‘Gears of War 4’ Gets Its Preorder Bonuses On, Because Of Course It Does

  Pre-order bonuses, huh? That’s a can of worms, right there. Well, more specifically, it’s a giant can full of worms, suspect hypodermic needles, used condoms and loads of other shit you just don’t want to be dealing with.  

There are a whole range of terrible first-world problems that today’s gamers have to deal with. Release delays, bugs, extortionately-priced season passes, the evils of on-disk DLC… it’s a hard life. Pre-order bonuses are right up there too, when publishers and retailers go freaking overboard. The bigger the game, the more likely you are to find special editions, collector’s editions and premium editions out the wazzoo. When you throw all kinds of extras for preordering on top of that, it becomes a bit of a shitstorm.

Over on the Xbox side of life, Gears of War 4 is one such big deal. A much-needed console exclusive from an iconic IP, there was no doubt that this one was coming with all kinds of extras in tow. Now, Xbox Wire have given us a look at what we’re dealing with here.

If you preorder any edition of the game, you’ll get yourself the Brothers to the End Elite Gear Pack. This is a lil’ slice of fanservice for Gears fans, including three character skins:

- “Tomorrow Anya” is named after her famous words following the end of the Locust War (“Tomorrow Marcus. We finally have a tomorrow.”) Her appearance is based on her look in the Gears of War 4 television commercial, “Tomorrow,” where she was introduced as the mother of JD Fenix.

- “Old Man Marcus” features an older Marcus Fenix as unveiled in the E3 2016 media briefing demo. Twenty-five years after the Locust War, Marcus and the COG have long since parted ways. His facial hair has grown long and his COG regulation kit has been replaced with by civilian clothes.

- “Zombie Dom” proves there’s no keeping a good soldier down, at least in the form of this character skin created as tribute to Marcus’ dearly departed best friend Dominic Santiago.

Then, natch, there are the gold weapon skins. Because where the hell would we all be without gold weapon skins? It doesn’t bear thinking about.