Gears of War 5 (Xbox Series X)

One of my favorite additions that Microsoft added with the Xbox One was the ability to track how many hours you put into a particular game. For some reason, I put 754 hours into Battlefield 1, back in the day. That is nearly 19 work days’ worth of time. Now, this data tracking isn’t always reliable. Oftentimes, it won’t actually track all of the relevant information. For instance, Dragon Age: Inquisition is one game I’d be interested in seeing how long I spent playing it. Not only did I play it, but my ex actually played through herself as well. I also played it through multiple times to do different story things. But for whatever reason, it did not log how many hours I spent. It logged just about everything else, besides that.

All of that to say: I wish this feature existed back when I was playing Gears of War 3, back on the 360. I have to imagine it gave Battlefield 1 a run for its money, if not eclipsed it entirely. Honestly, I’d wager on the side of “blew Battlefield 1 away,” but we’ll never know for certain.

When I got my Xbox 360 way back in the day, Gears of War was one of the games I was interested in getting. I had heard good things, and I picked it up from Best Buy for a small sum, and then I sat down and played it through and beat it in, I don’t know, six or seven hours? It didn’t take long. I enjoyed it, but I remembered feeling very let down at the end of the game. It felt awfully short, and I didn’t see myself really playing it through again. I didn’t have anybody to go through it with in co-op, and I didn’t have internet in my apartment at that time. What a crazy idea. To not have had internet in my apartment. When I wanted to use the internet (because this pre-dated cell phones with stable, reliable, cheap internet access), I would have to take my laptop to somewhere that had wifi (school, a coffee shop, or the clubhouse of my apartment complex). Otherwise, I just would go without. What a different time. Anyway, because I didn’t have internet, I couldn’t play the multiplayer of Gears of War, which I think was for the best. When I finally did get some internet access, I tried Gears of War online, and oh my god, it was terrible. Buggy, dirty, and I had joined the game so late in its life; everybody else was so much better than me. It was terrible. I think when I went over the Gears of War series in a previous post, I might have told all of this. I should go back and re-read.

Yeah. I said most of that already. But whatever. That was over three years ago. (What!? Jesus!) I made a comment back then about how Gears of War 4 ended on a cliffhanger, that I hoped was handled well. I said I wouldn’t pre-order Gears of War 5 (like I did for Gears of War 4, despite my barely playing it), but I would probably get it when it went on sale. Well, fuck you, past me; Xbox Game Pass became a thing in the last three years. Who would have thought? Well, Gears of War 5 came out in late 2019, and here it is late 2021, and I thought I’d go ahead and give it a try.

Well, two things: one, the title is actually “Gears 5,” which I think is idiotic. It’s called Gears of War. This is the fifth (technically sixth, if we count Judgment) Gears of War game. Hence, Gears of War 5. There was no previous “Gears” game. Calling it “Gears 5” is just entirely incorrect. I wonder why that decision was made, to drop “of War.” My quick Bing (!) research tells me that it was just to streamline the title for marketing. I wonder if it had anything to do with God of War, which shared an acronym and two words and was one of the flagship franchises of Sony’s consoles. An executive made a joke that it makes it easier for people to post about it on Twitter, back when Twitter had character limits. Also, everybody just called it “Gears” anyway. Well, that was a tangent. Two, I actually tried Gears of War 5 back when it came out on the Game Pass in the first place, because of course I did. I have played every Gears of War game, and I have generally enjoyed them all. I wanted to see how the story continued. But, I think this last time was my third or fourth time to actually try the game. I never got past the first chapter before, until this time. And I will talk about why that is.

I don’t know what compelled me to play it again now. Wait; yes, I do. Marcus Fenix and Kait Diaz were added into Fortnite a few weeks ago, and I bought them both, because I am a consumer whore. Though, to my credit, I managed to finagle my currency to only end up having to spend $1.98 on both of them, which I think is pretty impressive. Side note: I recently bought the Boba Fett pack on Fortnite, which after my money-management, ended up also only costing me $1.98. Weird how that happened twice. Anyway, I thought that if I cared enough to buy those characters (I really only wanted Marcus, but it barely cost any more to get both), and if I was that excited by the prospect of playing them, perhaps I should actually play the most recent game in the series. So, with that in mind, I downloaded Gears 5 (only the campaign, at first) with the intention to give it an honest try. Much to my surprise: I beat it. Who knew.

