Gears of War E-Day is a few weeks away, and whilst we’re fans of the series to a degree, it’s been a while. Understanding the story of Imulsion, Pendulum Wars, COG and everything else needs a bit more of a deep dive, so we’ve done exactly that!
Full disclosure, whilst we’ve played and loved most of the games in the series, Gears Tactics and Gears 5 haven’t been played yet (they’re on the ever-growing list!). So we’ve had to do a good bit of Gears of War lore-reading and fact-finding. The wiki’s and other articles online have made this a pretty fun job, truth be told.
There’s a depth and richness to the long-running series that we had kind of ignored as chainsaw-ing folk and using cover mechanics years ago was all it really took to keep us engaged.
It turns out that there’s a lot more to Gears of War.
The Origins of Sera’s Forever War
Long before mankind ever encountered the nightmare lurking beneath the surface of Sera, humanity was already busy tearing itself apart. For nearly eight decades, the planet was consumed by the Pendulum Wars. A global conflict fought between the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) and the Union of Independent Republics (UIR).
The war was driven by the discovery of Imulsion, a luminous, highly volatile underground fluid that initial scientific research assumed to be little more than a vast, clean energy source. The struggle to control these deposits pushed both super-states to the brink of total annihilation.
It was during this period of industrial warfare that the foundational characters of the franchise were forged. Soldiers like Marcus Fenix, Dominic Santiago, Damon Baird, and Augustus Cole earned their stripes in brutal planetary battlefields, most notably at the Battle of Aspho Fields. It was there that Marcus lost Dom’s older brother, Carlos, cementing a lifelong bond between the two surviving soldiers.
The Pendulum Wars finally came to an abrupt, terrifying end when the COG stole the plans for an orbital laser battery (the Hammer of Dawn – on of Gears of War’s most fun weapons!) developed by scientist Adam Fenix, Marcus’s father.
By deploying this devastating satellite weapon, the COG forced the UIR into surrender, ushering in what humanity believed was a long-awaited era of global peace.
That peace lasted precisely six weeks before the Gears of War were re-engaged.
Emergence Day and the Scorched Earth Policy
On Emergence Day, or E-Day, the earth split open across every major continent on Sera.
Out from the Hollow, a vast subterranean network of caverns, poured the Locust Horde. A subterranean species of genetically modified, subterranean humanoids built for absolute warfare. Armed with heavy weaponry and riding terrifying native beasts like Brumaks and Corpsers, the Locust launched a coordinated, global surprise attack.
In a single twenty-four-hour period, twenty-five percent of Sera’s human population was wiped out.
The early months of the Locust War, chronicled in titles like Gears of War: Judgement and Gears Tactics, showed a military structure rapidly fracturing under an enemy that did not follow conventional frontline rules.
Damon Baird and Augustus Cole found themselves put on trial for field decisions made while trying to protect civilians, while tactical commanders like Gabe Diaz (father of future series protagonist Kait Diaz) fought desperate rearguard actions in the ash-choked ruins of provincial cities.
As the Locust continued their relentless surface march, Chairman Richard Prescott made the unthinkable decision to authorise a scorched-earth campaign.
Using the Hammer of Dawn, the COG incinerated its own cities, farmlands, and infrastructure to deny the enemy land and resources. Millions of human survivors who could not reach the granite plateau of Jacinto in time were vaporised or left to starve in the fallout, earning those who survived outside COG control the title of Stranded.
That’s a pretty dark turn of events, and whilst Gears of War has always felt “dark” and gory on the screen, you can see how the story reflects that, too. Moreover, it’s worth thinking about how it would be handled in the current day real-world. We suspect it might not be too different…..
The Lightmass Offensive and the Sinking of Jacinto
Fourteen years after E-Day, humanity was clinging to survival by a thread. Marcus Fenix, sitting in a military prison after abandoning his post in a failed attempt to save his father at the Fenix Estate, was pardoned by his close friend Dom Santiago and reinstated into the COG military. This where Gears of War started, in terms of the game release order.
Assigned to Delta Squad under the command of Lieutenant Minh Young Kim, Marcus and Dom joined forces with Baird and Cole to execute a desperate mission: deploy a Lightmass Bomb deep inside the Hollow to destroy the Locust stronghold from within.
Despite the death of Lieutenant Kim at the hands of the formidable Locust commander General RAAM, Marcus took control of Delta Squad. Pushing through the swarm-infested ruins of Sera, Delta successfully defeated RAAM aboard a runaway COG supply train and detonated the Lightmass Bomb, scorching large swathes of the underground tunnels.
However, the victory was short-lived. As detailed in Gears of War 2, the detonation caused unintended side effects. The Locust Horde responded by using massive, underground Rift Worms to sink the physical rock foundations beneath human safe zones, gradually destabilising the entire Jacinto plateau.
Realising that defensive actions were no longer viable, Delta Squad spearheaded Operation: Hollow Storm. A massive, counter-offensive land invasion into the heart of the subterranean enemy territory known as Nexus. Deep within the Hollow, Delta made two harrowing discoveries.
First, Dom discovered his missing wife, Maria, reduced to a hollow, lobotomised shell inside a Locust labour camp, forcing him to end her suffering in one of the narrative’s most heartbreaking moments. Second, Delta learned why the Locust had surfaced in the first place: they were losing a brutal civil war against the Lambent, a parasitic mutation caused by prolonged exposure to Imulsion.
To wipe out both the Locust and the growing Lambent infestation, Marcus and Delta executed a devastating tactical decision. They intentionally flooded the Hollow by detonating explosives to sink Jacinto itself, drowning the subterranean ecosystem beneath millions of gallons of seawater.
The Lambent Pandemic and the Final Sacrifice
With Jacinto sunk and the COG effectively collapsed, humanity split into fragmented refugee camps. By the events of Gears of War 3, Imulsion was no longer just a fuel source or a localised mutation. It had become a planetary pandemic. Highly volatile Lambent stalks were erupting through the surface across the globe, mutating both human and surviving Locust forces into explosive, mindless abominations.
Operating from the naval vessel CNV Sovereign, Delta Squad received news that Adam Fenix was still alive, having been held captive on the hidden island facility of Azura by Chairman Prescott. Adam had spent years developing a targeting weapon capable of emitting a targeted energy wave to destroy every cell infected with Imulsion across the planet.
The journey to Azura came at a crushing cost. In the ruined town of Mercy, surrounded by overwhelming Lambent forces and with Delta out of ammunition, Dom Santiago sacrificed his life by driving a fuel tanker into a massive fuel depot, taking out the horde and allowing his squadmates to escape. This is one of our strongest memories of Gears of War as players. Still shouting “Dom!!” in our best Marcus Fenix impression, more regularly than people would probably like.
Reaching Azura, Delta fought through the remaining royal guard of Queen Myrrah. The human leader of the Locust Horde whose genetic lineage held the key to their origins.
Adam Fenix successfully activated his energy pulse device, broadcasting a wave that dissolved every trace of Imulsion and completely eradicated both the Lambent and the Locust from the face of Sera. Because Adam had tested Imulsion on himself to study its cellular structure, the activation killed him in front of Marcus.
Marcus then personally ended Queen Myrrah’s life, finally closing the chapter on the Locust War.
A New Era and the Rise of the Swarm
Twenty-five years of peace followed, during which the reconstructed COG, under First Minister Jinn, instituted strict totalitarian rule to rebuild the human population in walled, automated cities. Outside these walls, groups of Outsiders lived independently, rejecting COG control.
This fragile new reality shattered in Gears of War 4. JD Fenix—son of Marcus Fenix and Anya Stroud—alongside his best friend Del Walker and an Outsider named Kait Diaz, discovered that something was kidnapping human village populations. Investigating these disappearances led them to ancient Locust mass graves where millions of crystalised Locust corpses had been buried after the Imulsion wave.
The Locust had not died; they had merely hibernated inside protective cocoons, mutating into a sinister new species known as the Swarm. Upon emerging, the Swarm began capturing humans to process them inside flesh-like pods, converting them into mutated infantry like Juvies and Scions. When Kait’s mother, Reyna, was taken by the Swarm, the young squad enlisted an aged, reclusive Marcus Fenix to aid in her rescue. Though they reached Reyna, she was fatally integrated into the Swarm network; before dying, she handed Kait a family amulet featuring the emblem of Queen Myrrah, revealing Kait’s direct bloodline connection to the former Locust monarch.
The Bloodline of Myrrah and the Choice
In Gears 5, the focus shifted directly to Kait Diaz as she struggled with terrifying psychical visions connecting her consciousness directly to the Swarm’s hive mind.
Seeking answers, Kait and Del travelled to the secret New Hope Research Facility and Mount Kadar. There, they uncovered the darkest secret of the COG: decades before E-Day, scientists led by Niles Samson used children exposed to Imulsion to clone genetic hybrids, ultimately creating Queen Myrrah and the foundational stock of the Locust species.
Kait realized that her mother, Reyna, had been resurrected by the Swarm to serve as its new Queen. To fight back against this escalating global threat, Marcus, JD, Baird, and Cole worked to reactivate the long-dormant Hammer of Dawn network.
During a desperate defence of the city of Vasgar, the resurrected Queen Reyna attacked Delta Squad directly, forcing players to make a agonising choice between saving JD Fenix or Del Walker.
Regardless of who survives, the battle ends with humanity securing a temporary reprieve, but with the full force of the Swarm now unified under Queen Reyna’s leadership, setting up an inevitable final confrontation for the fate of Sera.
Gears of War
So, there you have it. Gears of War is a dark, dramatic tale. Showing the failings of humanity and scientific inquiry, the emotional ties of family and squadmates, and war. War ravaging entire planets, and civilisations.
The series created some modern gaming standards, it defined the Xbox 360 generation, and took us all on many gory journeys.
Gears of War is a core series for Microsoft, and deserves all the praise and recognition it’s received. The story is interesting, and whilst it always fell into the background of the gameplay, it’s well worth your time to get into it.
Let’s hope E-Day is a solid new addition to the Gears of War series, next month.
