Gears of War: E-Day Walkthrough

How the campaign is structured

E-Day tells its story over a Prologue, five Acts and an Epilogue, with 26 numbered chapters in between. Acts 3 and 4 are the largest, with six chapters each. The campaign is linear and focused rather than an open world, a deliberate change from the open areas of Gears 5.

Expect each chapter to take around 30 to 40 minutes, and longer if you stop for collectibles. Most players finish a first run in 14 to 16 hours. The developer itself calls it the longest campaign The Coalition has made, at more than 14 hours.

You can play solo, with a second player in split-screen on one Xbox, or with up to four players online. Everything here applies in co-op too, but solo players should keep an eye on AI squadmates, who sometimes fail to revive you.

Every Act and chapter

Chapter titles match across independent walkthroughs, so you can use this list to find your place. If you want every pickup along the way, pair this page with our collectibles guide, which breaks the counts down by chapter.

Act 1: Emergence

The opening sets the scene on Sera, a planet where war has raged for 79 years over the energy resource Imulsion. That war has just ended and humanity is close to peace, when a far deeper threat starts to emerge from below. You play as Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago, 14 years before the original Gears of War.

Act 1 opens as the Pendulum Wars end and the Locust surface beneath Kalona. The first chapter teaches melee with a metal pipe and the Snub Pistol before you earn the Chainsaw Lancer. Use this act to practise cover-to-cover movement and Active Reload while enemies are still forgiving.

Weapon caches around Kalona let you swap your loadout, so do not feel locked into the guns you pick up. Collectibles announce themselves with an audio chime, which is the easiest habit to learn early. Act 1 holds 13 collectibles across its four chapters.

Act 2: Bravo Squad and Hold the Line

Act 2 brings Bravo Squad together and contains the densest chapter in the game. Chapter 2, Hold the Line, sprawls across areas including the Bank of Tyrus and the Warehouse District. It also holds seven secondary objectives, so take your time here if you want completion.

Secondary objectives are optional side missions that add story context and reward weapon mods. The act closes with Overrun, which plays out mostly inside the Point Fairlight hangar. Expect heavier waves and fight from cover rather than pushing into the open.

Act 3: the Corpser boss

Act 3 is where the campaign gets bigger, and chapter 2, Enemy Lines, ends with the Corpser. The key to this fight is the arena, not your trigger finger. Bait the Corpser into charging the pillars around the room and let the environmental damage wear it down.

Shooting it directly does little, so prioritise staying mobile and positioning so its charges hit the pillars. The rest of the act — The Convoy, Desperate Times and Desperate Measures — escalates the set pieces. Brumak encounters, including a Weaponized Brumak, also appear over the course of the campaign.

Acts 4 and 5: Scoria and Vraahk

Act 4 has the most collectibles of any Act and a fight against two Scoria at a converter. Chapters such as Hope and Ruin and Tough As Nails are long, so save your heavy weapons for the big encounters. The act ends with Critical Failure, which sets up the final push.

The final boss in Act 5 is Vraahk, also known as the Impaler, the Blight commander of the Scorched Legion. His head is the weak point, so aim high whenever he exposes it. He sprays Imulsion along three straight lines, and standing in it stacks damage, so step out of those lanes immediately.

The fight runs in two stages: one on a bridge and one at the detonator. What happens afterwards is covered, with full spoilers, in our ending explained page.

Where players get stuck

The most common problem is assuming an objective is done because you reached the marked place. In E-Day, arriving at the named destination often starts the next step rather than finishing it. If nothing is happening, look for a second switch, door or interaction nearby.

• The train sequence: the first train is not your ride — wait for the second one.
• Legacy Bridge: after the first mechanism jams, you still need to reach a second control room.
• Resolute in dry dock: the ship cannot leave until you finish the flood-control sequence.

If you are going down a lot on Normal, you are not alone; reviewers found the difficulty genuinely demanding. Playing in co-op helps, as does dropping the difficulty for a tough section. Our beginner tips cover the fundamentals that make the biggest difference.

Watching a full playthrough

If you prefer to see a section before you play it, full campaign videos are widely available. A 4K no-commentary playthrough is the easiest to scrub through by chapter. Longer let's-play series also cover the campaign from the opening Emergence chapter onward.

Once the credits roll, use chapter select to go back for anything you missed. Your War Journal tracks every collectible by Act and chapter, so you can see exactly where the gaps are. For the total time commitment, see how long to beat E-Day.