'We really wanted the city to feel like a character in our game' — Gears of War: E-Day studio creative director says the game will make you 'care' about the city's fall through environmental storytelling | Tech Radar

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'We really wanted the city to feel like a character in our game' — Gears of War: E-Day studio creative director says the game will make you 'care' about the city's fall through environmental storytelling

"To make the stakes higher, we have to be able to go deeper"

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Gears of War: E-Day studio creative director Matt Searcy says players will "care about the fall of" the game's singular city setting

Searcy says "environmental storytelling" deepens the game's gameplay and exploration

The game is linear, but players will have some freedom in how they explore and complete missions

The Coalition wants players to "care" about Gears of War: E-Day's singular city location by deepening exploration and environmental storytelling.

That's according to studio creative director Matt Searcy, who dived into all the juicy details about the prequel's new mechanics and city setting of Kolana in an interview with Tech Radar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026.

He said the team wanted E-Day to be different from previous Gears entries in terms of location, explaining that in order to make players care about a city that is going to be destroyed by the Locust Horde invasion.

"One of the big differences between E-Day and other Gears titles, especially Gears 5, is that rather than going from one different location to another to another, from the desert to the forest to the ice glaciers, the whole game takes place in one city, so that has a lot of advantages now," Searcy said.

"There are a lot of distinct districts in the city, so there are tons of varieties, so don't worry, some of them won't look the same. But we really wanted the city to feel like a character in our game. For the first time in a franchise, you're gonna watch something get destroyed, because it's always already destroyed [...] and for you to care about the fall of the city, you have to care about the city, of that place, and to make the stakes higher, we have to be able to go deeper."

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To translate this: E-Day is restricted to one location, the city, allowing the studio to "go way, way, way deeper" in terms of world-building and "environmental storytelling."

For instance, players can travel through several areas of the city, such as the Downtown, Historic, and Military districts, and encounter things like abandoned apartments and unfinished meals, showing that people left in a hurry.

Players will also explore areas before they're destroyed, and then when they revisit them later, they will be visually different, with certain environmental assets and items that clue players in if they don't recognize them.

"Throughout the whole game, you start to feel the feeling that the characters are feeling, which is the city falling apart around us, and it's sad," Searcy said.

He later confirmed that the game is still linear, and players can't go off and do whatever missions they choose, but environmental storytelling helped deepen exploration and gameplay in this "intimate journey."

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"You're supposed to go over to this place and do this thing that someone's telling you to [do]," he said, "but how you make your way there, across that neighborhood, what you come across; other people fighting, surviving, [you can] help them out on your way through.

"Just what you see in the wreckage in the city, the environmental storytelling, it allowed us to get way more variety in our gameplay than the way that you play the game, but also tell all these stories about Kalona that you might not have otherwise [seen] if we were doing hallway to hallway to hallway."

Gears of War: E-Day launches on October 6 exclusively for Xbox Series X and Series S.

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Demi is a freelance games journalist who helps cover gaming news at Tech Radar. She's been a games writer for five years and has written for outlets such as Game Spot, NME, and Games Radar, covering news, features, and reviews. Outside of writing, she plays a lot of RPGs and talks far too much about Star Wars on X.

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Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards