The Possibility of Forgiveness: Reed Van Dyk, Boyd Holbrook, Hiam Abbass, and Kenneth Branagh on “Atonement” (October 5, 2026)
From the opening moments of director Reed Van Dyk’s “Atonement,” the film subverts tropes and expands what war films (and their harrowing aftermath) can be. Shot on a warm, 16mm film by cinematographer Jon Peter, the film opens with a family in Iraq going about their quotidian rhythms for an extended period of time before an explosion shatters their peace. We feel the surprise just as viscerally as the family does.
Even if war films try to be anti-war, you feel the fundamental tension when those projects dedicate screen time and craft to make the battle scenes robust while leaving the human drama behind. Not so for “Atonement,” by the time the film transitions to its scenes depicting war, you feel lament, because you’ve grown to love the family whose lives are now being torn apart.
Nightmare becomes reality for matriarch Mariam Khachaturian, who flees with her family after the explosion, only to see her children and husband get gunned down by U.S. Marine Lou D’Alessandro (Boyd Holbrook), who, being far too trigger-happy, mistook them for “enemy” Iraqis. Years after, Lou and his crew wrestle with the traumatic fallout of their murders, and in their grief, Lou learns that journalist Michael Reid (Kenneth Branagh) has written an article about the killings, citing Mariam and her daughter, Nora (Gheed), as the only survivors. Lou seeks to contact them to atone for his sins, while Miriam wrestles with whether she is ready to offer peace even while nursing the mental and physical scars of their encounter.
Van Dyk adapted the film from Dexter Filkin’s New Yorker article of the same name, and while other films might focus solely on Lou, treating Mariam, Nora, and their families as voiceless secondary characters, whose roles in the narrative are to act as cogs in Lou’s redemption arc, Van Dyk ensures all characters have fully fleshed-out arcs, offering no easy answers right down to its beautifully tender final shot.
While the film made its Canadian premiere during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, RogerEbert.com sat down with Van Dyk, Holbrook, Abbass, and Branagh; these interviews have been edited in three parts and combined into one fluid conversation. The foursome discuss changing the grammar of war films, the ways modern conceptions of mercy have been shaped by Shakespeare, and the key Biblical verse that served as a springboard of sorts for the film’s thorny exploration of forgiveness.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Reed, I know that you wanted to shoot this film in Baghdad and though that was not a possibility, you did visit with your cinematographer, Jon Peter. Can you speak more to that trip, how it shaped your approach to filming in Amman, Jordan?
Reed Van Dyk: Through the making of the film, I got very close with several Iraqi filmmakers, and also Gheed. I remember when I was casting her, I was looking at all the film photographs she’d taken and thinking, ‘Wow, this is the way I was thinking about capturing the city and using color.” Gheed and others told me what I already knew, which is that I have to just go to Baghdad and feel the city of the place.
Of course, it looked different in 2003 than when I visited, and so you’re relying on a lot of research to try to represent 2003 Baghdad. We spent some time casting when we were there, and some guys who were involved with “The President’s Cake”–a production that was able to shoot in Baghdad–brought us around. I wanted to make sure that, based on my research and conversations, my ideas in terms of how I was presenting the place were rooted in reality.
You’ve also cited Abbas Fahdel’s “Homeland: Iraq Year Zero” as a cornerstone as well when it comes to the film’s visual language. Can you elaborate more on what you were drawing from there?
RVD: I need documents of life on the ground, of Iraqi civilian life. There have been lots of war documentaries that I watched that give that first-person view of what it is like for the American side of the war, but there was less available to me that depicted the day-to-day life of Iraqis. In Fahdel’s film, you live with a family, and that focus makes the rhythms fascinating. It elliptically captures their motions. I tried to pay homage to what he did not just in the film’s opening, but also in the way he captured what the interior of homes looked like. In American media, the images that proliferate portray Iraq as post-apocalyptic, which was not what I was finding.
What also gives those non-war scenes their warmth is the 16mm film on which Jon shot the film. How did you two come to decide that was the best medium?
RVD: As early as I can remember, I wanted to shoot on 16mm. I shot a test in Los Angeles with a lot of help and favors. We were able to take some cameras off campus from Panavision, and once I saw the test, I told Jon, “I refuse to shoot this movie any other way than this, and I’ll do anything to make that happen.” There’s something magical with film. It feels like it has a body, almost sensual, and that felt very important to this story about bodies and loss of life.
