Major spoilers follow.
Laura Fryer has finally weighed in on Gears of War: E-Day, and she did not hold back on the story. Fryer worked on the first two Gears of War games, and she said she held off on commenting until she had actually played through the new one herself. Her verdict, in a new video on her YouTube channel, is split. She likes a lot of the game. She does not like what it does with Marcus.
She opens by explaining why this one hits close to home: "this one is personal for me because I worked on the first two, and I really wanted Gears to be great. And a lot of it is. The shooting is still Gears, the reviews are solid." The problem, as she sees it, is the brotherhood between Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago. "the bond is still in there, but it's not the focus of the story. The campaign keeps pulling the other squad members into the center."
Check out the full video below:
The Emergence Hole Scene
The Coalition released E-Day on October 6th as a prequel set 14 years before the original game, on the day the Locust first broke through the surface of Sera. Bravo Squad is Marcus, Dom, and two new characters, Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes. Fryer's main example comes from a moment where an emergence hole opens up and the squad has to figure out how to shut it. Someone steps up to handle it, and it is not Marcus.
"In the old Gears, that was Marcus, the hero. In this game, it isn't," she said. Her point is about who is holding the controller. "if you play this game alone, like I did, you play as Marcus. You are the hero. That scene should have been yours."
She is also clear about what she thinks the real complaint is. "They're not mad because Mag is in the game, they're not mad because Mag is a woman. The player was the hero." Gears has always sold itself on you and Dom against everything the Locust can throw at you. In her words, "In this story, you're just watching."
Dom, Carlos, And A Badly Timed Cough
The second example is the one that clearly stung the most. Dom is holding the tags of his brother Carlos, tearing up, and about to hand them to Marcus. Fryer said she was holding her breath waiting for the payoff. Then Mags coughs, the moment breaks, and the scene moves on. She said the payoff "completely evaporated."
Fryer also compared the new squad to the original crew. Cole Train kept the mood up. Baird went from jackass to trusted friend over time, and his friendship with Cole mirrored Marcus and Dom. She said those characters earned their scenes, and that Mags and Reyes get a lot of screen time without ever getting players there. Her take is that players will forgive a lot of story problems if they like who they are stuck with.
What E-Day Gets Right
It is not all negative. Fryer praised the brutality, which she said the original team called "intimate violence." She loved watching a beautiful city get wrecked in real time, and said she got distracted just looking at the scenery. The horror landed for her too, with gruesome moments that sell what Emergence Day would have felt like for the people living through it. She did note complaints about the missing chainsaw duels and meat shields, but thinks those could be added later.
That lines up with how the game is doing with players. Fryer pointed to "High 80s from the press, mostly positive on Steam." The Steam page currently sits at Mostly Positive, with 7,607 positive reviews and 2,781 negative ones. She thinks that split comes down to two audiences. One got enough of what they wanted from the shooting and spectacle. The other came for the Marcus and Dom story and did not get it.
Sales, Game Pass, And The Coalition's Future
Fryer was more worried about the business side. She said early sales do not look great, a lot of players are on Game Pass, and she believes E-Day probably does not make its money back. She added that Microsoft chose to keep the game exclusive on purpose, so the real measure may be Game Pass hours and Xbox engagement, numbers nobody outside the company can see.
She also mentioned that Coalition studio head Mike Crump was asked about layoff worries after launch and talked about focusing on what the team can control, with E-Day serving as a foundation so the next game should not take as long. Fryer is still rooting for them. "the story was a miss, but that miss is fixable with better writing," she said.
Coming from someone who helped build the series, that is a fair amount of praise mixed in with the criticism. The gunplay, gore, and destruction are there. The heart of the Marcus and Dom story is where she thinks it slipped.
Do you agree with Fryer that E-Day sidelines Marcus, or do you think Mags and Reyes deserve the spotlight they get?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.