If you ever played any of the past Gears of War games online against other people, you almost definitely had to interact with players wall-bouncing around levels with shotguns. This has long been a part of the Gears multiplayer meta. But that will be changing in the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day, according to the devs behind the prequel shooter.
Last weekend during Summer Game Fest season, Xbox finally gave us a good look at Gears of War: E-Day, which is launching on October 6 on Xbox and PC. (And not PS5.) While visually it looks a lot like your typical Gears of War, behind the scenes, developers at the Coalition have spent years rebuilding the Gears experience in Unreal 5 using all-new code and assets. This means there will be some changes, including the ability to jump and a new, more traditional sprint, which players can slide out of and into cover.
But perhaps the biggest change that hardcore Gears multiplayer fans will notice is how wall bouncing has been radically changed and is almost gone from E-Day entirely.
“We have forms of wall canceling in there, but you won’t be able to do [wall bouncing] the way you’ve done it in the past,” creative director Matt Searcy told IGN and other outlets in a group interview at SGF.
“There are lots of other things you can do. There are [ways to] play with it, it’s not entirely gone. We think we found a balance in terms of how that really feels. But back to my catchphrase, it is a new game. If you come back expecting it to play exactly like a previous Gears game, it won’t be that way. [It] will probably be an adjustment, but it is also built around the same mechanics.”
Fans react to the big wall bouncing news
The reaction to this news has been mostly positive online, with many players, even those who have used wall-bouncing during matches, thankful that the devs are removing or changing this controversial tactic. If you’ve never seen wall bouncing before, here’s a clip from Gears 5 that shows how powerful it can be and also how annoying and silly it is:
“I have played Gears for 20 years and have learned wall bouncing and utilize it constantly,” said one player on Reddit. “That being said this change is needed. The game is a 3rd person cover based shooter. Wall bouncing out of danger in the open is the complete antithesis of the philosophy of the game.”
“Im in the same boat,” replied someone else. “I’ve played Gears since day 1 and wall-bounced because you sort of had to in order to survive, but the game will be so much better off without it.”
“Hopefully the new system is good, and we can finally kill wall bouncing. That garbage ruined gears,” said someone else.
Others pointed out that it will make Gears of War streams easier to watch, as you won’t have people wildly spinning their cameras around during fights. Of course, some players lamented the change and claimed people need to just get better instead of complaining. But to those people I say: Nah.
I had a lot of fun playing Gears online, but wall bouncing scared away a lot of players for sure, and after a few months it was just wall-bouncing pros dominating every match. And while some of those players were having fun, I’m not sure everyone else was having a good time dealing with their nonsense. It also just made the game boring as it became the de facto way to engage enemies, and you had to do it if you wanted to keep up. Even as the games tried to nerf wall bouncing, people kept doing it.
So I’m 100-percent on board with the Coalition killing or greatly changing wall bouncing. I want a tense cover shooter built around moments of chaos and hunkering down, and hopefully E-Day delivers that multiplayer experience when it arrives in October on Xbox and PC.