I think with 16mm in contrast to 35mm, what you get is the opportunity to push back visually on how the Middle East is depicted. One of the visual clichés of Middle Eastern war films is this instinct to drain it of color. I wanted to emphasize the richness of color, both inspired by my aforementioned time in Baghdad and by the research I did. I saw light and color as if they had a spiritual dimension, in that the characters, even if they have dislocated themselves after tragedy, life is calling them back.
It’s making me think about the second definition of atonement that you put on screen, which I confess I don’t think I’ve heard before: “The exemplifying of human oneness with God.”
RVD: It really was that second definition that captivated me, and as I was watching the movie, I thought at a photo chem, I said: “Oh, I think I understand something about this movie that I haven’t up to now.” That second definition has to do with Miriam’s atonement. She experiences a double vision: when she sees Lou, she is seeing this man who took the lives of her sons and husband. On the other hand, she’s seeing something else, and she seems almost possessed by that other vision. It is through that vision, maybe, that she is led to these moments of atonement.
You and Jon really love faces. I was reflecting on this when I noticed how you kept the camera close up on Boyd’s face when he was shooting, or even how claustrophobically you framed Lou and Anna’s intimate scenes.
RVD: I suppose in thinking about that intimate scene, what’s interesting is what is happening between characters’ faces at a given point in time. The camera is talking to the audience; it’s talking to us about what we’re seeing. In the prep phase, you are often exploring a lot of different ideas about how to present any given moment, figuring out what feels intuitively right, and then maybe after the fact, understanding more intellectually what conversation that particular camera placement is having with the audience and for these characters’ journeys.
When it came to the combat portion, it is common to shoot those scenes from the American’s side, then cut to the perspective of the opposing side. It can feel like a sporting event, which communicates this sense of “who’s up, who’s down.”
“Platoon” taught me there is another way to shoot action. There is a battle scene in which the only people you are seeing are the Americans, and they are intercut as if they’re firing at each other, but they’re all firing in the direction of the other side. There’s not just the physical war but the war going on internally. Another influence to shape the visual grammar was this documentary called “Restrepo.” There is no ability to put the camera on the “other side”; you are just forced to look closely at the men, pulling the trigger, and hearing that kind of wildly loud sound. In Lou’s case, I wanted the audience to be close to Lou, to feel the wild and chaotic power of this weapon he’s been tasked with working with.
Boyd, I’m curious for you as well, how you were thinking about holding the gun, especially if you know Jon was not going to be framing you in hero shots but in close-ups.
Boyd Holbrook: Yes, Reed was adamant about never showing any Iraqis shot on film because to do so would make them feel like targets. “We got four people over here, three people are down on this side” type of thing.” For Lou, a lot of the discussions revolved around how the anatomy and physiology of Lou is directly impacted by the inner torment he feels. He is literally shaking, vibrating with emotions that he cannot process, and it is physically cracking him. There was so much to work on physically and to prepare for in terms of a performance. You have to read someone’s thoughts in a way.
Reed, to your “Platoon” point about the personal being the entry point to something larger, while “Atonement” focuses on the relationship between these individuals, it has made me think about what it looks like to atone and forgive sins on a national scale, especially regarding an entity like the United States that has perpetrated harm and violence around the world.
RVD: It is an interesting observation, and I think the thing that struck me even about this story is that, though I do not know what it looks like at the collective or government level when it comes to atonement, it is the government that is the real perpetrator of American wars.
What struck me was that Lou is a man who, at an individual level, felt so called as to track down the survivors and connect with them. Even to him, he’s not even clear on why he needs to be with them or meet them. That is powerful, but he is also an individual who is sent to do this thing and is left to deal with moral wounds that he might not have the capacity to fully tend to. Meanwhile, the people who make those decisions have their white gloves on and do not have to reckon with it in the same way. We’re not the only country with one, but the U.S. has a great appetite for war. We are a world power and have done great harm because of this compulsion toward violent conflict.
BH: What Reed articulated, I feel like that is why he’s a new voice in cinema. He’s dared to put a story like this on screen that asks these questions around the US military-industrial complex and whether forgiveness is possible at a systemic level, especially if the system at large does not find it profitable or fruitful to acknowledge wrong.
