Gears of War: E-Day Voice Actors Reveal A Massive Comeback

Gears of War: E-Day's development has been slow and covert, with new information regarding its timing and planned marketing campaign only starting to surface. Executives from Xbox, including Head of Xbox Phil Spencer, lately visited The Coalition headquarters in Vancouver, which raised hope regarding the game's development. Longstanding Gears of War voice performers have been teasing the project, generating speculations of a significant reveal almost here.

Gears of War: E-Day, which debuted nine months ago during the Xbox Game 2024 June Showcase, revealed that the next iteration in the franchise will not be Gears 6 but rather a genesis story centered on Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago on Emergence Day. Set in the COG city of Colona, the game shows the destruction resulting from the first onslaught by the Locust Horde against humans.

Since the announcement, few details have been provided about the game's development, so many people believe it is still in the early phases and will not be published anytime soon. New findings, however, reveal that this is far from accurate.

Based on data gleaned from The Coalition developers' LinkedIn profiles, Gears of War: E-Day has been in active development since early 2020, almost five years ago. Apparently, a senior designer who has spent over 13 years with The Coalition helping every Gears of War project has been working on E-Day for five years and three months.

Working on the project since October 2020, a ten-year veteran principal sound designer for the company has put almost four and a half years of effort behind it. Claiming that what started as a temporary contract evolved into four years of work on their largest project to date, another developer's profile revealed that a character designer worked on the game from August 2020 to August 2024.

This chronology lines up with significant turning points in Gears of War history, especially the change of leadership in February 2020. After Gears 5 came out, the Coalition held a Gears of War conference where Rod Fergusson quit the studio. Leading a team of Gears veterans comprising Matt Searcy as creative director, Nicole Fawcette as brand director, Aryan Hanbeck as art director, Colin Penty as technical art director, and Kate Rayner as technical director, Mike Crump took over as studio head.

At this meeting, the Coalition decided on the franchise's future and decided that Gears 5 would get eight operations of content support. Shortly after, they became among the first outside of Epic Games to have early access to Unreal Engine 5, which proved vital in the choice to turn the brand toward a fresh start.

The Coalition focused on Unreal Engine 5 technologies throughout 2020 and 2021, producing numerous tech demos, including the Alpha Point demo, which highlighted next-generation graphical features; the Cavern cinematic test, which highlighted new MetaHumans technology; and the studio's contributions to The Matrix Awakening: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience.

The Coalition and People Can Fly started full production on Gears of War: E-Day as more left Gears 5 content support and worked on the Hivebusters DLC. Now spanning five years, the long production time suggests that the project is almost finished, therefore increasing the likelihood of a significant improvement appearing shortly—perhaps during the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2025.

To add to the buzz, several well-known Gears of War voice actors have begun subtly hinting at E-Day on social media. Both Lester Speight, who voices Augustus Cole, and Carlos Ferro, who voices Dom Santiago, posted images from the game's introduction video showing Marcus and Dom viewing the COG city of Colona before the Locust attack. Simultaneously tweeting the same photograph on Twitter and Instagram, the two performers tagged the official Gears of War account on what looks to be a concerted social media campaign.

Given that Carlos Ferro had already stated that he would be reprising his role as Dom in E-Day, his inclusion was expected. However, Lester Speight's essay raises new issues as Augustus Cole does not meet Marcus and Dom until Gear of War 1, fourteen years following Emergence Day.

Although Cole is not likely to be very important for E-Day, a Thrashball Cole statue was seen in the game's announcement video, implying a cameo. The teaser tweets of the voice actors suggest that marketing events for Gears of War: E-Day will be building up, possibly resulting in fresh reveals in the next months.

Gears of War: E-Day seems to have progressed further than many fans had anticipated, given almost five years of production and growing signals from both The Coalition and prominent Gears of War series members. All signs point to an upcoming revelation as the Xbox Games Showcase approaches in June, opening the path for the most important Gears of War rebirth in years.