Back by popular demand, it’s What’s Up – your weekly update on all the latest news, game updates and more in Gears 5 and beyond.

Here’s What’s Up in Gears this week:

Store Changes based on your feedback

Title Update 1 out now!

Boosted Double Stars Every Saturday!

Arcade Double Trouble Special Event

New Escape Hive: The Surge

Store Changes

We heard your feedback and reduced the prices of a wide range of store items. Please note, these changes will roll out over time as we add new items (and prices) over the coming days and weeks.

We also want to provide some clarity around how you will be able to acquire select group items like weapon skin sets. While the Rainbow Swirl lancer and gnasher are purchasable, other weapons in that set will be earnable for free in the next Tour of Duty.

In addition to reducing prices, we’re also looking at ways to increase the visibility and value of Banners and Blood Sprays before and during matches. For example, Blood Sprays are designed to be a way to taunt opponents by giving a reminder of your dominance. We’re currently concepting ways to have the blood spray appear on the kill screen of an opponent after they have been executed – hopefully that middle finger blood spray will get a lot of more personal. Stay tuned for more updates.

As always, we will continue to listen to you and make further adjustments.

Title Update 1

Our first major Title Update will arrive tomorrow, October 1st. Our first Title Update is focused on fixing some of the most impactful issues reported by the community, with more Updates to come over the following month to address more issues with longer development times.

Here’s what you can expect in Title Update 1:

New Escape Skills

As part of our continuing support to evolve the meta of our PVE modes, new Skill Cards are coming for Mac, Keegan and Lahni for FREE beginning tomorrow!

These Skill Cards provide strong new bonuses when playing in the Venom for Keegan and Lahni, plus an additional Venom-based option for Mac. If you like to live dangerously, builds with these Cards will benefit you greatly – but only if you can survive on a knife edge.

Here’s a list of the upcoming Skills with their Level 1 Card values listed below:

Lahni

Venom Resistance (Rare, Level 11): All damage taken is reduced by 10% while in Venom

Venom Blade (Epic, Level 15): Melee damage in Venom causes enemies to bleed for 10% of damage dealt

Keegan

Venom Explosive Resupply (Rare, Level 11): Resupply recharges explosive weapons while in Venom

Venom Boost (Epic, Level 14): Kills inside the venom reduce the cooldown of Resupply by 20s

Mac

Venom Resistance (Rare, Level 12): All damage taken is reduced by 10% while in Venom

Each new Skill Card will be added to the Character Progression path for each Character at the listed levels.

If you have already passed the level requirements for the Skill Cards, we will be retroactively rolling out these new Skill Cards to eligible players within 48 hours of our Title Update releasing.

Bug Fixes and Changes

Re-Ups are now visible in your Player Card on the Main menu

Improved Tour of Duty Time Remaining display to more clearly reflect the length of the Operation

Added new DBNO markers for all weapons

Fix for missing DBNO notification when players are DBNO (eg. downed when vaulting over cover)

Kill feed now shows downs to all players

Added an option to disable down/kill notifications next to crosshairs

Added an Easy Navigation accessibility option (allows navigating linearly forward/backward through interactive UI elements on screen)

Added Aim Toggle Accessibility option – using this toggle requires you to tap the aim button to ADS rather than hold

Asylum: In Escalation, trains now enter on a predictable timer based on the start of the round rather than match duration

Exhibit: Escalation rings are now the same across both halfs

Exhibit: Laser bridge cooldown doubled from 5s to 10s

Updated the Escape Veteran, Survivor, Escape Master Medal requirements

Improvements to Asylum’s train audio before it enters the play space

Resolved an exploit that allowed enemies to be de-spawned in Escape

Escape Leaderboards now show times in the correct format (HH:MM:SS), including negative times

Negative Escape times now consistently, correctly register on the leaderboards

Fixed an issue where Jack’s Assault and Support Abilities can get into a state where they cannot be upgraded in Campaign Co-Op

Fixed an issue on Vasgar where Joining In Progress could cause issues traversing the mid exit to helicopter side

Fixed a bug that could prevent Ultimates from being activated on PC

Resolved an issue that could rarely allow Horde enemies to spawn out of world

Fixed a bug where players could get stuck on black screen after the credits roll

Fixed an issue where only a single playlist reward was granted even there the player is tiered in multiple modes

Fixed crashes when transitioning through some cinematics on Nvidia Cards

Fixed a bug where meatshields could block shots when they are dropped and ragdolling