What you’re saying, Reed, is making me reflect on that scene where Mariam is talking about how she is being harassed by a neighbor, and Lou offers that she should get a restraining order. I loved her response [paraphrased]: “That doesn’t make sense because they live so close.” Even the American responses to conflict are rooted in the same hyper-individualistic, isolated violent tendencies.
RVD: It’s a great observation. I was in Japan when I was thinking about “DeKalb Elementary,” and I remember thinking, “It’s very collectivist in Japan, but in America, we are hyper-individualistic.” I wonder if it has anything to do with this antisocial phenomenon of spraying bullets at groups of people.
Kenneth, I find Michael’s role in the story to be fascinating because, as a journalist, he hears about stories like what happened between Mariam and Lou and then, in writing them down, by the nature of the work he does, might have to sand down the nuances of what he’s experienced. I feel like that dovetails with the work of a director, in that you have all of this material, but have to translate and distill to the straitjacket of a feature film. As both of you, Reed and Kenneeth, are directors, has this impacted the way you see yourselves as stewards of the story?
RVD: I think the work as a filmmaker or a creative is sustaining when you feel like you’re serving something. That’s how it is for me when I feel in service of something. In this case, it was a true story that impacted me when I first read it in Dexter’s article.
The other place my mind is going, which maybe isn’t an answer to your question, is that I got to know everyone involved in this quite well. The Iraqi family that is depicted in this film lives close to me in LA, so I see them very frequently. It was interesting too; when I went over for the first time to meet them, I felt like the Dexter character. I felt like, and in fact, there’s quite a good bit of dialogue that’s actually my conversations with them and me asking questions about their experience: “What was it like to live in America now, to be in the country that had invaded theirs?”
Kenneth Branagh: I think what I admired Reed was doing on many levels was his regard for tone, a tone that respected the story and the people involved, but resisted additional manipulation and sentimentality. It is a real gift to give the story and situation room to breathe, to allow it to do the heavy lifting and allow the intelligence and the sensitivity of the audience to come to it. What Reed does so well is situating the audience in Michael’s headspace, to be ringside without judgement or easy empathy. Michael is someone who is attempting to understand, but he is in no way signed up to be a therapist or a professor, nor is he pruriently pursuing the easy tears of the wronged. He’s listening to see if he can hear anything that goes deeper. He’s almost, as it were, got a sort of spiritual stethoscope at work and asking the questions and then waiting and then waiting. The film revels in showing how waiting can be quite gripping.
What you’re articulating is making me think about how you have adapted and worked with Shakespeare’s plays for much of your creative life. I wonder if there is anything in the way Shakespeare looks at atonement, mercy, and forgiveness that was rattling around in your brain when you were working on a project that is exploring these themes so nakedly?
KB: It is a strong theme in Shakespeare for sure. Earlier this year I played Prospero in The Tempest. That is an interesting text because it talks about the difficulties of atonement when resentment is at play, when the notion of forgiveness is sought, valued, and seen as a destination. The challenge being it seems to involve the rather more difficult thing of forgetting. If you can’t forget, can you forgive? It’s very, very naughty, and the characters, including those in Shakespeare’s, like to have the last word. When all the arguments have been had, they want to have the last words that say, “Yes, now I forgive you, but do you remember, ultimately, you hurt me more than I. So I’ll forgive you conditionally.”
Shakespeare investigates that profoundly in The Tempest because a man has to look at people who banished him and his daughter for 12 years, essentially trying to murder them. He has survived by the skin of his teeth and magic and needs to address whether he thinks it is worthwhile to forgive, whether it will enhance his life to do so. I think this film has a scene at the end that underlines that in a way that cinema plays beautifully to because Reed allows the audience to come to the landscape of the human face here, and these graphic shots in that small living room, which suddenly seems like a kind of dynamic performance space, as if it is housing a Greek tragedy.
I loved how the Proverbs verse is quoted in the film. Miriam recites “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.” There is a part she does not say that I have always grappled with:“In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” There’s something about extending forgiveness that’s so illogical, disarming about mercy, but it can also be violent and liberating.
