Gears Of War: E-Day Seems To Miss The Point Of Prequels

Having now played about two hours of Gears of War: E-Day's story campaign, I'm not impressed. The upcoming third-person cover shooter handles fine and the demo I played through checked all the hits you'd expect from a story in the genre--intense action, cringy one-liners, lots of blood, a desperate gamble to cross a bridge while being peppered by sniper fire. But of what I've seen, it seems like E-Day's story misses the mark that all prequels should try to hit. Admittedly, there's a good idea here: the setting. E-Day is the sixth Gears game but is set about 14 years prior to the events of the first game, during the titular Emergence Day when series antagonist the Locust Horde made its first move against humanity. The game is set in the city of Kalona, which sees you play in open, explorable areas between linear missions. This structure isn't new for a Gears game, but the series has yet to tackle this structure while remaining solely in a city. The city features streets that cross into one another, and seems to get more destroyed every time you exit back into it from a more linear mission. Minor characters reappear and you seem to cross back into specific areas over and over. There…