Gears of War: E-Day adds free RAAM skin and December 1 Season 2 date

The Coalition has kicked off a two-week 20th anniversary event in Gears of War: E-Day, adding limited-time multiplayer playlists, a free General RAAM character unlock, and a December 1 launch date for Season 2: Legacy. The studio first outlined its anniversary plans and the second season in a September 2026 post-launch roadmap, ahead of the game's October 6 release on Xbox Series X|S and PC.

The celebration marks two decades since the original Gears of War launched on the Xbox 360 on November 7, 2006. Anyone who logs into E-Day on November 7 can claim General RAAM, the primary antagonist of that 2006 campaign, as a free multiplayer character.

No supply caches in Horde Siege

The two-week anniversary event brings two temporary modes across the game's PvP and PvE playlists. In 4v4 Versus, players can jump into Guardian, the returning variant where teams must protect their designated leader while hunting down the opposing captain to disable enemy respawns.

For the 12-player Horde Siege mode, the update introduces a limited-time variant called For the Queen. The mode disables the standard mid-match supply cache entirely, forcing three four-player squads to rely strictly on their starting class loadouts (Assault, Marksman, Medic, or Breacher) as they clear objectives and fight world bosses. I want to see how well random matchmaking squads manage their ammunition once the safety net of the supply cache is gone, because coordinated ammo sharing rarely happens without voice chat.

A twenty-year trajectory from Epic to Vancouver

When Epic Games and lead designer Cliff Bleszinski shipped the original Gears of War in November 2006, it quickly became the technical showcase for Microsoft's seventh-generation console and sold over three million copies in ten weeks. It popularized the chest-high cover mechanics, active reload timing, and heavy roadie-run camera shake that half the industry spent the next five years copying.

Microsoft purchased the franchise intellectual property from Epic Games in 2014 and handed the series to its Vancouver studio, which rebranded from Black Tusk Studios to The Coalition in 2015. After handling Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (2015), Gears of War 4 (2016), and Gears 5 (2019), the studio used Unreal Engine 5 to rewind the timeline for E-Day. Set 14 years before the original game, the prequel returns to Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago during the initial Locust invasion, supporting two-player split-screen on consoles and up to four-player online co-op across the campaign.

Dom gets his suit from the Maria photo

Once the two-week anniversary event wraps up, Season 2: Legacy arrives on December 1 with another batch of throwback maps, modes, and cosmetics pulled from the series' twenty-year history. The first previewed cosmetic is the Solemn Memories Dom skin, which dresses Dominic Santiago in the formal suit he wore in the keepsake photograph with his wife Maria from Gears of War 2.

Turning a tragic plot point from the 2008 sequel into a multiplayer cosmetic for 4v4 matches is a slightly strange tonal choice, even if the model itself is well executed.