RVD: That verse was so interesting to me. Everyone in that reconciliation moment is bringing–to put it mildly–complex motives. I think on the family’s side, I wonder what that verse was kind of communicating; maybe in a moment there was some element of “killing with kindness.” For Lou, by being kind to him, he can feel the pain he caused. That verse felt almost like it was laced with anger.
KB: Very Shakespeare!
RVD: Exactly. I think what’s interesting is that in the early beat of the scene, Miriam extends forgiveness to Lou, but in name only. She does her duty, and then something else starts happening, which is maybe even underneath forgiveness. I found that verse very interesting because, on the one hand, it is about inviting him in, treating him well so he will feel terrible.
KB: That verse feels like it is part of the multilayered issue at play here, which is how we can live the experience of forgiveness, not just the intellectual understanding. What I think, at the length we see it in here, suggests itself is that there is this necessity to sit and even experience the reverberations of the initial act. The first part of that act won’t do it, but maybe you’ve got to fake it to make it. You start with the hollow sound of “you’re forgiven,” but it shouldn’t stop there. It should not stop at superficiality. What I love about what Reed’s done with that scene and this sequence in this film is that there is an unpressured invitation to consider these things, with a firm and invisibly firm directorial guide that means we are compelled by performances, drama, atmosphere, even if it is not necessarily at all times. That last scene is like a sort of subterranean, Titanic depth charge.
Hiam Abbass: I’m really glad you brought up the verse. I do not think it is easy to sit with this visceral pain that you sleep and wake up with. She is not normal in any sense after the loss of her husband and kids. I do not think we have the faculties to understand loss. It seems so counterintuitive… to meet the person who was the progenitor of your suffering. I think what Miriam experiences is beyond humanity. I think you need to transgress humanity in order to be able to forgive such a thing.
I want to share something personal in relation to this. I grew up with a grandmother who was thrown out of the house and experienced unspeakable loss. One of the things that she brought me up with is forgiveness. I was really often looking at the face of this woman and trying to understand how, on earth, with whatever happened to you, you were able to forgive. How do you make peace while the machine of war still rages on? So I was channeling some of that unknowability I felt when she would talk to me about her forgiveness into this character. Miriam is someone who has her own pain, but she is not too far lost in it that she cannot sense the pain within Lou. I think that is why she was able to forgive.
This film’s ending stands out to me for its mundanity and profundity: people from disparate backgrounds, on their own searching journeys, yet trying to find something collectively. I’m curious for the actors: how you approached that sequence, and for you, Reed, where this idea came from to conclude the project not with absolution or confession, but searching?
BH: Yeah, it is a larger metaphor for humanity in a way. We’re all trying to make ourselves feel connected as though we are one. I approached that scene with ease; Lou is still out of place and feeling like a fish out of water. He’s sensitive to someone who deserves much more respect than me. At the same time, he’s on the journey to being accepted. That was a whole arc I felt like Lou underwent in those moments.
HA: I’ll be honest, I did not really understand the ending. I eventually accepted the metaphor of it. Miriam is finally able to forgive. There is something powerful about doing something so ordinary, like looking for keys, after something as emotionally powerful and draining as reconciliation. I think she saw her boy living in the body of Lou. Watching the film again, I am trying to locate what I was feeling when I bent down to look for the keys.
I wanted to point that out too because, funnily, you’re putting your whole body into the key search, whereas I feel like others did not have a sense of urgency.
HA: Yeah, you never know as an actor. You do not calculate your gestures because you do not know; your body doesn’t belong to you at that moment. I think at that point, she’s not just looking for a key, but looking for a new lie. It is her looking for a new beginning to live with that pain forever, but maybe it can be a little less painful than what she thought.
RVD: Yeah, that ending went through iterations. It was not always a key search, but I wanted it to end on a note of collective action, and I kept trying to find the right musical note for it to end on. I like a film that widens at the end of it as opposed to narrowing. I think everybody loses something in war and has to find the way back home to themselves, so I think that was a component of that scene.
KB: The end seemed surprising to me because of the momentous moment of reconciliation prior. Upon further reflection, though, I think it is necessary. The film and these characters partly ask: What do you do in the wake of information so massive? How do you process it? What is the next point, and how do you put one foot in front of the other? How do you take another breath?
