Today's Xbox Showcase delivered some truly incredible announcements and reveals. But while games like Fable and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle were great to see again, and titles like Mixtape, Winter Burrow, and Atomfall all showed the great diversity of games Xbox has to offer right now, few announcements could hold a candle to Gears of War: E-Day.

Though the Gears of War franchise was heavily rumored to appear during this year's Xbox Showcase, the loudest murmurs suggested that it would come in the form of a Halo: Master Chief Collection-like remaster of the original Gears of War trilogy. Some rumors did suggest that the next mainline Gears of War entry would be announced during the Xbox Showcase, but it being a prequel set 14 years before the events of the first game was something practically no one expected. Titled Gears of War: E-Day, there's a lot of lore behind this prequel's name to unpack.

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Gears of War: What Is E-Day?

The Pendulum Wars Set The Stage

The Gears of War franchise is set on Sera, an Earth-like planet that's always been home to the human race. Much like real-world Earth history, Sera's human race has warred frequently with itself, and one of the most bloody human-vs-human conflicts takes place just prior to the events of the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day. About 95 years before the events of the first Gears of War game, a violent conflict breaks out between the two ruling factions of the planet, the Coalition of Governments, and the Union of Independent Republics.

These two factions waged war against one another for almost 80 years, both fighting over Sera's dwindling supplies of naturally occurring Imulsion, which was used as a powerful form of energy. Both sides committed some horrific acts, including the use of the devastating orbital, satellite-based laser, the Hammer of Dawn, which eventually brought about an end to the war. Over the 79 years, millions of human lives were lost.

Emergence Day Kickstarts The Gears of War Franchise

Just six weeks after the Pendulum Wars' end, the human race on Sera experiences a moment that forever changes the course of history, so much so that everything in the Gears of War timeline is based around this one event: Emergence Day. With much of the population still recovering from a brutal 80-year-long war, the human race was at its most vulnerable, and that's when the Locust Horde decided to attack.

While the true origins of the Locust are still a little murky, it's believed that at some point during the Pendulum Wars, mutated beings found their way deep under the planet's surface. These mutated beings adapted to living underground, and over the course of a few decades became a thriving, albeit deeply sadistic society. When Imulsion started to infect the Locust and turn them into the Lambent, the Locust decided to try and escape to the surface of Sera, but to do so it needed to wipe out the human race first.

In an extremely coordinated, strategic move, the Locust Horde attacked all major human cities on the surface of Sera at once, emerging from the ground simultaneously to take the human race by surprise. One of the first cities to fall was Jannermont, one of the humans' largest military bases. From there, the Locust spread across Sera's surface, murdering every human in their way. Gears of War: E-Day is set on this fateful day.

Gears of War

Xbox Game Studios' Gears of War franchise began on the Xbox 360 and instantly became a flagship franchise for the green brand. The original Gears of War trilogy is considered one of the finest in the history of the third-person shooter genre, with the trilogy's intense action and surprisingly touching story moments creating memorable experiences.

The series has had another two solid main series entries since and even a turn-based tactics game.