- The Coalition studio’s creative director Matt Searcy says Active Reload is an “iconic” part of Gears of War series
- He explains that the team moved the mechanic to the center of the screen in E-Day because “it feels better”
- Searcy adds that players can learn Active Reload “much easier” when it’s placed there
Gears of War: E-Day is set to bring back the series’ iconic Active Reload mechanic, but The Coalition has made some design changes.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026, the studio’s creative director Matt Searcy discussed new features that have been built with Unreal Engine 5, such as larger environments like an entire city, a jump button, improved animations, and a revamped cover system and traversal mechanics that feel “smoother than they’ve ever felt before.”
“All these deck mechanics are there; they just feel smoother than they’ve ever felt before,” he said, “and then we just gave little new ways for you to interact with the environment, for you to traverse, opportunities to take new flanking routes, just to open up our map a little more. It made for some pretty amazing additions to the gameplay, but also the world.”
Searcy also touched on Active Reload, an almost minigame-like feature that allows players to manually reload their held weapons instead of waiting for the magazine to run out of ammo.
IN E-daythe mechanic has been moved from the top of the screen to the middle by default, which Searcy said works better.
“So active reload is a big part of Gear” said Searcy.[It’s] an iconic feature. By default, we have moved it to the center of the screen. It feels better [from] what we have played; we’ve tested it as part of your shooting experience.”
The creative director confirmed that players can move Active Reload back to its original spot at the top of the screen, but notes that there are some extra “cool” touches with natural reloading and other additional reloading mechanics.
“Every shell is reloaded,” he said, “so some of the weapons have additional reload mechanics.” For example, players can abort the reload and continue playing with two or three shells if they’re halfway there and then “use them really fast to like get out of harm’s way,” or they can wait until the end to get their Active Reload bonus.
He added that players will noticeably use the mechanic “telemetry-wise” and use it a lot more than they did when it was at the top of the screen “because you can learn it a lot easier [when] it’s in your face.”
Gears of War: E-Day is scheduled to launch on October 6 exclusively for Xbox Series X and Series S.
Matt Searcy told TechRadar Gaming that he believes making the game an Xbox exclusive was the best decision – something not all Xbox Game Studios teams are keen on.
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