- Coalition studio creative director Matt Searcy says Active Reload is an “iconic” part of the War equipment series
- He explains that the team moved the mechanic to the middle of the screen in E-Day because “it feels better.”
- Searcy adds that players can learn Active Reload “much easier” when 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.
Speaking 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 rebuilt cover system and traversal mechanics that feel “smoother than they’ve ever been before.”
“All these cover mechanics are there; they feel smoother than they’ve ever been before,” he said, “and then we’ve just given new ways to interact with the environment, to traverse, options for you to take new evasive routes, just to open up our maps a little bit more. It makes some pretty amazing additions to the gameplay, but also to the world.”
Searcy also discussed Active Reload, an almost mini-game-like feature that allows players to manually reload their weapon rather than waiting for the magazine to run out of ammo.
In Electronic daythe mechanic has been moved from the top of the screen to the middle by default, which Searcy says works better.
“Active recharging therefore constitutes an important part of Gears“, Searcy said. “[It’s] an iconic feature. We moved it to the middle of the screen by default. We feel better [from] what we played; we tested it as part of your shooting experience.
The creative director confirmed that players can move Active Reload to its original place at the top of the screen, but notes that there are additional “cool” details with natural reload and other additional reload mechanics.
“Every shell is reloaded,” he said, “so some weapons have additional reloading mechanisms.” For example, players can pause reloading and continue playing with two or three shells if they are halfway through, then “use them very quickly to get out of danger”, or they can wait until the end to get their active reload bonus.
He added that players will noticeably use the mechanic “at the telemetry level” and will use it much more than 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 set to launch on October 6 exclusively on Xbox Series X and Series S.
Matt Searcy told TechRadar Gaming that he thought making the game an Xbox exclusive was the best decision – something that not all teams at Xbox Game Studios are aligned on.
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