Gears of War: E-Day gets co-creator CliffyB's seal of approval as the prequel "gives the people what they want"

Gear of War: E-Day has received a seal of approval from the series' original co-creator.

Gears of War: E-Day is throwing it back to a time when the now familiar subterranean Locust army was nothing more than an unidentified scaly demon horde that had just popped out of the ground more than 14 years before the first game even started. Developer The Coalition decided to go down the nostalgic route with main man Marcus Fenix back in the spotlight and everyone's favorite beefcake Dom Santiago fully resurrected - an approach that seems to have wooed long-time fans and developers alike.

Cliff 'CliffyB' Bleszinski, the lead designer and co-creator of the first three Gears of War games, said E-Day's "back to basics" trailer gave him "chills" in a series of recent tweets. According to Bleszinski, the prequel approach "gives the people what they want (Dom and Marcus)" and leaves "plenty of room for set pieces."

Having worked on the series during its conception, Bleszinski happens to have a few theories about what the game might depict too. Bleszinski points to the "Welcome Home" banner in the reveal trailer, which might indicate that the characters are "fresh off the Pendulum Wars" - the regular human war that preceded the Locust invasion. "Prologue might be a chapter in the Pendulum Wars," he adds, though it should be noted that Gears of War 4 began in much the same way.

Speaking of theories, the co-creator reckons there will "probably" be a "heart-wrenching scene where we see Dom rushing to save Maria before she gets taken." For the uninitiated, Dom's struggle to rescue his wife Maria from the Locust is a recurring point of focus in the original trilogy and led to some of Gears' most iconic scenes, so, yeah, I'd also be surprised if E-Day didn't callback (call forward?) to those events. The prequel already seems eager to tug on our heartstrings if that Mad World remix is any indication.

Elsewhere, Bleszinski mulls over how the Lancer ("chainsaw gun") and Hammer of Dawn (orbital lasers) might come into play since the former doesn't even exist yet and the latter was a new, controversial invention in the Gearsverse that ended the Pendulum Wars. There is indeed a canon explanation for the Lancer's birth, but I'd rather see some rookie casually sellotape a chainsaw and rifle together while everyone else scoffs, "well, that's never going to work."

Gears of War: E-Day is rewinding the clocks, but The Coalition hints it still has eyes on Gears 6: “We’re not retreating from that storyline in any way.”