Published , by Ozzie Mejia
Published , by Ozzie Mejia
Gears 5 stands to be one of the Xbox One's biggest first-party exclusives of the year. While Microsoft has revealed details of the game's various modes throughout E3 2019, this weekend will mark one of the first big looks at Gears 5 multiplayer. It comes courtesy of the folks at ELEAGUE, who have invited the top Gears esports teams in the world to the Turner Studios in Atlanta, GA to compete for supremacy in the first official Gears 5 esports tournament.
In a manner of speaking, yes, this marks the official premiere for one of Gears 5's upcoming multiplayer modes called Escalation. While Escalation makes its return from Gears of War 4, Microsoft, The Coalition, and ELEAGUE have all stated that Gears 5's Escalation mode was being designed specifically for the esports audience.
Rose Gunson, Executive Producer for Esports at The Coalition had this to say to Shacknews about Escalation during an exclusive interview back at E3 2019:
"The version that we'll be revealing at the tournament in July was designed 100 percent with esports players in mind. For the first time, we were able to take their voices, take their perspective on what makes an entertaining broadcast, and take that to our devs and our audiences and really just build around that. It is a fun and exciting time to release a game that we feel like has been created to have an entertaining broadcast. It's also something where you're going to see more stories, we're going to observe more stories on broadcasts."
The ELEAGUE Gears Summer Series live streams will start on Saturday, July 13 and Sunday, July 14 at 9AM PT. The Gears of War website will have a live broadcast set up. You can also watch on Twitch (the stream is embedded below) and B/R Live, but you may want to keep that Gears website bookmarked for reasons we'll get into shortly.
The following teams will compete at the ELEAGUE Gears Summer Series:
The casual reader may be wondering, "Wait, didn't I hear about OpTic Gaming having the best Gears of War team in the world? Weren't they invited?" Well, something funny happened between E3 2019 and this weekend's tournament. OpTic Gaming has exited the Gears scene, following OpTic's buyout from competing esports organization Immortals, and released the entire roster.
The roster has since landed with Tox Gaming, with that organization announcing just days ago that the former OpTic roster would be joining them.
Alex "Goldenboy" Mendez and Ben "Benson" Bowe will act as hosts for the weekend with a full team of casters, analysts, and Jourdan Kerl as sideline reporter.
Remember we mentioned having that Gears of War website link handy? Well, if you're a fan of Kait, you'll be happy to learn that there's an Esports Kait skin that Xbox and The Coalition would like to give to the Gears fanbase.
To earn the Esports Kait skin, make sure to watch 60 minutes of the ELEAGUE Invitational from the Gears of War website this weekend. Make sure you sign into your Microsoft account upon reaching the website. You'll also want to jump into Gears of War 4 and complete five Escalation matches. After completing those conditions, you'll unlock the Esports Kait skin for both Gears of War 4 and Gears 5. You must complete those five Escalation matches before September 2 to earn this skin.
Gears 5 will release on Xbox One on September 10.