Before I get into the campaign, I want to talk about the multiplayer. I downloaded the multiplayer component of the game (which I think is so neat that you can choose to not download anything but the campaign, to save on space and data usage) after I was about done with the story, in order to play Horde mode. I always enjoyed Horde mode in Gears of War 3, so I thought I’d give it a try. Horde is the only reason I haven’t uninstalled the game now. Anyway, I played a game of Horde, and I decided to try the multiplayer one more time before I wrote it off entirely. I played two games, and I really do hate the multiplayer now. I knew it was bad in Gears of War 4, but I thought maybe some things had been changed. Nope. In fact, it’s worse now. At least in the last game, you had some choices for switching weapons. I actually played Gears of War 4’s multiplayer for a bit (I played the game for 68 hours, in total), because I had friends to play with. However, Gears of War 5 only lets you switch between smoke and flash grenades. You’re forced to use the Lancer and Gnasher and that’s it. You can’t change anything. So, of course, everybody immediately switches to the Gnasher at the start of the game and makes a beeline for the other team and starts firing wildly. The Lancer feels more useless than it ever has. The weapon bloom is intense, compared to any other game. The accuracy of the Lancer used to be pretty reliable; now you kind of have to fire it in bursts like the old Retro, dealing far less damage. And even if you catch somebody out in the open, you probably won’t down them even with an actively-reloaded Lancer. It was terrible. I played one game that I joined mid-match, did terribly, gave it another try, did better, but turned it off afterwards because it was just terrible. There was nothing fun about it whatsoever. It was like they kept all of the worst parts of the series and cut out anything resembling the good parts. I don’t know what they were thinking. It’s like they have absolutely no interest in drawing a new audience to their game. They’re only appealing to the people who already like Gears of War. I mean, they don’t need to go to the extreme other end like Judgment did. Don’t take out DBNO. Don’t make the maps circular. Keep the feeling of siege warfare and defending points. But maybe make ranged weapons that aren’t power weapons an option. Why isn’t the Markza or Hammerburst an option at spawn? Why can’t I use the Enforcer or Claw intead of the Gnasher? As many weapons as are available in the campaign and Horde mode (which added the flamethrower back in!), why are we forced to use the fucking Lancer and Gnasher in every single fight? They have a single-shot marksman rifle, a burst rifle, a fully-auto assault rifle, a light machine gun, a submachine gun, and a shotgun. But you’re forced to use only the assault rifle and shotgun. Why give all these options but not let us use them? So stupid. So, so stupid.

But the campaign. That’s the main thing I wanted to write about. As I said in the last post about Gears of War, the series has never been the best at storytelling. Those trailers were the best storytelling part of the series, and those were just trailers. The games themselves were always a bit silly. Macho, overly-violent and angry, full of unnecessary language and melodrama. There’s a comical scene in Gears of War 4 in which our protagonists hunt down Marcus Fenix, who has since retired and decided to live the life of a hermit, but of course he was always preparing for another war. So he lets them into his secret armory, where four suits of COG armor are hung up for future use. You see these three, massive piece of body armor, then this teeny, tiny one for Kait, because she’s a tiny lady who can’t handle all the heavy armor of REAL MEN. Also, one of the more famous lines in Gears of War 2 is, “…it’s a giant worm! They’re sinking cities with a giant worm!” Which the player then goes inside of and kills from the inside with chainsaws, which are also guns. And, of course, the deus ex machina ending of the third game. It was just…atrocious. Gears of War 4’s story was a bit better, introducing us to JD Fenix, Marcus and Anya Stroud’s son, who had abandoned the COG with two of his teammates after having…issues with the powers to be. Of course, they’re forced to rejoin the COG after their town is destroyed by the Swarm, a group of enemies that are…the Locust. I mean, they’re just the Locust. I don’t understand what they’re supposed to be, and I’m honestly not sure if they really explain it. The Locust and Lambent are all supposed to be dead. I don’t know why the Swarm exist or how they differ from the Locust. They seemed to have been created from the dead Locust or…something. Myrrah still can control them, so I don’t know.

