MS Staff Reveal: The Gears of War E-Day Trailer Was “FULL REALTIME”

We have some interesting insight on the development of Gears of War: E-Day.

On Twitter, video game events organizer Geoff Keighley said this in reaction to the Gears of War: E-Day trailer:

“The great Gears of War piece was a CG from Blur Studio, using in-game assets from UE5.

Game info: Gears of War: E-Day is the next mainline game in the Gears of War universe, set during the pivotal Emergence Day. Fourteen years before Gears of War, war heroes Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago return home to face a new nightmare: the Locust Horde.

 These subterranean monsters, grotesque and relentless, erupt from below, laying siege on humanity itself.”

The thing was, even though Geoff was helping promote the game, he actually got it wrong because he didn’t know how it was actually made. He got a response from Xbox marketing director Guy Welch:

“Glad you liked it! Blur developed the trailer hand-in-hand with our team @CoalitionGears  using @UnrealEngine 5. The trailer is developed with in-game models, textures, environments and props that players will see in the final game.

This follows the same method that we used for the Gears of War trailers for the first three games, which were made in Unreal Engine with in-game assets, showcasing the engine’s technical capabilities and we’re pushing that even further with Unreal Engine 5.”

But he got an even more interesting response from Jamir Blanco, a digital artist working in fellow Microsoft studio Blizzard:

“Let me rephrase this a little better.. the amazing Gears piece you just saw was FULL REALTIME. With realtime models, textures, environments, etc. All within Unreal Engine 5. Saying it was a “CG from Blur Studio” diminishes  all the technical achievements you probably didn’t notice from how good it was.

Though it looks like another pre-rendered CG piece from Blur, it was actually a realtime masterpiece using in-game assets and RT lighting in the same engine the game will play. Already seeing people say  “yeah it was cool, but it was a CG (pre-rendered) trailer” because of stuff like this.

They also didn’t just use in-game assets from UE5, they did the whole thing inside UE5.”

We should focus on where Xbox games are now, thanks to The Coalition. We got a preview of this with Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga, where gamers couldn’t actually tell whether what they were looking at was cutscene animated in CG separately, or whether it was footage that was made in the engine itself.

That shows the power of Unreal Engine 5, and the technical prowess of The Coalition. While no one can say PlayStation 5 looks ugly by comparison, it’s pretty obvious that even the newest games from first party studios from that company don’t get this uncanny valley-breaking moments.

And if Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga was always going to be a niche title, the same isn’t true of Gears of War: E-Day. It is not only the first Gears of War game in the last five years, it’s the first time gamers will get to play with Dom again in the last thirteen years.

We absolutely cannot wait to find out more about Gears of War: E-Day, and especially when it finally releases.