Much to the surprise of many, Gears 5 will be getting a full-fledged new story DLC soon, with the expansion set to put the spotlight on the Hivebusters, the trio that stars in the Escape multiplayer mode. Details on the DLC are currently scant, but those will be coming before the year is out- as will the DLC itself.
Speaking with IGN, Gears 5 principal lead producer Zoe Curnoe said that the Hivebusters DLC will launch in December. “All I can say is December and the title is Hivebusters, so it might give you a little hint as to what that content might contain Curnoe said. “That’ll be available on the new consoles as well, so it’ll be optimized for those two.”
The DLC will be about 3-4 hours long, but more details on its story and whether or not it will cost anything will be shared in early December. Meanwhile, The Coalition’s studio technical director Mike Rayner also says that the upcoming DLC is the first time that content is being made for the Xbox Series X/S hardware rather than being upgraded for it post-development.
“The things that we’re doing with global illumination and constant mapping I think are a good example, and we’ve made sure that the content is really set up to take advantage of that,” Rayner said, “The ultra-res textures are now there and we can kind of tune them and make sure that they really show up in 4K resolution with the additional memory we have on these consoles and the ability to stream them in super fast.”
Gears 5 is currently available on Xbox One and PC, and will be launching for Xbox Series X/S on November 10. The next-gen update will also come with some additions to the campaign, on top of other improvements such as reduced input latency, shorter lode times, 120 FPS multiplayer, and various other technical enhancements.
