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Gears 5 is receiving a new mini-campaign as DLC on December 16, and it’ll be available as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. The campaign, Hivebusters, follows the heroes of the game’s Escape mode as they go on a “suicide mission” to take down a Swarm hive.

The campaign will be playable in three player co-op, with Lahni, Keegan, and Mac featuring. You’ll be able to use and upgrade their Ultimate Abilities, which was not the case in the regular campaign. The game will come with 16 achievements, totaling 210 Gamerscore, too.

This DLC is written by Kurtis Wiebe, who also wrote the Hivebusters comic series, published across 2019. This DLC is based on those comics.

Gears 5 is releasing a Game of the Year edition alongside this DLC, which includes Hivebusters and earlier updates. The DLC also benefits from Xbox Series X/S optimizations, including 4K graphics, shorter loads, and quick resume.

If you don’t have Game Pass, you can buy the DLC separately for $20.

Gears 5 recently added WWE stars The New Day as DLC, and in a stranger twist, introduced an update to let you replace Marcus with the wrestler Batista throughout the campaign. Gears 5 is also available on Steam, making it the first game in the series to appear on the storefront.

Apex Legends fans who want to dig deeper into the game’s lore are in luck, thanks to a new artbook releasing next year that will delve into a character’s past. Apex Legends: Pathfinder’s Quest is a 208-page hardcover book from Dark Horse Books, but it’s not yet clear whether it’s a traditional artbook or a comic.

The book is due to release on February 2, 2021, both physically and on Kindle. The book’s Amazon page currently lists the book as sold out, but it’s possible that more stock will be secured ahead of release.

Manny Hagopian, the lead writer of Apex Legends, is credited as the book’s author. There’s no preview of the pages inside the book yet.

The game is currently running a Holo-Day Bash event, which will run throughout December. The battle royale title will also come to the Nintendo Switch in 2021.

Pokemon Go developer Niantic’s Harry Potter mobile game, Wizards Unite, is introducing a series of villains and evil creatures in the new Adversaries update.

This update, which is the “biggest feature release of the year,” adds new evil characters to fight against. These include the bad boy Draco Malfoy and the nefarious Bellatrix Lestrange. The werewolf Fenrir Greyback is also included with the update, along with the Basilisk.

These villains will come to Wizards Unite as part of the game’s new monthly patches. Players can earn rewards like Wizarding and Challenge XP, among other bonuses, for defeating the villains.

The Adversaries update also adds a new Adversaries Registry, which is a compendium of more than 75 collectibles that players can collect. There are more combat lessons also available in this registry.

Head to the Wizards Unite website to see a full and detailed breakdown of the Adversaries update.

Another Harry Potter game, Hogwarts Legacy, is in development for release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2021. As controversy swirls around author J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros. has confirmed that she is not directly involved with the game’s development.

The first gameplay demo of Halo Infinite spawned one of 2020’s top memes: Craig, the deadpan Brute. The meme, which took on a life of its own and earned the approval of Xbox’s Phil Spencer, was tied in with the criticism that this gameplay demo attracted–Craig’s cold, uncaring eyes were emblematic of the less-than-stellar visuals on display in the video.

Now, 343 Industries has delved into the game in a new Halo Waypoint update, and there’s news on Craig. Neill Harrison, the director of art management at 343 Industries, has revealed that the Brute will look very different in the final game, and that the version we saw was far from a finished model.

“Firstly, I can confirm that the facial animation on NPCs was not fully implemented in that build, which resulted in Craig’s incredibly deadpan/lifeless look,” Harrison says. “All characters are modelled in a neutral pose, prior to blendshapes & animation being applied. So, poor old Craig was never intended to be seen in that condition which is not something that was evident during the gameplay.”

Craig’s face is actually a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in the trailer, but the screenshot of his face has become infamous. “It was only later, in the close-up freeze frame of his one bad moment, where it came to light and the legend of Craig was born,” he says.

“There’s been further work done on the material fidelity and more variety added for Brute faces, we’re also working to add some hairdos and beards which was something we hadn’t gotten to in July,” Harrison continues. “So, whilst we have come to love our dear old Craig, he’s certainly undergoing a significant makeover.”

All models have seen similar improvements, and the game is certainly looking a lot better now. Still, we wouldn’t be surprised if Craig appears somewhere in the game as an Easter egg.

Halo Infinite will release in Fall 2021. 343 Industries has also shown off the first look at a multiplayer map, and revealed that the game will have microtransactions, but not loot boxes.

Yes, Your Grace, a small game about making decisions on how to run a kingdom, recently released on Xbox Game Pass after hitting PCs and consoles earlier this year. In its first five days on the service, the game–which features Xbox Series X/S enhancements–has done extremely well, the publisher has now revealed.

