Batista skin is now available in Gears 5

As promised, Gears 5 now lets you play as Dave Bautista.

One of Gears 5's surprise reveals ahead of launch was a cross-promotion with WWE that would see wrestler and movie star Dave Bautista join the game as a playable character.

Bautista made no secret of his love for Gears of War and his eagerness to play lead Marcus Fenix in a Gears of War movie, should it ever actually happen. Until then, however, Gears 5 players can now play as Batista in the game.

Batista is a skin for Marcus Fenix in versus multiplayer and Horde, and comes with over 700 lines of dialogue. Batista is available for free to anyone who logs into the game from now until October 28.

To play as Batista, simply pick the skin under Marcus Fenix's customisation options.

"Adding Batista to Gears 5, we started with the fantasy of 'Batista as Marcus,' putting Batista into Marcus’ armor, and starting with Marcus’ script," said studio head Rod Fergusson.

"Then we added elements of 'The Animal' Batista into his voice performance and onto his look by adding his signature Hollywood shades to his character."

In other Gears 5 news, Microsoft announced the game broke series records in its first week on sale, as well as on Xbox Game Pass.