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Gears 5

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Gears 5
Gears 5 cover
Developers
The Coalition
Publishers
Xbox Game Studios
Engines
Unreal Engine 4
Release dates
Windows September 10, 2019
Reception
Metacritic 82
OpenCritic 85
IGDB 88
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase, DLC, Expansion pack
Microtransactions Loot box
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Shooter
Art styles Realistic
Themes Post-apocalyptic, Sci-fi
Series Gears of War
Gears 5 on HowLongToBeat
Gears 5 on IGDB
Gears 5 on MobyGames
Gears 5 on Wikipedia
Gears of War
Gears of War 2007
Gears of War: Ultimate Edition 2016
Gears of War 4 2016
Gears POP! 2019
Gears 5 2019
Gears Tactics 2020

Gears 5 is a singleplayer and multiplayer third-person shooter game in the Gears of War series.

Some microstutter or light hitching is present at high FPS values, requires a Gen4 NVME SSD to avoid heavy hitching.

General information

Official forum
Official support page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Amazon.com
Microsoft Store
Game of the Year Edition
Windows
Microsoft Store
Microsoft Store
Xbox Game Pass for PC, Xbox Play Anywhere Game of the Year Edition
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Game of the Year Edition also available.
Windows
All versions require an Xbox Live account and Arxan Anti-Tamper DRM. Microsoft Store version is not available in China.

Version differences

The Standard Edition includes the base game.
The Game of the Year Edition includes Ultimate Edition pack and Hivebusters expansion as well.

Monetization

Type Notes
DLC Additional content.
One-time game purchase The game requires an upfront purchase to access.
Subscription gaming service Available via Xbox Game Pass for PC.

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Ultimate Edition Includes Halo: Reach Character Pack and Boost: 30 Day Bonus Included with the Game of the Year Edition.
Windows
Ultra-HD Texture Pack Free
Windows
Hivebusters expansion Included with the Game of the Year Edition.
Windows

Essential Improvements

Skip intro videos

Instructions[1]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\Gears5\GearGame\Content\B2.
  2. Open GearGame.b2index in a hex editor, such as HxD.
  3. Search for Coalition_MSStudios.bk2 and change any letter, such as Cdalition_MSStudios.bk2. Do the same for TheCoalitionLogo.bk2, too.
  4. Save the file. A backup, GearGame.b2index.bak, is automatically created in case it does not work.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Steam %LOCALAPPDATA%\Gears5\Saved\Config\PC\
Microsoft Store %LOCALAPPDATA%\Gears5\Saved\Config\PC\
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.HalifaxBaseGame_8wekyb3d8bbwe\Settings\
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/1097840/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Steam <Steam-folder>\userdata\<user-id>\1097840\remote\
Microsoft Store %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.HalifaxBaseGame_8wekyb3d8bbwe\SystemAppData\
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/1097840/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
Steam Cloud
Xbox Cloud

Video

In-game Video settings.
In-game Video settings.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Game assumes you're on an 21:9 ultrawide ratio for menus and cutscenes, meaning that menus get cut off by bezels and cutscenes and some animations are Vert-. HUD can be moved towards the center, but not enough, and the closest option leaves the edges at about half way on the side monitors.
Ultra-widescreen
Cutscenes are Vert- when using the "fill" option.
4K Ultra HD
Ultra texture pack is an optional download from inside the game on Windows Store or DLC on Steam.
Field of view (FOV)
60-100°, default 80°.
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
No exclusive fullscreen.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
2x, 4x, 8x, 16x.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
TAA. SSAA available via resolution scaling. Contains separate "Sharpening" setting.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
Framerate can be unlimited or limited between 30-144.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
Uses OS setting for HDR.
Ray tracing (RT)
Uses GPU software ray tracing for shadow and screen space global illumination, not hardware accelerated ray tracing.[2].
Color blind mode
Settings for protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia.
The game engine may allow for manual configuration of the game via its variables. See the Unreal Engine 4 page for more details.
Video settings are explained along with visual previews and expected performance impact.

