Got my download sorted out & played the first level, on the island. Looks & plays great. I like that each character has a special ability, that’s a cool little twist.
Also like that one of the squad is a loudmouth Scotsman. Nice 
Friendly reminder: Gears 5 is one of the only games that supports Dolby Atmos natively. There is a 7-day free trial on Xbox if you want to experience the best of this DLC on headphones.
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All I say is mighty vulcano
God damn this looks good. Whatever they’re doing for their reflections is brilliant.
This DLC was awesome really wish the Coalition was staffed like 343i.
If TC really wants to bring the open world in 6, i think that instead of making it in wastelands like 5, maybe an open world in a city, full of different routes and small sections might be good.
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Exactly my thought, wastelands is a great example. I think open world brought something new and interesting to Gears, it doesn’t need to be massive, but meaningful, small vivid areas with few but good side quests. I look to Assassin’s creed Vahalla/Odissey, the world is massive and beautiful, but most side quests are just boring that you feel your doing them just to lvl up.
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Yep I loved the game too, the open segments didn’t bother me at all. Actually for me the quieter moments of the hubs (like the chit chat between the characters) actually added to the pace of the game, between the bombastic amazing main missions driving the skiff and exploring the areas was pretty cool. Also thank god the hubs weren’t filled with question marks and the extras of the open maps were some really cool totally optional combat encounters (like the one with the snipers and the Warden, the forgotten DB’s and the helicopter or the one when you were cornered by some hunters e.t.c.), meaningful collectibles like the Jack upgrades and of course the badass Relic weapons. Sure it would’ve been awesome to use our skiffs to fight some swarms or even some bosses, do some battles with the mechs or in general having more set-pieces like the lightning one in the desert area but what was there was pretty good considering it was the first attempt of the franchise for something more open and less linear.
Also I wanted to add that slow/walk and talk sections (Act 2 of Gears 1 and the ash area in Gears 3 to give some examples) were always a thing for the series. If your game is 15 hrs long being always dialed up at 11 is not good design or good pacing, you have to keep things varied so the game won’t feel tiring and exhausting after a few hours of balls to the wall action. When the game is more open and not strictly linear it’s the player who should make the pacing good and that’s what I did with the open areas in Gears 5, I treated them as small breaks between the blockbuster missions and it worked pretty well for me (especially on the Insane difficulty).
Back on topic Hivebusters is a pretty awesome expansion which is also the best looking thing that I’ve seen on my One X (I can only imagine how amazing this looks at the SX…), The Coalition continues to outdid themselves. The only thing that bothers me is that MS didn’t push this marketing wise enough, a trailer at the Game Awards would’ve been a good way to promote this but MS just released this great piece of content with not buzz at all. I just don’t understand MS’s marketing sometimes…
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Yes this is truly baffling. They have a, by everything I hear, great new story add-on which looks and plays great but aren’t pushing it.
Xbox needs a specific games marketing team I think. Everything else is good, like consoles, brand, Game Pass etc.
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Nice to see some people appreciated the new gameplay experiments in Gears 5.
I’m not alone. There may even be dozens of us!
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No😈
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I think that maybe if TC makes some kind of open world in a city, they can take some ideas of the Raccoon Police Station in RE 2. So if you are curious enough to explore, you can find new routes to make the travel faster. Because the only reason you had to explore before 5 was coz some random things like newspaper and the cog tags, and in 5 to upgrade jack, but i mean, you can finish the game without those upgrades, and even if you would be able to do so in an open world inside a city, that can help you to go faster to things, also i still believe that gears should take some things from the Survival horror (i mean, it took a lot from re 4 at the start) because you can easily make an open world in a City that makes you find new routes because you dont have enough ammo for all fights you might find, and so that makes the player to explore for new routes, and ammo. I felt the open world of 5 like brutal legend, the thing its that because the last one tries to makes fun (a really big joke, play the game, you might have some laughs) , you dont even bother that the open world its empty, and even when its empty, it had more side quest than 5.
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No please not. Gears lives by its vastly different locations and setpieces. One city would limit the possible variation by a big margin.
The DLC showed many different areas in a runtime of three hours and was tight linear and bombastic
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Oh yeah, of course i prefer more what they did with the dlc, the thing im trying to explain its what they should do if they really want to keep that open world thing.
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They could make those sections more directed. The thing I hate about this is how undirected it is. Let’s take chapter 2 in gears 5 for instance.
The way this lvl is structured gives you the option to tackle a couple missions in your own order but why give us the option if we need to do all this missions anyways? You limited yourself in a way cause those sections can’t build on each other. I don’t mind side paths but I hate this no directional way of playing. Feels more like I do sidequest until the main parts continues.
So basically I don’t hate open spaces I hate no directional storytelling in a normally linear game.
I mean, also beeing a wastelands without anything didn’t help either. Its like try to make an open world but without the things to craft, shops, etc etc. I finished to play days gone at the start of the month, and i know, its weird to use it as an example, but the thing its that, the game its cliche as hell. But because its cliche, we can use it as a checklist of what an open world game needs to have. And welp, even thinking in how to make it in gears its a bit complicated. Like, what the player should craft, reasons to go to a store, the story around side quest, etc. I felt the gears 5 open world that easily you can make all of it without the open world, and so, the open world was an excuse to add the storms.
Scrap these sections completely and rather create a big open linear lvl. Make us use the glider to fight against something. Gears is not a adventure it is a tight action shooter. Discovery was never the focus this is not a Tomb Raider game where tombs and hidden secrets play a big role.
Either create something completely new or different but don’t make this strange mix out of everything. Fallen Order has the same problem. It trys to be everything but fails to master anything.
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Gears 5 has improved yet again.
All the previous launch issues are now fixed. Full 60 fps now on series X 
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But there weren’t any tombs in Gears 5, plus Gears is what the team wants it to be. Some of us like exploring too. 
Also it seems to me that you are overthinking and analyzing too much the open sections of the game. They are a small part of the overall game and you can pretty much skip everything from the open sections and go in literally 5 minutes to the next action packed main mission if you want. Either way the meat of the game (which is of course the main missions) are the best in the series so even if you dislike the hubs that much the game is still an amazing Gears experience.
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Well yes but thanks to their nature it is interconnected and therefore has to follow certain rules. I don’t mind the openness of the map as long someone leads my way in case of gears a story.
Also I love Tomb Raider but I don’t expect this kind of game in a gears game. Thus other games are made for. Also what does discovery has to do with 3-4 missions that are checkpoints on the map you have to do all of them anyways?