Anyway, at the end of the fourth game, after going through all the typical bullshit, it’s revealed that Kait, the token lady of the group, has some connection to Queen Myrrah, because she’s wearing a necklace that has the Locust symbol on the back. Intriguing. Cut to the fifth game, where we dive right into… JD? JD and co are going back to Azura, where a lot of the third game takes place, to try to find a Hammer of Dawn satellite to launch into space to try to fight the Swarm. The Hammer of Dawn. You know, the giant space laser that wiped out the vast majority of humanity and was one of the primary factors in the continuation of the century-long war between the COG and UIR. This first chapter is…so bland. It’s just more Gears of War 4. It jumps into a lame story following a lame character going through a lot of the same motions. Go into this ruin, kill Swarm. Launch the satellite, come back to the COG and get chewed out by the Prime Minister. Fuck you, lady, I’m a Fenix, and what I say goes. Rush off to help evacuate people who are being attacked by the Swarm. Oh, and there’s some British dude who’s an asshole. Whee.

You do, however, get a new Jack, which is the robot that follows Marcus around through the first three games. I want to say it gets destroyed at the end? So the one that they have in 4 and the first chapter of 5 is Dave, which gets badly damaged in the first chapter and is replaced by a new Jack. Jack is playable, if you’re playing co-op (which I wish I could), and he can be upgraded. Gears of War is a shooter, not an RPG, so there is no means of making yourself stronger. However, Jack’s powers get more powerful and more useful as time goes on. Like, there were only two abilities that I used with any frequency. One was called Flash, and it would stun enemies, which would knock them out of cover. Helpful. But once it was upgraded all the way, it would freeze enemies. Against normal enemies, this was all but an instant kill attack. Against the bigger ones, it would force them to stop attacking and be a huge damage multiplier. It helped so much. The other was a stealth field, which would allow you to become invisible like Jack can. However, enemies can’t see you at all when you’re invisible, even if you’re stabbing one of their buddies to death in front of their eyes. There were certain parts of the game that were super easy because I could stealth and just chain kill my way from one enemy to the next. One of the upgrades for it added a few seconds after each kill. It was pretty fun and satisfying to do that, though, because Gears of War and stealth do not get along at all. So, I liked the Jack stuff. It also made me WANT to explore, rather than feel obligated to, because I could discover more upgrades for him.

Well, after typical chapter 1, it comes out that JD committed what one might call a war crime and ordered his robot peacekeepers to open fire on a group of unarmed protesters, which the other members of the group do not take too kindly to. Deep in regret for his actions (or, rather, his friends learning the truth), JD attempts to have Damon Baird (from the first games) use him as a target for the Hammer of Dawn, due to issues. In the process of this, Baird loses control of the satellite, and it ends up killing dozens of civilians, including Lizzie Carmine, the requisite new Carmine for the game. As a weird in-joke, they added a character to the original game named Anthony Carmine. In the first chapter, he serves as the fourth member of Delta Squad, with Marcus, Dom, and Minh. However, he is shot through the head very quickly into the game. Carmine is a shade of red, as a reference to his existence as a “red shirt,” like in Star Trek. In Gears of War 2, there is Benjamin Carmine, who is also killed brutally. Gears of War 3 had Clayton Carmine, who managed to survive the game due to a poll being taken in which it was asked if he should live or not. In Gears of War 4, there was a Gary Carmine at the outsider town, who is killed, and then Lizzie in this one. First female Carmine, and she gets killed in the first chapter in a dismissive way. Good to know they’re equal opportunity.

