You can really tell that Gears of War: E-Day developer, The Coalition, wants the upcoming third-person shooter to be enjoyed by more than just Gears diehards. In last Sunday’s developer Direct, the studio recalled the decision to start development from an empty hard drive.
And the results are clear. E-Day is a faster game that brings major updates to character movement, environmental traversal, cover dynamics, and even shooting mechanics. Anyone even remotely familiar with the series, of course, knows about its active reload mechanic.
This is essentially a mini-QTE that tests your reflexes every time you press the reload button to rechamber any weapon. Land in that sweet spot, and you’re rewarded.
If you watched any of the E-Day gameplay footage released so far, you might have noticed that the active reload bar is now in the middle of the screen. Not only is the UI element itself larger and easier to read, it now sits closer to where your eyes are going to be naturally drawn to.
In a follow-up presentation at Summer Game Fest, attended by Eurogamer, members of the development team revealed that the middle of the screen is the active reload bar’s default position.
“It feels better when we’ve played it, when we’ve tested it,” the developer said.
“Telemetry-wise, [and] just watching people, we actually find they use this mechanic way more than when it was up there. Because you can learn it much more easily. It’s in your face every time you do that.”
Historically, the active reload indicator has been placed under the weapon icon. That meant having to dart your eyes to one corner of the screen every time you wanted to pull off a perfect reload, which obviously meant you’re no longer focused on what’s in front of you.
Longtime players, of course, know the timing for the different weapons by heart, so they have no need for an indicator. For the rest of us, however, this is very much welcome. And, yes, the developer confirmed that there’ll be an option to move it back to the classic position.
The team also revealed during the same presentation that some of the weapons now have additional reload mechanics. The shotgun, for instance, now reloads each shell individually, allowing you to interrupt the reload to fire off what’s been loaded if you need to. Doing so will cause you to miss out on the active reload bonus, of course, but it’s nice to see a little bit of added depth to this aspect of combat
Gears of War: E-Day arrives 6th October on PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
