Characters, Bravo Squad & Beyond

E-Day's character work starts from a simple premise: in 2006 we met Marcus and Dom as legends. E-Day catches them as soldiers who've never seen anything like what's coming, "you only see what they see and learn what they learn." Where the day itself sits in series history is on the timeline page; who plays whom is on the cast page.

Bravo Squad (all four playable)

Marcus Fenix

• War hero of the Pendulum Wars, freshly home; a Sergeant in the 26th Royal Tyran Infantry and an Embry Star recipient, connected to Dom by service and their shared love of the late Carlos Santiago
• Full name per the official art book: Marcus Michael Fenix
• Voiced by John DiMaggio, reprising the role
• Younger, more vulnerable than the trilogy's Marcus, the game's armorless design says it visually

Dominic Santiago

• Grieving his older brother Carlos Benedicto Santiago, killed at Aspho Fields two years before the game; the wound that keeps him and Marcus "distant"
• A Private in the 26th Royal Tyran Infantry and an Embry Star recipient like Marcus
• Voiced by Carlos Ferro, reprising the role
• The story is as much his as Marcus's, the brotherhood's origin is the campaign's spine

Mags Carter

• A retired 8th Kalona Siege Grenadiers (8th KSG) Specialist and former demolitions expert; a mistake in the field got her entire squad killed, cost her a court martial and ended in a dishonorable discharge, and she carries that into the game
• Now working at Kalona's Imulsion refinery when Emergence Day hits
• A Kalona local, which matters: "Marcus and Dom are not from the city"
• Voiced by Elizabeth Ludlow

Lucas Reyes

• A Cadet First Class at Kalona Academy: he tried to enlist with his friends but was pulled from the infantry for his high aptitude scores and trained as a comms officer instead, so he's never seen the front lines despite wanting nothing more
• The other Kalona local in the squad, clearly the odd one out in a veteran fireteam
• Voiced by Jake Ryan Lozano

The design rule from art director Aryan Hanbeck: the four aren't "four versions of Marcus and Dom." "Marcus and Dom sit in the front, Mags and Lucas sit in the back. Different roles, but all important to the journey."

Allies & Figures of Kalona

Tai Kaliso

• The fan-favorite from Gears of War 2 and the comics returns, played by Maateiwarangi Heta-Morris, a New Zealand bench-press record holder. Fawcette: "The casting search was pretty short. He's a living Tai."

The Mayor and the Colonel

• Two civilian/military figureheads of Kalona "at odds with each other while we're fighting the Locust", part of the larger brotherhood the Direct promised: soldiers with their own stories crossing paths through the city

The Locust Side

Vraahk

• Main antagonist, a blight commander injured in the Lambent War, sent to raze Kalona; debuted in the Gamescom story trailer
• Carries the Locust title "Svore," "he who has been scorched", and leads a Locust Blight: the Scorched Legion (how a Blight fits the Locust hierarchy is tracked on the enemies page)
• Also playable on the multiplayer Locust side, see the Versus roster

The Bonding Moment

The squad forms in the game's defining image: when the road opens and Wretches pour out, four near-strangers in plain clothes turn toward the danger instead of away from it.

"There's a bonding moment before they've even met, where they all have a shared value, a shared loyalty, and they all know exactly what to do.", Matt Searcy