Gears Of War 6 is a prequel starring Marcu Fenix but when’s it out?

Just as predicted, a new Gears Of War game was announced at Xbox Games Showcase but it’s not a sequel to Gears 5.

It is a shame that everything always leaks out about most games, long before they ever get an official announcement, but luckily that didn’t really affect the Xbox Games Showcase, which was thoroughly entertaining despite the lack of genuine surprises.

Although in the case of Gears Of War 6 an important detail had been missed out: it’s actually called Gears Of War: E-Day and it’s a prequel, not a sequel.

That’s somewhat surprising, as Gears 5 ended on something of a cliffhanger, but since no one particularly liked that game Microsoft appears to have done a Halo Infinite, with a soft reboot that ensures no homework is necessary to understand what’s going on – although it does help if you know what E-Day is.

Emergence Day is the moment at which the Locust attack the humans on the planet Sera (Gears Of War is not set on Earth, even though it looks like it most of the time) and this new game stars a young Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago, 14 years before the events of the first game.

There had been some speculation that the next Gears Of War would be a full reboot but that’s clearly not the case, so it remains to be seen whether this being a prequel is purely for the nostalgia (you can even hear Mad World in the background) or whether it’s going to try and recontextualise the story of the other games.

The latter does seem to be the goal, but developer The Coalition is keen to make clear that the storyline from Gears 4 and 5 is not being abandoned.

“We’re super proud about Gears 4 and Gears 5 and the stories that were told,’ says brand director Nicole Fawcette on Xbox Wire. ‘We’re not retreating from that storyline in any way. But in [this] moment, we had an opportunity to write our next step, and this one just felt too good to miss.’

Unlike most of the trailers in the Xbox Games Showcase there’s no hint of a release date for E-Day, not even a year. That seems to rule out this year and if they’re not confident enough to say 2025 then 2026 must be a possibility.

It’s unlikely to be any longer than that though, as Gears 5 was 2019 and The Coalition hasn’t made a full game since then. Unless they paused Gears 6 halfway through in order to start this.