SPOILER ALERT!
Okay, I am a glass half full kind of guy so I want to start with the great things about Gears of War.
-It is possibly the best gameplay I have ever had in any game ever, period. I love what epic has done with EVERYTHING involving cameras, controls, and overall play.
-Based on gameplay and content, it is the best game ever in my book, only competing with the Mass Effect series.
-Lots of love and good listeners on Epic Game’s side.
-The atmosphere is amazing all throughout.
Fun Things about the third game’s plot:
-The whole idea of Azure was a fantastic and fun ride. Loved the Maelstrom. Loved destroying it.
*Important to note that some of these things might have “answers” in collectible information, but no game should require the user to find hidden collectibles to make the plot remotely believable. That would be silly. Also, I highly doubt there is any “good” explanation for these problems.
*Many of my comments include all games in the trilogy
So… let’s begin… Gears of War has one of the most contrived, poorly planned plots in any video game ever.
-Immulsion is alive…Really? It’s a parasite? You mean to tell me no one EVER ONCE looked at immulsion under a microscope or made any attempt to figure out exactly what it was. One day, someone found it and threw it in a fuel tank for fun and happened to discover its fuel potential. And then everyone accepts this new fuel source with as little effort into researching it as the people who first recognized its potential as fuel.
Don’t tell me “technology” because these guys have more advanced tech than we do. Robotics? Orbital laser cannons? But they haven’t invented microscopes or something comparable? If they have and knew that this fuel was actually made up of living cells, then do they not have mass media or textbooks to inform people? Because the nature of immulsion is obviously not widely known.
I am an author myself. There is a thing called suspension of disbelief and this is just so utterly ridiculous that I cannot suspend my disbelief. Imagine, if you will, Halo ending under these circumstances…
Master Chief is actually a kangaroo, but no one bothered to check (or didn’t notice) when they augmented him into a cyborg. The Flood is actually a really bad foot fungus that got out of control and developed intelligence. Nobody every autopsied or biopsied these guys to learn anything about them, so this fact goes unnoticed until the very end of the very last Halo game.
Does that sound stupid? Sure does; and while the GOW plot mentioned above isn’t quite as outright ridiculous as that, it does insult the reader’s intelligence. Especially if they have ever taken Biology 101 at the very least.
-Delta Squad goes to Mercy and Char for fuel when fuel was at the sub bay… This one is a big head scratcher. So the team goes to Mercy for fuel. Inexplicably, they hardly try to defend the fragile fuel truck. Even the opposite, they use its momentum and weight to crush obstacles and block fire. Then they act surprised when it is full of holes and unable to hold the fuel from Mercy. That place was just a forced way to kill off Dom. The actual moments leading to Dom’s death are expertly done and emotional (despite the fact that Dom is one of my least favorite GOW characters), but it is the grand scheme of it that bothered me.
Then Char… This place was only used to add atmosphere and layers to the story, but this fact is painfully obvious. Littered with the figures of people turned to ash from the Hammer of Dawn strikes 14 years earlier, it is meant to invoke a sense of awe, regret, and sadness. You get the fuel and you’re out… But when you get to the sub bay, you have to go search for fuel again by the docks, and that is what you take. So the fuel was at the docks the whole time. There was no point to Mercy or Char for any other reason than forced atmosphere.
-The lambent and locust have been mortal enemies for twenty years! That is six years before the locust first emerged from the ground and besieged humanity. The first game takes place 14 years AFTER emergence day. Guess what, in the first game in the immulsion mines, the lambent wretches fight WITH the locust. So they had a cease fire and suddenly were fighting together against humanity? Soooo doesn’t make sense.
I am guessing that when the first game is made, they had utterly no idea what the end of the trilogy was going to be, and plot priorities changed, making this all obsolete, but still silly.
-Why is Queen Myrrah a human, but leading the Locust. It was something that was weird to begin with and needed some explanation. There was never any, making that ultimately a silly plot device/character.
This was one that’s been bugging me for a while.