Input

In-game Controller General Configuration.
In-game Controller General Configuration.
In-game Controller Remapping.
In-game Controller Remapping.
In-game Keyboard Configuration.
In-game Keyboard Configuration.
In-game Mouse Configuration.
In-game Mouse Configuration.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Negative mouse acceleration from mouse smoothing which doesn't properly disable even if turned off in settings.[citation needed]
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
Controller remapping
Only remaps to controller buttons instead of actions.
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion
Controller types
XInput-compatible controllers
Xbox Adaptive Controller is supported.
Xbox button prompts
Impulse Trigger vibration
PlayStation controllers
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Generic/other controllers
Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Audio

In-game Audio Settings.
In-game Audio Settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music, effects, character dialogue, cinematics and environmental volume.
Surround sound
Also supports Dolby Atmos.
Subtitles
Speaker names displayed, size adjustable.
Closed captions
Enabled with subtitles. Available for dialogue and some environmental effects.
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Arabic
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Latin American Spanish
Turkish

Change language

The game lacks an option in-game to change language.
Change language of the game
  1. Go to the configuration file(s) location and open GameUserSettings.ini.
  2. In the section GearGameUserSettings change PreferredLanguageCode=EN to PreferredLanguageCode=DE for German voice-overs for example.

Network

In-game Matchmaking Servers Window.
In-game Matchmaking Servers Window.

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
Local play
3 Co-op
Split Screen Co-op
LAN play
10 Co-op, Versus
Co-op modes require online connection.
Online play
10 Co-op, Versus
Supports crossplay with Xbox One, and Series X/S.

Connection types

Type Native Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Used for campaign co-op.
Dedicated
Used for multiplayer.
Self-hosting
Direct IP

Issues unresolved

Hivebusters resets upgrades and checkpoints

Continuing the Hivebusters dlc after quitting in the middle of a chapter resets both the chapter progress as well as the player upgrades.[3]

Issues fixed

Stuck while loading the main menu

If PC is still connected to the modem, but without internet[4] or the game servers are having issues, the game will not identify the lack of internet. This causes an infinite loading-screen when trying to load the main menu as the game keeps trying to communicate with its servers.
Starting the game in offline mode will delete your checkpoint progress and start you at the beginning of the chapter you were playing.
After 24hrs offline you will be required to connect to your Xbox Live account; failing to do so will not allow you to play the game nor access the main menu with error "Unable to connect to Xbox Live account, please connect online in order to continue".
Unplug ethernet cable from the PC and restart the game[5]
Temporarily disable ethernet and/or wifi adapter(s) through Device Manager and restart the game[5]

HDR not working

Unplug non-HDR displays[6]

Other information

In-game General Settings.
In-game General Settings.
In-game Accessibility Settings.
In-game Accessibility Settings.
In-game Mature Settings.
In-game Mature Settings.

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 12 Uses D3D11On12 mapping layer for Windows 7.
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Physics Havok
Audio Dolby Atmos, Ogg Vorbis, Wwise
Cutscenes Bink Video
Anti-cheat Easy Anti-Cheat [7]

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 7 SP1
Processor (CPU) Intel Core i3
AMD FX-6000 series
System memory (RAM) 8 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 80 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050
Nvidia GeForce GTX 760
AMD Radeon R9 280
2 GB of VRAM
DirectX 12 compatible
A 64-bit operating system is required.

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/1097840/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (1097840) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References

  1. Skip Logo :: Gears 5 General Discussions - last accessed on 2020-12-15
  2. It took two weeks to get Gears 5 to RTX 2080 standard on Xbox Series X - last accessed on 2022-10-03
    "We have some compute-based ray tracing in Gears 5, we have ray traced shadows and the [new] screen-space global illumination is a form of ray traced screen-based global illumination and so, we’re interested in how the ray tracing hardware can be used to take techniques like this and then move them out to utilising the DXR cores."
  3. Anyone else experiencing bugs with new hivebusters dlc? [missing title] - last accessed on 2021-01-16
  4. Verified by User:Mrtnptrs on 2022-12-28
    When unplugging DSL-cable from my modem, while having my PC connected to the modem, and trying to load the main menu, it indeed infinitely loads.
  5. 5.0 5.1 Can't start campaign in gears 5 - last accessed on 2022-12-28
  6. Reddit thread 'Gears 5 PC HDR issue (won't turn on)' by Javiercico - last accessed on May 2023
  7. Easy Anti-Cheat - last accessed on May 2023