I think you need the distraction of a simple hide-and-seek, some sort of relief where you do not have to face your feelings. Looking for an object like car keys, an object that somehow says we are on our way, shows the possibility of moving forward. It is a seemingly meaningless act in the grand scheme of things, but it turns out to be a foothold on the next climb up the mountain of human experience. For Michael and, to some extent, in my brief conversations with Dexter Filkins, it feels as though there was a genuine astonishment at having been drawn into the nature of the story. This was not a story that he pursued; it pursued him. He was fascinated by it, but he regarded himself as a sort of fortunate witness at something which he was amazed–not seduced–by. He was compelled and found all that he saw to be important, but not because of any additional insight of his, but by his honest and true attempt to witness well to something extraordinary.
NYFF 2026: Bardi, Heil Jupiter! (October 2, 2026)
This year’s New York Film Festival has, for my money, had one of the strongest festival lineups in ages. Granted, I’ve only been able to sample a handful of titles from the week I spent huddling outside Walter Reade Theater in the pouring rain (amid a Nor’easter, no less) with all the other poor press and industry folks, burdened by the agony of getting to watch free movies early and write about them for money. But as our very own Godfrey Cheshire wrote last week, it kinda just feels like the movies are back, baby, and we might just be climbing out of the post-COVID haze.
That said, so many of the films in this lineup are carryovers from Cannes, or TIFF, or Venice, or Locarno, so we’ve already got some words down on all of those from our intrepid festival journeymen. Some highlights on my end: James Grey’s “Paper Tiger,” which feels like the ultimate punctuation of his semi-autobiographical family dramas set in the Queens of his childhood; Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland,” whose probing look at a post-WWII country struggling to reclaim its identity is a fitting twin to, of all things, “Godzilla Minus Zero”; and a dazzling 35mm screening of Ken Russell’s revived “The Devils,” with Russell’s widow, Lisi Tribble, offering a beautiful ode to her late husband at the top.
But a couple snuck through the cracks that stood out to me (for good and ill), both abstracted, subjective tales of the relationship between mankind and the world around them.
The first, and the far better example, is Tala Hadid’s mesmerizing “Bardi,” a striking look at the tradition of Tbourida, a centuries-old ritual that generations of Moroccan men from all walks of life have participated in. These bardi, or horse riders, train from childhood to master their relationships with their steeds; while the ritual is steeped in wartime tradition—the ritual feels, from the outside, like a thrilling combination of dressage and a military manual of arms, as groups race down a stretch of desert in formation, twirling and holding rifles aloft—many participants are working-class farmers and the like.
Hadid, who spent four years immersed in this fraternity of bardi in rural Morocco, immerses us in their daily routines in a style that blurs the line between documentary and fiction. We zero in on the concerns of a few characters: An older brother worrying about his younger brother’s skill with a horse, a father concerned about passing on his traditions to his children, a Moroccan girl who bristles against her culture’s resistance to her learning the craft. One boy, Walid, struggles with a recently discovered horse allergy. Nevertheless, these boys persist in their struggles: These traditions are too steeped in the masculine identity of Moroccan culture to shirk away from.
Hadid plays these dramas out with the intimacy and proximity of narrative film, but keeps her doc moving at a leisurely, meditative pace. It’s less sports doc than anthropology, as her ethereal style keeps us locked into the spiritual connection between man and beast. (Terrence Salt Lick?)
Sometimes, “Bardi” gets so relaxed in its presentation that it’s easy to lose the momentum a doc like this needs. Hadid luxuriates in close-ups of hands working food, tending to sick horses, in close-ups of the beasts’ eyes looking directly down the lens. That’s all well and good, but it can also leave us adrift when it comes to tracking the throughlines of each of our cast of characters. (Hadid imposes a kind of structure in the form of playing card-based chapters—”Knight of Swords: Courage is your master. Persevere at all costs”—but they often don’t feel like they correspond to a shift in tone or pace.)
That said, what is on screen is gorgeous and undeniable. Hadid captures some brilliant images here, not just of the Moroccan countryside, or of the beautiful horses and their ornate adornments for the actual competition, but of the thoughtful young men and women who live in this community. Rather than dismiss Tbourida as an archaic ritual performance of male aggression, Hadid sees the beauty and fellowship in the tradition. These men build healthy brotherhood with each other and through their animals; they learn to care for these beasts and, in turn, care for themselves. There’s a sense of pride these ordinary men feel in, just for a moment, riding mighty beasts side by side and taking pride in their beauty.
