Gears of War: E-Day developers have reassured fans that multiplayer information is coming soon, following the game’s single player-focused Xbox Game Showcase appearance.
Following the Gears of War: E-Day showcase, palpable excitement from fans was unmissable online. Still, given the significant changes to movement mechanics we saw, questions are flooding Gears community hubs about how this will all work in multiplayer.
Speaking to press following the showcase, Eurogamer asked if there was more that could be revealed to anxious fans, lead developers including brand director Nicole Fawcette, creative director Matt Searcy, and art director Aaryn Hanbeck provided a few breadcrumbs teasing future announcements.
“It’s coming!,” said Fawcette. “This is our gameplay reveal, we haven’t shown anything of this game, so we really wanted to set that groundwork. Especially from that reveal trailer which was really cinematic, to show the world the characters and story. We have a lot coming.”
Searcy followed up with some further words of reassurance to Gears of War’s keen multiplayer community. He said: “Hopefully they see this as a good thing, not a bad thing. Rather than try and divide the time three ways, we wanted to give each part its proper deep-dive.”
Although, there were a few hints towards the four-player squad format taking the main stage yet again from Searcy for its Siege game mode (a spin on older game’s Horde mode) to tide folks over.
“There’s an intersection between gameplay mechanics, story, and characters. So even if you’re playing a multiplayer mode in Gears, you’re playing as canonical characters with personality. There’s this vibe when you have these four characters interacting with each other, four players with all sorts of mechanics in play.
“We’ve tried things in the past where we’ve had five person multiplayer modes, and it’s not that this doesn’t work, but there’s something special about the four versus four format. So some of the reasons behind our Siege game mode was a way for us to gauge what a four player co-op on a larger map was like. We’re excited to talk about that more in the future on why that works, but it keeps that feeling of being the squad alive. We’re able to expand into a larger mode with more players, without losing those [that].”
Gears of War: E-Day was Microsoft’s star player during its showcase, being one of two games coming just to the Xbox console and PC, not PlayStation, in a steer back towards exclusives. When this decision was made for Gears of War: E-Day remains a hot topic, especially with a post-show video featuring the PS5 logo.
