Dust off your Lancer and get ready to jump back into Sera – Gears of War: E-Day has landed! The franchise has a legacy as one of the premiere Unreal Engine (UE) titles, known for featuring (and pushing the boundaries of) the latest gaming technology in a gory yet stable package. And since Microsoft acquired the classic series back in 2014, current developers, The Coalition, have continued to position Gears of War as a graphical powerhouse of the industry, with the latest entry being no different.
A prequel 20 years in the making, Gears of War: E-Day explores the early hours of the Locust War and ‘Emergence Day’; an event fans have long heard about and dreamed of playing through. While not the first (or even the second) prequel game in the Gears of War saga, E-Day is the earliest in the timeline, taking place 14 years before the 2006 classic, a year before the X-Com-like Gears Tactics, and 6 weeks before Gears of War: Judgement. E-Day is also the first mainline game to feature the iconic duo of Marcus Fenix and Dominic “Dom” Santiago in a playable squad since Gears of War 3.
And though Gears of War: E-Day is a return to the basics for the franchise, there is nothing basic about the technology behind the game. Through their partnership with Epic (the developer of UE and studio behind the original Gears trilogy), The Coalition made use of UE5’s key features like MegaLights, Nanite, and hardware Lumen ray-tracing. This was also paired with the first major use of NVIDIA’s RTX Mega Geometry in an Unreal game – to make E-Day one of the most atmospheric and best-looking games of this generation across consoles and PC. But if, like me, you’re somebody who likes to turn every setting to max without worrying about lag, then check out my experience trying the game out with NVIDIA GeForce NOW.
Before we dive in, NVIDIA GeForce NOW requires access to the game via Steam, and Internet speeds to match the desired resolution. Of course, the higher the better. I was targeting a 5K resolution with uncapped FPS to make the most of my 65” 144hz VRR OLED TV, but the game and GeForce NOW also feature total ultrawide support, ideal for moving the action to my desktop.
Loading up E-Day, I grabbed a hot chocolate as I waited for the shader compilation. It only took a couple of minutes compared to the upwards of 5 minutes I experienced on my comparatively beefy PC.
Once that was done, the first thing I did was head to the settings… and changed the main menu song to Metallica’s iconic ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’. Then, I headed straight into the graphics settings and began to play around. With a resolution of 5120 x 2880, I decided the safe approach was to turn everything to the ‘Ludicrous’ setting to really make the most of the VRAM at my disposal. After all, I just wanted to dive straight into the game!
One setting that you may not have seen before is RTX Mega Geometry, which can only be used on NVIDIA cards with at least 12GB of VRAM. The feature works with Unreal’s Nanite technology to give more accurate, sharper, and deeper shadows for ray-traced effects, while reducing noise. With DLSS 4.5 set to ‘Balanced’ and multi-frame gen at ‘Dynamic’, I giddily began my co-op playthrough.
The first thing I noticed was the sheer level of detail. Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite technology lets environments carry far more geometric detail than before, without the noticeable pop-in as you move closer to objects. Turn on the optional Hair Strands setting, too, and Marcus and Dom look better than ever, with individually rendered strands of hair.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/trying-gears-of-war-e-day-with-max-settings-on-nvidia-geforce-now
