The Gears of War: E-Day Beta Shows UE5 Visuals at Their Best, Despite Sometimes Shaky Performance on Series X/S

Key Points:

• Gears of War: E-Day beta showcases The Coalition's latest project, highlighting Unreal Engine 5 features like Nanite assets, hardware Lumen global illumination, and MegaLights to deliver ray-traced visuals at 60fps on Xbox Series X/S and PC.
• The Xbox Series X version offers three modes—performance (60fps), quality (30fps), and balanced (40fps)—with minor visual trade-offs such as persistent chromatic aberration and film grain; performance mode maintains smooth multiplayer but dips frame rates during intense PvE horde encounters.
• The multiplayer beta shows limited environmental destructibility compared to the single-player campaign, with fewer breakable elements, suggesting major destruction effects may be reserved for the story mode.
• Xbox Series S runs the game with lower internal resolutions and reduced graphical fidelity but maintains a similar frame-rate profile to Series X, including occasional performance dips during demanding scenes.
• Overall, Gears of War: E-Day is a strong demonstration of Unreal Engine 5’s capabilities on current-gen consoles, combining effective art direction and lighting, with potential improvements expected before the full release on October 6.