Contrast this simple grace with the deliberate vulgarity and opaqueness of Carlos Reygadas’ “Heil Jupiter!”, which finishes its first act taking a camera inside a character’s anus and, figuratively, never really escaping it for the remaining two hours. The sixth film from the acclaimed Mexican avant-garde filmmaker, “Heil Jupiter!” feels like the kind of Buñuelian provocation that aims to spark discussion through its sheer audacity, even if its ultimate points feel as dull as dishwater and just as murky to see through.
Shot across a number of continents and in many languages (including a fake version of Spanish that was fully concocted for the film), “Heil Jupiter!” spends its first minutes soaking us in flashing neon swatches of light, complete with staticky musical score, before introducing us to a foursome of two men and two women: Milu (Alexis Sánchez Alonso), Said (Alexis Said Villa de León), Lina (Neli de la Rosa), and Tzina (Flor de León), all lounging amid the crashing waves along the rocks of a sparsely populated island. It’s not long before the four are engaged in a furtive four-way sexual interlude, before the aforementioned camera shoots right up Milu’s backdoor and we’re thrown, “2001”-style, into what feels subtextually like a number of alternate dimensions in which our four characters experience maddening oppression by the state in numerous forms.
Maddening is the operative word for Reygadas’ film, which seeks for the kind of artistic abstraction folks like Andrei Tarkovsky perfected, but mostly comes across as inscrutable. Episodic segments cut us to a pair of fighter pilots shooting down a mysterious alien sound, of bodycam footage of a Polish police officer raiding Tzina’s home to try and drown her as a witch (complete with a cheering crowd), of factories where people carve up human legs with band saws. Eventually, Lina is further put on trial for witchcraft in an extended scene filmed as a multi-screen recorded courtroom procedure.
One by one, images and moods feel arresting: You get the sense that Reygadas has big things to say, or rather big things to feel, about anti-immigrant sentiment, of homophobia and transphobia (one of the film’s most arresting sights is a trans woman stripping down so a reconstructive surgeon can marvel at her body amid a request for a fourth breast augmentation), of the horrible miracle of a piglet’s birth viewed in extreme close-up. In one universe after another, various versions of our characters go through the physical and spiritual wringer, but it’s hard to find firm footing when Reygadas gets so lost in his own big ideas.
It’s tempting to grade “Heil Jupiter!” on a curve for its ambition, but at a punishing 158 minutes, these diversions feel more befuddled than profound. Plus, its emphasis on witch hunts and female sexuality is inexorably colored by the fact that Reygadas is still shaking off his own 2019 assault allegations by a former crew member on one of his productions. The director of “Post Tenebras Lux” is fond of his hazy, beveled lenses and his enigmatic provocations; this time, though, the luster is gone, replaced with bratty thumbs in the eye towards good sense and thematic cohesion.
Formative Action Series Comes Roaring Back with “Gears of War: E-Day” (October 1, 2026)
As a hallmark of the Xbox 360 era, “Gears of War” was a franchise that really cemented the nitty gritty third-person cover shooter genre into the cultural video game zeitgeist. The muted earth tones of the first three games set the stage for a bloody and visceral world filled with war and monsters. When the series shifted to the Xbox One, the fourth and fifth entries explored new colors and environments, with the former having a darker color palette with starker contrast and the latter introducing a new bright icy setting.
“Gears of War” doesn’t hold the same gravitas as it did 20 years ago, but “Gears of War: E-Day” is the best the series has been in a long, long time. While its campaign is fairly by-the-numbers standard for a third-person shooter, the game’s cast is engaging enough to elevate it. The pacing can be a bit of a slog sometimes, but the fantastic movement, gunplay, and visuals make all-out firefights an experience to behold.
“Gears of War: E-Day” is a prequel to the series, exploring the fated “Emergence Day” where the primary antagonists, the vile Locust, suddenly burst from underneath planet Sera and slaughtered a quarter of the global population. The story follows series protagonist Marcus Fenix once again, this time 15 years younger than he was in the first Gears game, as they come to terms with this apocalypse and try to salvage what’s left. Tagging along are his best friend Dom and two new characters in Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes. Marcus and Dom surprisingly aren’t the stars here, as they don’t get nearly as much character background exploration as they do in later entries.