Mike Rose, head of indie publisher No More Robots, has shared news of the game’s success. In its first day, the game added 10,000 new players, and over the four days that followed it continued to add that many new players every day.

“Around 250,000 people have now played Yes, Your Grace,” Rose revealed–a high number for a game like this.

If this pace continues, then Yes, Your Grace will roughly double its player base within two weeks–a fantastic result. Rose says that optimizing the game for the new Xbox consoles seems to have had an impact.

Rose has been very open about sales figures for No More Robots’ games in the past, and has been a fascinating resource for figures and observations. Descenders, in particular, has been covered extensively as it has hit new platforms. Here’s some further coverage of how these games have performed on Xbox, PS4, and Switch.

343 Industries has revealed that Halo Infinite will be delayed to Fall 2021. The news comes from a blog post, which also goes into how Halo Infinite and its free-to-play multiplayer will handle microtransactions.

“Yes, being free-to-play does mean that there will be some premium cosmetics, but players will still obtain tons of customization content through things like playing campaign, challenges, skill, special events, legacy rewards–such as the Halo 5 SR 152 reward–the progress system, and more,” Halo Infinite lead progression designer Christopher Blohm said.

Blohm added that the team wants players to feel like they’re being properly rewarded for time spent in the game. So players who don’t spend any additional cash won’t be penalized, they’ll still be able to unlock “items across multitude of different customization types.” Microtransactions will only be tied to premium cosmetics, and it’s a one-and-done purchase. “No loot boxes,” Blohm clarifies. “No randomness or items that influence the sandbox and gameplay.”

If you’re in love with the Spartan you’ve already built in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, 343 Industries wants you to be able to recreate them in Halo Infinite. Much like MCC, every armor cosmetic is planned to release in Infinite eventually.

“We want everyone to build their dream Spartan,” Halo Infinite design director Ryan Paradis said. “We are always looking for more ways to customize in-game personas and give the players options. My team knows that our long-term players have favorites that they love and may have for two decades. We want to make sure that Halo Infinite players will be able to get their old favorites, as well as find new favorites at launch and as we expand over the months post-launch.”

Halo Infinite is scheduled to launch for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries has provided an update on the project, revealing a new release window, talking about microtransactions, and showcasing the first multiplayer map in a post on the Halo Waypoint. Alongside all of this, the company supplied a number of new images, which fans of Microsoft’s iconic first-person shooter franchise are sure to poreover in the coming days.

The images include environments from the game, weapon models, and a close look at some of the Spartan armors that will be available when the game launches. Much of the discussion around Halo Infinite when the first gameplay was shown was about its somewhat questionable visual fidelity and this is something acknowledged by 343 Industries.

“The primary goal for the Campaign demo in July was showing Halo Infinite gameplay for the first time. While that aspect generally landed as we wanted, the reality is that the art and visuals weren’t at the bar we hold for Halo – even in a work-in-progress state.

“Much of the feedback we heard from the community aligned with our own views and work we were already committed to doing around things like indirect lighting, material response, foliage and tree rendering, clouds, level-of-detail transitions, and character fidelity. Still, the feedback was humbling, and it also pushed us to look at additional opportunities for improvement.”

However, the studio added that the team has been “heads down working on everything from lighting to fog to wear-and-tear on Spartan armor.” It continued, “July was indeed a very much work-in-progress slice of the technology, and a reasonable set of key features from global illumination and dynamic time of day, to GPU-driven rendering and variable rate shading were all in active development.

“Much of the graphics team’s capacity, along with that of some key technical artists, was focused on achieving high resolution and performance leading up to the demo, which meant several of these features didn’t quite get the level of polish and bug fixing that was warranted.

“Visual fidelity is a very important goal for Halo Infinite, and the graphics and art teams have been continually aspiring, and working closely with each other, to create the best-looking Halo game ever. I definitely want to acknowledge the input that we got from the Halo community and our fanbase; staying open to critical feedback and looking at areas where we can learn and do better is an inherent part of our culture at 343.”

How that looks in motion remains to be seen, and it may be some time before we get another look at Halo Infinite gameplay, but the images do look significantly improved. The environments and models look sharp, detailed, and vibrant, while also sticking close to the Halo aesthetic fans know and love.

According to Joseph Staten, a longtime Halo developer that returned to the franchise to work on Halo Infinite, the game is now expected to release in Fall 2021. As part of the same Halo Waypoint update, 343i revealed the interiors of an as of yet unnamed multiplayer map. It is believed the final game will have a mixture of interior and exterior locations, as has been the case with most Halo games.

As previously confirmed, the multiplayer component of Halo, which is usually incredibly popular and enduring, will be free for the first time in the franchise’s history. Halo Infinite’s free multiplayer mode will also run at 120fps. GameSpot’s Eddie Makuch discussed why this will be such a boon for Microsoft, which you can read for further insight into the potential ramifications of the decision.