The launch trailer for the Gears 5 Hivebusters story DLC is here, and it gives us a good look at the adventures of Scorpio squad. The story add-on was revealed in October, but no footage of the campaign was released at the time. Ahead of its launch though, developer The Coalition has finally showcased some of what to expect.
Some of you will recognize that gruff old voice that greets Scorpio squad in the trailer. It’s Victor Hoffman, often referred to as Colonel Hoffman, who featured heavily in the original Gears of War. It’s not clear how prevalent Hoffman will be, but he is giving orders to the Hivebusters squad before deployment.
A core aim of this story add on is to provide some backstory on Gears 5‘s Escape mode. The co-op mode, which saw Scorpio squad dive deep into the Swarm hivemind, gave little to no background on why. We were presented with three characters that were new to the series (Lahni, Keegan and Mac), but given little info on the context of the mode.
Hivebusters will hopefully fix that. The launch trailer is led by Mac, who says that the squad were attacked in the air, before having to escape wherever the swarm took them. Of course, if you’ve played Escape, you know that it’s deep underground where poisonous gas fills the air.
Environmental variety
When it comes to Escape mode in Gears 5, one problem was its environmental variety. Gears of War has some richly detailed maps in other modes, but Escape was let down by a boring underground labyrinth of dark and dingy tunnels. This Hivebusters DLC looks to fix that, as we see lush green landscapes and plenty of open space.
Hopefully these new environments translate to the co-op mode after the story DLC launches. It’d be great to add some variety to the mode, and would provide another use for these story campaign assets. As for the campaign itself, the Gears 5 Hivebusters DLC launches December 15.
