Gears of War studio The Coalition shows Unreal Engine 5 tech demos on Xbox Series X

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Anyone who lived through the Xbox 360 era remembers the first Gears of War, from 2006, made by Epic Games itself, the owner of Unreal Engine. Fifteen years later, history repeated itself with another generation. On July 26, 2021, The Coalition, the studio that has handled the Gears of War series since 2015 (Ultimate Edition, Gears of War 4 and Gears 5), published two technical demos of Unreal Engine 5 running on the Xbox Series X.

The first is Alpha Point, a demo showing an extremely detailed cave, with a mysterious object in the center, rendered in real time on the console:

The second is a character rendering test, showing the level of detail in skin, hair and face that the new technology already allowed:

Both ran on an early-access version of Unreal Engine 5, released by Epic Games to developers on May 26, 2021. The engine had been revealed a year earlier, in May 2020, with the “Lumen in the Land of Nanite” demo on the PlayStation 5, which also took place in a cave. Nanite is the system that automatically adjusts the level of detail of models, and Lumen handles global illumination and dynamic reflections. With Alpha Point, it was the Xbox’s turn to show its side.

As a bonus, The Coalition presented at GDC a video about how the demos were made, with direct comparisons between Unreal Engine 4 and 5:

In May 2021, the studio had already announced that all of its upcoming projects would use Unreal Engine 5.

What came next

Unreal Engine 5 was officially released on April 5, 2022. The Coalition helped 343 Industries on Halo Infinite, released Gears of War: Reloaded, a remaster of the first game, in August 2025 and, with People Can Fly, made Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel built in Unreal Engine 5 that arrived on Xbox Series X|S and PC on October 6, 2026.