-Another one that has been bugging me… those Sires from the second game. They never show up, never are mentioned, what at all was the point to that entire section of the story? It doesn’t tie into anything and the mystery it could have created was shattered. It ultimately made that whole section of the second Gears pointless and confusing. If these creatures and their story was supposed to have a point, OR did somewhere in the books, then they should not have been included in the game.
A user should be able to draw logical conclusions from a game without having to search for hidden collectables or reading novels based on the stories. Collectibles should be for fleshing a story out, not providing the ground to walk on, so to speak.
-The immulsion burned the corpser in the first GOW, but mutates the berserker in the second and everything in the third. Is the parasite intelligent in its immulsion form? That is, can choose when to mutate people, since it existed for so long before mutating any humans?…
-The immulsion in the second game can defy gravity and liquid physics and move up a wall… lol ok. Yes it is alive but not even a squirrel can move up a vertical surface that fast, and a squirrel isn’t an amorphous blob.
-Where the heck does Carmine go halfway through the game, only to suddenly appear at the end? This one might be solely on me missing something important, but he just sort of wanders off from the story, “I’m done with this plot. I’ll see you at the climax”.
-Scourge saws through a tank! That is so stupid on several levels. It was supposed to be awesome and hardcore but it fell flat on its face. I laughed so hard I choked when I saw that. Why? He has a chainsaw staff. There are two chainsaws on either end. The entire thing is NOT a chainsaw. Now imagine trying to cut a 15 foot tall steel vehicle clean in half with two standard chainsaws, one in both hand. And you have to do it in one go. No little bits here and there.
That is what he did and I died a little bit inside when I realized that Epic Games really thought that would make enough sense to get us pumped.
Simply Annoyances or Nitpicks:
-“Mad Scientist” Adam Fenix tests his work on himself. One of the most contrived and unoriginal side-stories and twists in science fiction, ever. It happens virtually every time a scientist is involved in a plot in any major way and it takes no originality to make that twist.
-Why do these guys make fun of the Carmines for one getting his head blown off in the first game. Especially Dom. Dom was one of my least favorite characters. Especially after making fun of B. Carmine getting his head popped off (his “joke” is made in the second game just after the team drills into the warrens). The of course Clay gets sniped in the head in this game, but his helmet miraculously serves a purpose in the third game, when Anthony’s didn’t in the first.
-Where have all these enormous creatures been hiding? Especially airborne things like the reavers and gas bags. They are flying creatures that lived solely below ground until 14 years ago?
-Why has no one noticed Locust before? They seemed to be fairly common. The same with immulsion. These things suddenly started appearing years ago? Or people suddenly started getting a drive to spelunk?
-Why do King Ravens get dominated so easily? They look pretty well-armored. This is purely a nitpick. And how the heck can a catapult be remotely considered anti-air defense in the third game… Artillery, like the catapult beasts are anti-armor and infantry. Look at how fast the projectile flies. And yet we had a big side diversion to take out about three that were “entirely” too threatening for an entire armada of King Ravens on Azure.
-Adam Fenix was crushed by a falling chopper, then Prescott kidnaps him from beneath the chopper, and Marcus didn’t notice any of this happening when he was standing right there?
-Why would Prescott kidnap Adam Fenix? Not a plot hole, but I was hoping for a little more explanation than, “He was smart and could help build a Neuron Device. Why not simply enlist his help or rescue him and tell Marcus that his father was alive and helping the cause?
-Where is Australia located on Sera?
-Lambent Kryll anyone? Whatever happened to those buggers? A single lightmass bomb, which is like a nuke, does enough damage to make them go extinct across the entire planet?
There is never a mention of them after early in the second game, and I for one loved them.
-The stranded guy, Chaps… He dies in the first game and is back in the second. You will notice that when you go to defend the stranded outpost in the first game, after gassing the junker, he gets out with his boltok pistol to help defend. He will be killed by the incoming waves of locust, as all of the stranded AI does at that part. You can even see his body in pieces.
“You were dead!”
“I got better.”
