Gears of War 4's First Free DLC Maps Revealed

Microsoft has announced the first two free DLC maps for Gears of War 4.

Checkout and Drydock, maps that originally debuted in Gears of War 3, are being added to Gears of War 4's multiplayer hopper for versus and Horde starting on November 1. People who own the $50 season pass can start playing that day through the developer playlist, Microsoft said.

Everyone else can play the maps a week later, starting on November 8. Checkout and Drydock are the first Gears of War 4 DLC maps, but they won't be the last, as Microsoft will add two new maps every month going forward, for a total of 24 DLC maps when things wrap up.

As announced previously, all Gears of War DLC maps will be free in public playlists, but if you want to play them in private matches or offline, you need to buy them.

Watch the videos embedded in this post to see how Checkout and Drydock look in Gears of War 4; you can see that they look better than when we first saw them.

Additionally, Microsoft released a video that shows what the playable characters based on Killer Mike and EL-P from the hip-hop group Run the Jewels look like in the game. They will be playable characters in Gears of War 4's multiplayer and Horde modes in the future.

In other news about Gears of War 4, the game is celebrating Halloween with pumpkin heads and a remixed version of the Dodgeball mode called Pumpkin Ball.