Being the new kids on the block, Mags and Lucas get the spotlight. Mags is a combat veteran whose mysterious chronic cough has you worried about what her ultimate fate will be, while Lucas is the young buck who’s overly curious and loves to spit random trivia about the surroundings during the group’s journey. These two inject much needed personality between Marcus and Dom’s frequent bouts of hardheadedness and masculine bravado.
Emergence Day covers three days in the Gears universe, but there’s quite a lot that happens during them. What’s impressive is how developer The Coalition is able to stretch those three days into a fully-fledged and realized campaign. Much of it is thanks to the excellent environmental design. Mainly taking place in the city of Kalona, you’ll be scouring the ruined streets and dilapidated buildings multiple times through the game’s six chapters. But each time, the levels and routes are smartly remixed with the surroundings looking decrepit as the story progresses. There are also separate areas like a forest and an underground cave that add more variety in between exploring Kalona.
“E-Day” heavily leans into its horror aspects more than any other entry in the series in a way that’s not scary like “Resident Evil,” but more unsettling as you can see the carnage around the city. Dead civilian bodies and Locust corpses completely litter the streets, showing how devastating Emergence Day truly was.
In terms of level design, most of the missions are linear corridor shoot outs, with tight spaces and cover to duck behind, creating a sense of tension as enemies shoot from afar as well as close in on you. However, there are a few open-zone missions where you have more freedom to explore ruined Kalona. Here, you can take on secondary objectives that act like side quests, which usually involve mowing down incoming enemies. They’re worth doing though, as they reward mods that help augment weapons.
Mods and collectibles are scattered throughout these sections, which incentivizes exploration. But the issue is that it bogs down the story’s pacing. These areas aren’t so big that they require fast travel or anything like that, but a faster mode of transportation would’ve definitely been appreciated other than simply running around.
The gameplay and movement in “E-Day” is better than ever before too. The shooting feels incredible, with every shot feeling satisfying as blood pours from Locust bodies and heads. The assortment of guns include snipers, shotguns, assault rifles, and pistols, so there’s plenty to choose from. The aforementioned mods you find and equip can be customized to fit your playstyle and make every gun feel different.
Perhaps the biggest change is that players no longer “roadie-run,” where characters run stiffly in a straight line with little horizontal movement. It’s been replaced with a normal and flexible run. While the roadie-run was a staple in the Gears series, giving it a heavier feel, this change allows for more versatile movement, making it easier to jump cover or get to higher elevation. This’ll certainly be polarizing to veterans, but it makes moving around feel much less rigid.
I played much of “E-Day” by myself, but I ran a few missions in co-op with a review buddy (with up to four players). Inviting friends is mostly a seamless process, especially if you’re both playing on the same platform (Xbox or PC). But sometimes cross-platform invitations can be tricky. My buddy played the Steam version while I was on Xbox. I was able to join his sessions without any issues, but he didn’t see my invitations when I sent them to him.
Performance may vary as well. In solo play, everything ran without a hitch, but when playing in co-op, some visual and framerate hiccups can occur, especially when multiple enemies are on the screen simultaneously.
“E-Day” also has competitive multiplayer in the form of Siege Horde and Versus modes. The former has up to three squads of four survive against waves of Locusts and tackle various objectives while the latter pits players against each other in a test of skill. Unfortunately, the servers weren’t online during this review period so I can’t comment on their finished status. However, these modes provide extra content and replayability aside from the single-player campaign, something that “Halo: Campaign Evolved” couldn’t offer earlier this year.
“Gears of War: E-Day” and its campaign is one of the best, if not the absolute best in the series to date. It feels modern and slick while retaining its core gameplay mechanics and refining them. Along with phenomenal art direction and environments, it’s a beauty to watch through too. The open-zone levels feel sluggish at times, but that doesn’t stop “E-Day” from being a bloody great time.
Microsoft provided a review copy of this game. It is available on October 6 on Xbox Series X|S and PC. Those who purchase the Premium or Collector’s Editions can start playing on October 1 through Early Access.
