Gears of War: E-Day transports players back to the most catastrophic day in Sera’s history, but according to GameSpot’s review of the campaign, this long-awaited prequel may be too busy looking backward to say anything new. Set 14 years before the original Gears of War, E-Day follows a young Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago as the Locust Horde erupts from the ground and plunges humanity into war. It is a premise dripping with potential — and, as the review argues, one that the campaign struggles to fully capitalize on.
What Makes a Great Prequel?
GameSpot’s review opens with a compelling thesis: the best prequels all share one crucial quality. Whether it’s Red Dead Redemption 2, Yakuza 0, Metal Gear Solid 3, or Halo: Reach, each of these games tells a story that fundamentally recontextualizes what came before it. Replaying the original game after finishing a great prequel should feel like a different experience, with characters, locations, and iconic scenes taking on entirely new meaning.
Lessons From Red Dead Redemption 2 and Halo: Reach
Red Dead Redemption 2 is the gold standard here. Its story adds emotional weight to the first game, humanizing the gang members that John Marston is forced to hunt down and transforming a simple revenge-and-redemption tale into a tragic portrait of a dying way of life. Similarly, Halo: Reach weaponizes its inevitable, doom-laden ending to make every moment of heroism hit harder, while Yakuza 0 and Metal Gear Solid 3 reframe their protagonists’ later journeys in devastating new light.
Where E-Day’s Campaign Gets Buried
The core criticism leveled by GameSpot is baked right into the review’s title: E-Day’s campaign is buried in the past. Rather than recontextualizing the Gears of War saga, the campaign appears content to retread familiar ground, leaning on nostalgia and fan service instead of offering fresh insight into characters players have followed for nearly two decades.
The Prequel Trap
E-Day faces a challenge every prequel must confront: the audience already knows how the story ends. Emergence Day has been referenced, flashbacked, and expanded upon across multiple games and novels for years. The best prequels embrace that foreknowledge and use it to deepen the saga — but if a prequel merely walks players through events they’ve already imagined, it risks feeling like an elaborate wiki entry rather than an essential story.
Our Take: A Wasted Opportunity or a Foundation for More?
From our perspective at TURGAME, E-Day’s situation reflects a broader trend in big-budget game development. After Gears 5’s ambitious — and divisive — campaign, returning to the franchise’s safest, most beloved era feels like a deliberate retreat into comfort. Young Marcus and Dom are an undeniable draw, and The Coalition’s Unreal Engine 5-powered vision of a crumbling Sera looks stunning. But the Gears formula of cover-based shooting is itself a relic of the 2000s, and a prequel that clings to both its narrative past and its mechanical past risks feeling like a museum piece. That said, if E-Day sells well, it could still lay the groundwork for the series to finally move its timeline forward.
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Source: GameSpot