Resolved an issue that could cause AI pathing issues on Harbor

What We’re Working On

While some crucial fixes have made it into TU1, work is continuing on a number of other community reported bugs and requests that we’re looking to address over the coming months. Here’s our list of some of the most notable fixes or changes we’re working on based on community reports:

Re-Up visibility in matchmaking lobbies and in-game scoreboards

Possible Aim Assist On/Off Toggle for Players

Investigating improvements to the Horde scoreboard

Fixing a bug that causes the bullet magnetism range of the Gnasher in LT to use PVE values rather than PVP

Issues with the destroyed Kestrel in Horde being in a constant spin and not exploding, preventing progression

Issues with Hijacking in Horde including being unable to fire his zapper

Audio issues on PC, including with X-Fi Sound Cards

Button remapping on PC, including scroll wheel functionality for zooming

Main menu background on PC always stuck on Icebound

Button mapping issues on ALT Control Schemes

For updates on service-based improvements, including ping times and Ranked, please visit Gears5.com/Status for the latest updates.

(As a reminder, tuning or server-side fixes – unless otherwise noted – can be resolved with live updates. This list is just a reflection of key issues we’re working on and does not include design-related feedback.)

Boost Bonus: Double Star Saturdays

We saw plenty of you make some significant progress in your Tour of Duty during our last Double Star event for Boosted players.

Based on the results and generally positive responses to the event, we’ve decided to turn on Double Stars in Tour every Saturday for Boosted players from 2am PT on Saturday – 10am PT on Sunday!

As a reminder, Double Stars only applies for Tour Objectives – not medals – and for players with active Boost.

Versus Special Event

October sees the return of Versus Special Events!

Over the coming months and years ahead, we’ll be bringing you a different Versus Special Event playlist every week – from classics like OSOK to new modes to fall in love with. We’ll also be tweaking some of your old favorites based on your feedback to continue to evolve the experience our special events provide.

This week’s special event is Arcade Double Trouble!

Arcade Double Trouble is simple – all skull gains are doubled! In this fast and furious variant of Arcade, new weapons are going to be appearing on the battlefield every second. Think fast, slay fast.

Escape Hives

With the exploit and leaderboards issues resolved as of TU1, our weekly rotation of new Featured Hives is unpaused and ready to roll!

This week, you’ll be jumping into The Surge, a highly customizable Escape experience featuring modifiers that enable different kind of enemies. Use the modifiers to create your preferred Escape challenge, or be brave and fight them all at once!

Supply Drops

Supply Drops are another way to earn rewards in Gears 5, dropping you content from the Supply Pool every time you fill your Supply meter just by playing the game!

This week, we’re adding our first Character Skins into Supply with Del’s Classic Gears 4 Skin! More Gears 4 variants of other characters will arrive in future Supply Drops. Remember – if you really want a specific skin, save that scrap and craft them directly from the Customization Menus.

Here’s this week’s drop of Supply content arriving Tuesday at 10am PT:

Character: Classic Del

Weapon Skin: Relaxed (Retro Lancer)

Expression: Advance (all Characters)

Execution: Eat The Gun (Overkill)

Bloodspray: Banana Peel

Mark: Xbox

Mark: Balloon

Banner: Pride Omen

Banner: Hivebusters Cover 1

Banner: Hivebusters Cover 2

Weekly Store Content

Quartermaster Keegan Character Skin

Quartermaster Keegan – 1000 Iron

Matte Black Loadout Weapon Skin Set – 500 Iron

GG Bloodspray – 500 Iron

Stage Bow Global Expression – 500 Iron

Question Mark – 100 Iron

Don’t forget, next Tuesday will see a brand new collection of content available in the store while this week’s collection is vaulted.

Esports Storefront Updates

Chrome Steel Snub – 400 Iron

Signing Off

Ryan Cleven, Multiplayer Design Director for Gears 5, will be joining us on this week’s Community Stream to answer your questions and address hot topics in the community. Don’t miss our Gears Weekly Developer Stream at 3pm PT on Thursday on live.gearsofwar.com.

We’re also close to finishing a blog on bullet mechanics in Gears 5 based on videos circulating in the community. This blog will include transparent comparisons to other Gears games and explanations for the mechanics at play – which are not aim assist related – in the videos captured by community members.

Stay tuned for more info in the future. See you on Thursday!

TC, out.