Gears of War: E-Day has been out for just over a week, and modders are already dropping Halo Spartans and Warhammer 40,000 Space Marines into the fight against the Locust. A new PC mod called Incursion, from game designer Tom Whaley (@Unreal_Dev on X), adds a full skin selector to the game. With it, you can dress up Marcus, Dom, Mags, and Lucas as characters from several of the biggest sci-fi franchises around.
Whaley teased the project on October 7 with a simple question to his followers, asking "What would #Halo made by The Coalition look like?" The post picked up close to 2,000 likes and almost 90,000 views. Check out the post below:
The lineup goes beyond Halo and Warhammer. The Incursion also includes Clone Troopers from Star Wars, along with a set of skins that fit inside the Gears universe for players who want something that looks a little more at home on Sera. Windows Central took a closer look at the Halo options and found that you can replace the entire main cast with Noble Team from Halo: Reach. The only exception is Noble 6, whose spot goes to Master Chief instead.
Swapping skins is about as easy as it gets. The mod adds a new Skins tab to the Settings menu, and you can pick a look for each of the four main characters from the main menu or from the pause menu while you are playing. Changes take effect without restarting the game, so you can start a chapter as Marcus and Dom and finish it as a squad of Spartans.
It has been pointed out that Incursion streamlines what is usually a multi-mod setup for this kind of thing. In most games, changing character models means manually swapping files or reinstalling a different mod for every look you want to try. Incursion keeps all of that in one place, and the mod page describes it as the foundation for future Incursion character packs and community-made skins down the line.
The Nexus Mods page for the mod is listed under the name WarhammerWorkshop, and Windows Central credited it to a creator known for mods for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. The creator is also pointing players toward a dedicated Gears of War: E-Day modding Discord for testing, feedback, and tools as the scene gets off the ground.
There are a couple of things to know before you jump in. Incursion is PC only, and you will need your own copy of Gears of War: E-Day to run it. Installation is handled by unzipping the download and copying its contents directly into the game's installation folder, merging files if prompted. The full instructions are on the Incursion Skin Select Menu page on Nexus Mods.
The skin selector is one of two Incursion releases so far. The same creator uploaded an Incursion Split Screen mod on October 7, which adds a second local campaign player on PC with a toggle for a horizontal or vertical split. Split-screen co-op is officially available on console only, so PC players who want to share a couch for the campaign now have an option as well.
The mods arrive during an interesting first couple of weeks for the game. Gears of War: E-Day opened in early access on October 1 for players who bought the Premium upgrade and launched worldwide on October 6 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and Steam. It also landed day one on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. The game was developed by The Coalition with People Can Fly co-developing, and it released in the same year the series celebrates its 20th anniversary.
Last week, Alinea Analytics head of marketing analysis Rhys Elliott estimated that E-Day sold around 230,000 copies in its first week. Steam made up 168,000 of those sales, with the other 62,000 coming from Xbox across console and PC. Elliott pointed to Game Pass as the main reason, estimating that 1.7 million players accessed the game through the subscription and that 722,000 of them paid $30 for the Premium upgrade. Alinea put the game's total revenue so far at about $37 million. These figures are unofficial estimates and have not been confirmed by Microsoft.
Earlier this month, The Coalition studio head Mike Crump also spoke to the BBC as staff at the studio worried about possible job losses amid the ongoing cuts at Xbox. Crump told the team to focus on what it can control and said that E-Day gives the studio a "great foundation" for future games. He added that "the next game will not take nearly as long" to make, which would be welcome news after the seven-year gap between Gears 5 in 2019 and E-Day.
That fresh foundation is also why some series staples are missing right now. E-Day was built largely from scratch in Unreal Engine 5 instead of on top of earlier Gears games, and it launched without meat shields or chainsaw duels. Those features will likely return in future entries now that the groundwork for them is done.
Until then, the modding community seems happy to fill the gap with Spartans, Space Marines, and Clone Troopers. It has also been noted that other early E-Day mods are mostly HUD tweaks and performance fixes, which makes Incursion the standout mod for the game so far.
Would you rather run the E-Day campaign as Noble Team and Master Chief, or does a squad of Space Marines feel like the better fit for fighting the Locust?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.