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:

Big Game Weekend Event

Weekly Store Update

On the Horizon

What’s Up Format Change

Big Game Weekend Event

A little birdie told us there’s some huge event going on this weekend – something to do with a massive bowl??

Whatever it is, we’re in the mood with a touchdown event of our own! Ready up for Arcade Blitz Double Trouble featuring new earnable rewards and some extra login bonuses on Feb 1st and 2nd.

Arcade Blitz Double Trouble

Fire up your favorite character and battle over rings in this objective based Arcade game mode. Stand in the hill to keep the points ticking as you rack up your next weapon with Double Skulls!

Earnable Rewards

We’re keeping it simple for this one. Just win three games of Arcade Blitz Double Trouble and you get the Spike themed Lancer execution!

Lancer Spike Execution

Log In Rewards

Everyone that jumps on Gears 5 at any time this weekend will get a couple of extra goodies – the Thrashball Mark and a Punt themed execution for the Gnasher. SET! HIKE!

We’ve also added the non-loadout Thrashball skins to supply.

WEEKLY STORE

Get in the big game spirit this weekend with our Thrashball Weapon Skin set and more available in this week’s Store.

Winter Baird Character Skin

Thrashball Loadout Weapon Skin Set

Pixel Art Jack Character Skin

Winter Baird Character Skin* – 500 Iron

Thrashball Loadout Weapon Skin Set – 500 Iron

Pixel Art Jack Character Skin – 500 Iron

Dead Face Blood Spray – 200 Iron

Gavel Mark – 50 Iron

*Reminder: purchasing a Character Skin does not include access to the Character. Use of Character Skins requires the base Character to be unlocked before associated skins can be used.

ON THE HORIZON

We know that you are always interested in what we’re working on. This section will give a snapshot of some of the updates coming up that don’t have a set release date just yet. Some of these issues will take time to develop and may stay on this list for a while, and this is not a complete list of what is being worked on.

Ranked Calculation Improvements

Preventing point loss on a game win

Rounds that start with quitters are ignored

More points for support play

Movement Gameplay

Remove speed boost after melee attack

Only allow speed boost out of cover with sufficient incoming momentum

Future improvements – blog post in the works

Weapons Gameplay

Gnasher tweaks – Slightly shorter gib distance & slightly increased long-range poke damage

Tour of Duty

Ability to earn stars just for playing any mode (in addition to objectives)

SIGNING OFF

It’s short and sweet this week following our major update last week with TU4. We hope you’re feeling the improvements in the update as we continue to address issues as fast as we can.

Today also marks the last time we’ll be posting a Monday What’s Up. With the fast-paced development environment at the studio, we feel we need to move away from Monday updates in order to better communicate what’s going on with Gears 5 outside of the shackles of a ‘save it for What’s Up’ template every week.

In other words, our plans are to post about news and information as they are ready more often. Ahead of our stream each week, we’ll drop a What’s Up to recap all the news, announcements and key information from the week past – so if you only read one thing every week, What’s Up is still the place to go.

We’re keen to know how you feel about this new format once it starts next week, so please do keep the feedback flowing wherever you post/share: our Weekly Developer Streams, support.gearsofwar.com, /r/GearsofWar, or our official forums.

So from our last Monday’s What’s Up – at least for the foreseeable future – it’s time for us to sign off.

We’ll see you online.

TC