Locust, not only was the Horde able to take the humans by surprise, but it was able to do so in almost all of the surface’s major cities. Practically nowhere was safe.
Within the first 26 hours of bursting onto the surface, the Locust had succeeded in exterminating 25 percent of the entire human population. It would go on to fulfill its namesake by stripping those cities of every resource and then moving on to swarm every human settlement it could reach. In other words, fans are looking at urban combat first and foremost.
3Humanity’s Resistance Was Almost Entirely Ineffective
Defense isn’t really doable when the enemy can just dig underneath your position.
After being surprised and immediately decimated by an enemy it neither understood nor even knew existed before the attack, there was little humans could do to stop the Locust at first. Most of the COG’s most competent soldiers were wiped out along with countless civilians during the war’s opening hours, so the COG was pretty much put at a permanent disadvantage in numbers.
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It’s likely that players will get to take part in many of these early engagements, fighting hopelessly against innumerable enemies just to buy a little time. Meaningful gains against the Locust are still years away at this point, so players are in for a different fight here.
2The Hammer of Dawn Wasn’t a War-Ending Weapon
Orbital weapons aren’t that great against a subterranean enemy.
This likely won’t be seen in a game set around the time of E-Day, but there was a time when the COG attempted to end the war by unleashing the full might of the Hammer of Dawn. The plan was to lay waste to almost the entire surface of Sera, save for the cities on the Jacinto Plateau. COG leadership thought it would be enough to kill the bulk of the Horde and deny resources to any remnants.
This plandidsucceed in slowing the Locust down, but that’s it. Most survived in their underground tunnels and eventually re-emerged with even greater determination to destroy humanity’s last remaining strongholds.
1The Kryll Were All Kinds of Devastating
One of the things those who played the first Gear of War quickly learned was that Kryllstorms are a gear’s worst nightmare. Once the skies turn dark, the Kryll have free-range to devour everything in the area; there’s no stopping them.
These ceased to be after the original game, but will no doubt be back for E-Day. In actuality, they’ll probably be an even bigger feature, since E-Day was when the Locust Horde was at its strongest and most numerous. Night and Nemacyst-inked skies will likely make for a whole different kind of combat, turning every move into a calculated risk.
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