Anyway, it jumps forward a few months, and now Kait is the protagonist, rather than JD. JD survived the Hammer blasts, but he was badly wounded and became a bit of an asshole, for some reason. So Kait and Del severed ties and went to do their jobs. During their attempts to bring Kait’s uncle into the COG, his settlement is attacked, and it is discovered that Kait has the ability to control the Swarm. She may or may not make one of the Swarm to kill her uncle, but with this new knowledge, she and Del go to discover the truth, with Marcus’s help. Long story short (too late), Kait is the granddaughter of Myrrah, the queen of the Locust from the first three games. Her mother, Reyna, was captured by the Swarm in the fourth game and was hooked up to the hive, which managed to convert her into the new Locust Queen. Myrrah shows up on the box of the game, and she shows up within the game as a character in Kait’s mind, so I appreciated that. Through the course of the game, they manage to launch the Hammer of Dawn for realz, despite the obvious bad idea that it is, and Reyna shows up as the proper Locust Queen and kills either Del or JD in the last chapter of the game. That choice was sudden and surprised me, which is good. The story doesn’t do that to me. Most of Gears is very telegraphed, but this sudden choice was tough.

Well, not tough. You obviously have to save Del. I don’t know which decision is canon, but it seems like it should be Del. I played through twice to see how the story changes, and I kind of like both. JD dying is appropriate, because he’s a war criminal asshole who never really gets redemption for the terrible things he did, and it adds an extra layer of grief to Marcus, who is kind of still a protagonist, despite being a side character in the new series. Del and Marcus kind of bond over this sudden loss, and it feels like a sacrifice that JD was wanting when he tried to kill himself with the Hammer the first time. When Del dies, Fahz — the British guy — has a good moment where he calls back to earlier in the game, which was clearly foreshadowing for the death of Del. JD’s grief over the death of Del brings Marcus and JD together, with the father and son hugging it out afterwards. It added some depth to JD and Marcus’s relationship that it really did need. But I don’t think that’s worth killing Del over. JD is a flat, boring character. Del was interesting. Oh, Jack died too. He sacrificed himself to serve as a target for the Hammer after the targeting was damaged by the Swarm. Poor little robot.

Overall, the story was actually very engaging. It had the same sort of fuck-about quests that the series is known for. Walk here, walk there, do this, do that, defend this. Escort this. But at least it all felt like it had a purpose, rather than Gears of War 3, which felt like a lot of walking in circles. Oh, and something that was revealed to me in the second chapter that I wasn’t aware of: the game takes a turn for the open-world.

One of my first posts was about open-world games, I think, and I still have mixed feelings about them. I don’t know why every game and series feels the need to add open-world elements. I don’t know. Sometimes, this is good. Skyrim handled the open world very well, because the world felt alive and every nook and cranny had something new to discover and conquer. Games like Breath of the Wild or Red Dead Redemption 2 just had…vast open space for no real reason. I wouldn’t feel like I was enjoying exploration; I would feel like I was wasting time just trying to move the story forward. Gears of War 5’s open world showed up twice, and neither was very big. I feel that they were adequately-sized and paced where it didn’t feel like you were wasting a lot of time wandering with little payoff. The sites to visit were frequent enough and obvious enough that I didn’t get frustrated or anxious about missing things or wasting time. To cap it off, your exploration vehicle was a skiff that used a wind sail to move around, which was reminiscent of the sailing in Wind Waker, which is always a positive in my mind. I do love Wind Waker.

Gears of War has long been my gold standard for cover-based third-person shooters, and I don’t think that’s changed with this one. The shooting still felt solid, there was a good selection of weapons to use, and each of them felt adequately powerful. Some of the new ones were clunkers, like the Lancer Grenade Launcher, but I found myself using that Claw LMG all the time, once I found it. Markza and Claw were my go-to by the end of the game. The enemies got a bit redundant, but that’s no big deal. I felt like the power curve of your characters was well-done, too. Enemies like Carriers and Wardens were huge struggles at the start, nearly being more mini-bosses than just enemies, but by the end, they were tougher than the average bear but not a big deal. It all felt natural.

