The Gears 5 story isn't over after all, as developer The Coalition has confirmed that story DLC is coming to the third-person shooter sometime after the launch of the Xbox Series X this fall. With Master Chief out of the picture until sometime in 2021, Marcus Fenix, Kait, and the rest of the chainsaw-wielding soldiers of Gears of War are working hard at the launch of Microsoft's new console. Not only will the Xbox Series X debut see the console premiere of Gears Tactics, but Gears 5 will be getting a big Series X optimization that includes some enticing upgrades for current and new players alike.
When loading up Gears 5 on Xbox Series X in November, players can expect quite a few enhancements from the existing Xbox One version. For one, the game has been shown to run beyond the best performance the current PC version can muster, even with its ray-tracing effects, better shadows, and native 4K textures. The game's load times are drastically reduced (as is the case with most backward compatible games on the console) and it will run at 120 FPS in multiplayer modes on both Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. It's a significant improvement that shows the power that can be harnessed by developers who put in the time with an optimization update.
Beyond the console launch, what's coming for Gears 5? In a talk with IGN's Miranda Sanchez, Gears 5 lead producer Zoe Curnoe revealed that a new campaign expansion was coming entitled Hivebusters. Fans of the franchise will already know that the name refers to Team Scorpio, a group of three characters that star in the game's middling Escape mode. Keegan, Lahni, and Mac were developed in a series of Hivebuster comics, but this will be their first starring role in the games.
Curnoe also shared that the Hivebusters DLC will last three to four hours, and players will learn more details in early December. The team at The Coalition has not decided how players will get access to the DLC, and that includes pricing. The developer previously stated that it wasn't interested in any sort of single-player expansion. Hivebusters is being developed after much fan demand, but it very much seems like it will be a side story with a group of tertiary characters rather than anything that will impact the ongoing story of the franchise.
It seems like good business to keep the Gears 5 train going in the immediate future, especially considering how uncertain the release window for Halo Infinite feels at the moment. Microsoft has been very reliant on both Gears and Halo as its top franchises for a long while, and one wonders if it was the fan demand that spurred the creation of Hivebusters or a gap in the release schedule. In any case, with Microsoft Game Studios bursting at the seams with potential new games in the years to come, perhaps Xbox's two monolithic heroes can put down their rifles for a brief respite and let new faces take over the green team for a brief moment.
Gears 5's Xbox Series X|S optimization update will release on November 10 alongside the next-gen consoles.
Source: IGN
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