The campaign for Gears of War: E-Day is set to arrive imminently, with the Premium Edition granting early access a few days ahead of the standard launch. For players planning their time around the story mode, the experience offers roughly 10-14 hours on normal difficulty when combining collectibles hunting and side missions, though a straight run through can be completed in closer to 11 hours.
The title remains primarily a linear cover-based shooter at its core, but it has expanded beyond that foundation by sprinkling semi-open-world environments between missions. These areas give players the opportunity to hunt down collectibles, locate upgrade packs for their arsenal, and take part in non-story side quests before returning to the main narrative thread.
A Standard-Length Campaign With Room To Explore
If you tackle the campaign on normal difficulty while doing a bit of collectibles hunting and participating in the game’s non-story missions, expect the campaign to take around 10-14 hours to complete. In practice, one playthrough motored through the story and finished in 11 hours, occasionally stopping along the way to track down hidden items, find upgrade packs, and engage with a side quest.
Roughly 60% of that content was covered before reaching the end credits. The game features a war journal that provides a comprehensive list of everything missed in each mission, allowing players to return for a completionist run without having to guess what they overlooked along the way.
The campaign is spread across five acts, each comprising several chapters. Acts 1 and 5 are the shortest of the bunch, while Acts 2 through 4 form the lengthy, meaty parts of the overall narrative. You could easily tackle an act per night and spread them out over a week.
The Full Mission Breakdown
The campaign for Gears of War: E-Day is structured across five acts, each comprising several chapters. Act 1 opens with a prologue followed by four chapters, while Acts 2 and 3 expand to five and six chapters respectively. Act 4 mirrors that length with six chapters before the story closes out with Act 5’s five chapters.
If you want to revisit an earlier mission to hunt down a missing collectible or gear upgrade, this can be done easily from the main menu rather than having to replay entire sections. The structure makes it straightforward to pick up exactly where you left off and fill in any gaps before tackling higher difficulty settings.
Beyond The Campaign
A campaign of that length is fairly standard for a game in this series, but the multiplayer modes look set to consume plenty of additional hours once the story is complete. Players can increase the difficulty to extend playtime, though on higher challenge levels enemies become notably tougher and can quickly burn through your stock of spare lives.
The Horde Siege mode appears to be an especially enjoyable timesink. This new take on the classic Gears of War horde mode revolves around three teams of four players taking on waves of enemies while cooperating with each other to accomplish objectives and survive against increasingly overwhelming odds.
Looking Ahead
With the campaign offering a solid 10-14 hour experience plus extensive multiplayer content, there is plenty to keep players occupied once they finish the story. For those planning ahead, more details are available on when the game launches globally, whether it will arrive on Steam, and what its post-launch roadmap looks like.
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