Welcome to 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:

New Characters Coming Wednesday!

TU1.5 Patch Notes

New Weekly Hive: Venom Run

New Versus Event: Arms Race Unchained

Curbstomp Comeback!

Weekly Supply and Store Refresh

Quit Penalties

What We’re Working On

New Characters

New Characters will arrive with Title Update 1.5 on Wednesday!

Keep an eye out for a full announcement tomorrow, where we’ll reveal the entire lineup of Characters coming in the update along with a first-look trailer.

TU1.5 Update Notes

Title Update 1.5 falls out our usual monthly cadence of Title Updates to add gameplay and functionality to support the new Characters, making it smaller than our usual Title Updates.

Features

New Characters

Changes and Fixes

Re-Ups will now also show in Scoreboards, Matchmaking Lobbies, the Social Panel and in the Post Match flow

Re-Ups no longer show 3 Re-Ups higher than you are in lobbies

Tour of Duty Medals now show their Stars value again

Re-Rolled Objectives will no longer award the same objective

Quitters in Ranked will now have a much reduced impact on Skill Rating calculations for other players in the lobby

Fixed a bug causing the Gnasher to use PVE tuning values for bullet magnetism range

Fixed a bug causing the Gnasher to still have bullet magnetism while ADS while Aim Assist is disabled

Fixed a bug causing bullet magnetism to still occur when using the double zoom on any weapon while Aim Assist is disabled

Bunker: Jack can now fly more consistently in the underground areas behind the ladders

Exhibit: Improved KOTH Spawns

Exhibit: In Escalation, the two center line placement diamonds no longer overlap

Forge: Incinerator now deals 1 million damage, reliably killing any creature or boss inside

Forge: The Incinerator no longer destroys any power taps or fortifications inside

Forge: Updated the location of some Power Taps

Reclaimed: Updated the location of some Power Taps

Harbor: AI can now correctly path into spawns

Bleeding damage will no longer be applied to the Matriarch unless she is shot in her weak point

Explosive Hijack no longer damages fortifications

Frag Grenades and Lancer GL Grenades now count towards the Get 15 Explosive Weapon Kills Tour Objective

Bumper scrolling through Characters in Escape and Horde lobbies will now allow you to tab through Characters regardless of duplicates present.

Tour of Duty: Power Hoarder Medal and Power Tour Objectives now include Power Tap, Forge and shared pickup gains rather than just your own pickups

Fixed an issue that could cause only a single placement award to be granted even though a user is tiered in multiple modes

Fixed an issue that could sometimes cause Quickplay playlists to skip the voting phase after the end of a match

Fixed an issue causing Character descriptions to display too low down in the Customization screen

Fixed an issue that could cause the Host to enter first person view in Campaign under certain conditions

Fixed an issue where clicking Mark followed by Zoom too quickly would cause zoom to not initiate

Re-Up 20 now shows the correct roman numerals

Minor bug fixes and improvements

Unfortunately, a last minute issue was discovered with blocking Flashbangs working through cover in the hours prior to submitting this update to certification. Due to this, we were unable to resolve this as planned for Title Update 1.5, and we hope to resolve it in time for our next Title Update.

We have another update on the way in early November to add further improvements and bug fixes. Stay tuned for more information over the coming weeks.

Escape

The next weekly Hive to drop for Escape is known as Venom Run!

In this one act Hive, the focus is on pushing forward fast thanks to an aggressive Venom behind your back.

Tougher Mutators include Ultra Stopping Power to slow down your advance, Even Faster Venom that is barely slower than your roadie run speed and Deadly Close Range that adds additional threat to your close quarters encounters.

The weekly Escape Hive will be playable from our weekly reset at 10am PT on Tuesday, October 15.

Versus

Arms Race Unchained is this week’s Versus Special Event playlist!

In Arms Race Unchained, you’ll play a shorter high action version of Arms Race in a first to 2 rounds format. The Arms Race Unchained weapons list focuses on new weapons introduced in Gears 5 with a couple of favorites mixed in – from the Lancer GL and Claw, to the Talon and Breaker.

Arms Race Unchained will be available with the release of Title Update 1.5 on Wednesday, October 16.

Curbstomps Are Back!

In case you missed the news, every player in Gears 5 will get this Curbstomp free once Title Update 1.5 arrives on Wednesday!

We’ll have more Curbstomp variants to come in the future, including some old favorites we know you want to see make a comeback.

Supply Content Drop

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!

Here’s this week’s drop of Supply content available ~4 hours after the release of Title Update 1.5 on Wednesday, October 16:

Character Skin: Classic Kait

Weapon Skin: Relaxed (Lancer)

Execution: Pummel (Snub)

Expression: Laugh (Global)

Blood Spray: Slip Hazard

Mark: Sword

Banner: Harbor

Weekly Store Items

This week’s Weekly Store Items include a variety of new items including an homage to the spinning Curbstomps of yore and a Gears 1 themed Jack skin!

Gears 1 Jack Skin

Weekly Store Rotation

Gears 1 Jack Character Skin – 800 Iron

Roundhouse Curbstomp Execution – 500 Iron*

Arm Cross Expression – 500 Iron

Animated Rainbow Swirl Snub Weapon Skin – 400 Iron

Retro Wave Snub Weapon Skin – 250 Iron

*All content shown other than the Roundhouse Curbstomp Execution will appear at the Weekly Reset time of Tuesday at 10am PT. The Roundhouse Curbstomp Execution will appear in the store with the arrival of TU1.5

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

Quit Penalties

Combatting quitters is one of our top priorities at the studio, and with our launch settled, step one was to re-enable time suspension penalties for players who quit.

Behind the scenes, we track quits with a value known as RCR (Ranked Completion Rating). Every match you quit adds a significant number of points to this, and finishing matches will reduce your RCR total gradually over time.

For players who have a disconnect or issue that causes you to leave once in a blue moon, you’ll be fine. For players who quit often, you’ll see an increasing time penalty for your actions – from hours, to days to months.

If you enter into Ranked, you are committing to playing your match in full, win or lose. Don’t quit or face the consequences.

Signing Off

The team is continuing to work on a number of improvements and fixes for Gears 5 that you can track on Gears5.com/Status.

We are also continuing to examine your gameplay feedback to determine future changes, and we already have active conversations on a number of hot topics throughout the community such as how we can improve Tour of Duty for Operation 2.

For now, we hope you’re excited to get out there and earn some new Characters as we approach Operation 2 this December! Stay tuned for a juicy trailer just before we go live on Wednesday to give you a taste of these new Characters in action.

See you online,

TC, out.