Gears of War: E-Day Beta Impresses With UE5 Visuals, But Performance Wavers on Xbox

The Coalition’s upcoming shooter has finally entered its public testing phase, giving players their first hands-on look at what promises to be a flagship moment for the current console generation. With a full launch scheduled for October 6th, the beta serves as an early indicator of how this Xbox Series X/S exclusive (with a PC version in tow) will leverage Unreal Engine 5’s most demanding features while chasing a smooth 60fps target.

On the flagship Xbox Series X, the technical presentation is genuinely striking. The game fully embraces UE5’s headline technologies, including Nanite geometry, hardware-accelerated Lumen global illumination, and MegaLights. These three pillars working together in a 60fps console title is no small feat, and E-Day joins a growing list of games that are making real-time ray tracing a standard expectation rather than a premium extra.

That said, the pursuit of visual fidelity requires some calculated cutbacks. Puddle reflections look crisp and accurate, but animated foliage doesn’t appear in those reflections, and transparent materials skip the specular ray tracing pass entirely. The game’s dusty, battle-worn environments actually work in its favor here, since the muted metallic surfaces and stone textures reduce the need for constant glossy reflections. It’s a smart artistic decision that masks some of the underlying compromises.

The Lumen-based global illumination generally delivers, especially within the naturally lit multiplayer arenas. There are occasional hiccups, like over-occlusion in dense vegetation or brief lighting instability, but overall the image quality remains consistently strong. It’s a credible, if not flawless, implementation of Epic’s latest rendering pipeline.

One area where the beta raises questions is environmental destruction. The single-player footage teased significant set-piece mayhem, but the multiplayer maps feel comparatively rigid. Pillars don’t chip away, lights don’t shatter, and cover remains stubbornly intact. Some small props are physicalised and a few elements break, yet the arenas have a static quality that feels like a step back for a series known for its interactive battlefields. It seems the truly spectacular destruction is being saved for the campaign.

Players on Series X get three distinct modes: a 60fps performance option, a 30fps quality mode, and a 40fps balanced setting. The quality mode pushes internal resolution to 1224p, compared to 1080p for balanced and roughly 1000p for performance, and it offers marginally sharper lighting. In practice, the differences are hard to spot. More frustratingly, all modes suffer from forced chromatic aberration and film grain, which soften the image and can’t be turned off.

Frame rate stability is a mixed bag. The competitive versus mode holds a steady 60fps, which is encouraging. However, the cooperative Horde mode is noticeably more demanding, with frame rates dipping into the 50s during chaotic firefights. Pre-release code often has these rough edges, and it’s reasonable to expect some optimisation before launch, but it’s currently the weakest aspect of an otherwise polished experience. The balanced and quality modes maintain their targets more reliably, though the beta window didn’t allow for extensive testing of the 40fps option. The game also supports eco and VRR modes, which will get proper scrutiny at full release.

The Xbox Series S version follows the same blueprint but with more aggressive cuts. Internal resolutions drop to around 576p in performance and balanced modes, and roughly 720p in quality mode. Variable rate shading is more pronounced, textures take a hit, and foliage animation is simplified. Screen-space reflections replace the ray-traced variety, and shadows are less detailed. Despite these reductions, the smaller console manages a similar frame rate profile to the Series X, including the same occasional stutters during dense Horde encounters.

Gears of War: E-Day is positioning itself as a definitive showcase for Unreal Engine 5 on consoles. The art direction and lighting are a natural fit for the technology, and while the multiplayer beta shows some performance instability, the underlying foundation is rock solid. If the final build smooths out those frame rate wobbles and the campaign delivers on its destructive promise, this could easily be one of the most important releases for Xbox owners this year.