Also, Gears of War isn’t known for its boss fights. Skorge and Raam in the first two games go down pretty quickly. The final “boss” of Gears of War 2 was a lambent Brumak, which isn’t actually true. Skorge is clearly the final boss, and that lambent was more of an interactive cutscene. Which is kind of how the final boss of Gears of War 5 felt. Interactive cutscene. However, there is a boss about halfway through that is clearly just an interactive cutscene, but I think it was done very well. When you’re trying to launch the Hammer of Dawn into space, you’re attacked by this big worm/squid creature who wants to eat the rocket or something. There’s no way you can properly kill it, so all you’re doing is trying to get away. However, it attacks when you’re on top of the rocket platform. So the fight is that you are trying to rush down the rocket platform while the rocket is about to take off, all the while being harried and attacked by the Swarm and this worm creature. It’s hectic and challenging but satisfying. You get stopped here and there to fight or weaken the creature’s tentacles, while it crushes the platform and forces you to find new ways down. It ends at the bottom of the platform, under the rockets of the…rocket, where you piss the creature off enough (serving as a “tutorial” for the final boss), where it puts its head under the engines right as the rocket takes off, hurting the creature enough that you can run away through the tunnels, as engine flames and the pained cries of the creature follow. It was really well-done. It was kind of reminiscent, to me, of the Colossus of Rhodes fight from God of War 2. This huge set-piece boss fight that was more of a huge cutscene that you played through rather than an actual boss. It was one of the high points of the series, to me.

I don’t know how I feel about the ending, though. All of the new stuff about Myrrah makes me question everything else I thought I knew about the series. If Myrrah had lived at the end of Gears of War 3, she probably would have been in her 70s or 80s in Gears of War 5? Which means that when she was a child, tested on at New Hope, it would have been several decades ago. Okay. My understanding was that Myrrah had some connection to the Locust, and she found them and became their leader. Gears of War 5 seems to posit that the Locust were a man-made creation that spawned from that research on Myrrah. The project was trying to create super-soldiers for the COG, and what they got was the Locust. But Myrrah could control them through the hive mind, and she led them into rebellion, destroying the facility, and escaping underground. And then, in just a few decades, the Locust were a planet-wide force that had extensive caverns, architecture, religion, language? That doesn’t make sense. How could that have happened? Myrrah was a small child when she first came to New Hope, but she didn’t lead the Locust into rebellion until after Reyna, her daughter, was taken from her. She had to have been an adult (or near to it) at that point. So by the time of Gears of War, she would have only had two or three decades to lead the Locust. It makes no sense at all. There is no explanation for how the Locust could have gotten so ancient and advanced in such a short span of time. I don’t know. I don’t like it. I don’t know if they’ll explain it or just leave that huge plot hole there. It makes the Locust more sympathetic in some ways but less so in others.

Also, the game ends with the Hammer of Dawn back online and having saved the day. The warnings the characters get from Paduk that using the Hammer is a mistake fall on deaf ears, and he’s proven wrong by the Hammer destroying the threat. The game ends with the Swarm having a queen, making them more organized and threatening than they were before, kind of like how humanity was at the start of Gears of War. It feels like the whole series has moved in a circle. Hopefully, the sixth game puts a satisfying end to this second trilogy, otherwise I may have to dock some points from Gears of War 5 in retrospect.

I’m glad I finally played the game, though. I’m surprised it took me this long, but I guess I expected worse than I received. I doubt I’ll ever go back to Geras of War 5, except maybe to play some Horde, but I would recommend it to anybody who’s looking for a solid shooter. I don’t know if previous experience is required.

One last thing: they added Richard Prescott back into the game through multiplayer, but they changed the voice actor. The guy playing him now is Liam O’Brien, who voices Illidan in Warcraft. It’s a severe shift in tone and attitude, and I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m also not sure why it happened. Dwight Schutlz, who voiced him in 3, was very harsh and condescending and kind of whiny. Prescott was a politician, not a soldier, and he was set up to come off as a bit dastardly. Somebody you don’t feel bad when you see him die. The Illidan voice makes him seem very intimidating and commanding, heroic and important, with a presence that you can’t ignore. Not this whiny, shrill politician. Since I like Prescott, I should approve of the change, and perhaps it’s indicative of the creators’ feelings for the last Chairman of the COG, but I feel like it’s such a drastic shift that I find it hard to accept. Oh well. At least they added him back in. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who missed him in 4.