Gears 5 is replacing Marcus Fenix with Dave Bautista, if you want?

Continuing Gears Of War's weird dalliance with celebrity, Gears 5 is adding Dave Bautista as a replacement actor for John DiMaggio's Marcus Fenix. They've made Dave's face and had him re-record all of Fenix's lines so your man Drax The Destroyer fully replaces the old man of Gears, because reasons. Mystifying. It'll be optional, mind. Some more-substantial newness is coming in the form of the first Gears 5 story DLC, named Hivebusters.

"Dave Batista is a huge Gears of War and Marcus Fenix fan, so we jumped at the chance to get him in the game," the devs explained yesterday. "We worked with him re-recorded all of Marcus' lines while the art team meticulously recreated his likeness. The end result is Dave Batista is present throughout the campaign in both gameplay and cinematic moments."

He's arriving as part of "a major campaign update" due on November 10th (alongside the new Xbox). That will also add the ultra-tough Inconceivable Mode and the Ironman Mode which doesn't let you die at all. New mutators are in as well, letting players fiddle with game-changing settings including making enemies deal freezing damage, changing when health regen kicks in, and daft things like headhots exploding into confetti and ye old gaming classic, Big Head Mode. The update will also let folks use multiplayer character and weapon skins during the campaign.

Gears has courted celebrities before, including casting series fan Ice-T as a character in Gears 3 and giving musical duo Run The Jewels skins in Gears 4.

Then in December, Gears 5 will launch its first story DLC, Hivebusters. In Gearsland, Hivebusters are supermurderers who wipe out whole Swarm hives by letting themselves being kidnapped then murdering their way out. Gears 5's Escape multiplayer mode focuses on Hivebusting, and it sounds like we'll be seeing more of a story take on it. The devs told IGN that it'll be about 3-4 hours long, and they'll explain more in early December.

Game's a good'un, our Gears 5 review said. Matthew Castle explained that "however you want to couch behind cover and shoot monsters, Gears 5 has you catered for. Whether it's crouching with friends and shooting waves of enemies; crouching through furious set pieces in campaign; crouching and getting killed by teens who are better at the game than you; or crouching with pals and worrying that you should really be running from the poison gas and not crouching at all."