The Gears Campaign, Then and Now
The Coalition never stood a chance.
And how could they? They were entrusted with the keys to the best third person shooter franchise ever to grace an Xbox, maybe any console. Gears of War 1–3 were near perfect examples of gameplay and level design. Fresh, innovative, challenging, and fun.
It was like asking The Coalition to make Illmatic 2.
And while their attempt was admirable enough, as I played through Gears 4 and 5 I found myself reflecting less on the positives of my current adventure with Jr. Fenix and friends, and more on what made the original three campaigns such masterpieces.
The cover system springs to mind. Snapping to a pile of sandbags, sprinting through a hail of Locust fire to another convenient half-wall, nailing a reload while shuffling across to get a line on an approaching Boomer: it was all executed flawlessly.
The gunplay was top-notch. Be it the fierce rattle of the Lancer or the visceral crash of the Gnasher, the guns had weight and personality (the game didn’t have to tell you to use burst fire with the Lancer, the gun did). As you poured bullets into a stubborn Locust you could feel the pressure build until it finally released when the Locust collapsed to the ground. It was immensely satisfying. Reloading, an afterthought in most games, became a huge point of pride. And heavy weapons like the Boomshot, while OP, took skill and didn’t feel cheap and easy like your standard AOE rocket launcher.
Then there’s the atmosphere. The Locust-infested planet of Sera was consistently desolate without being repetitive. Whether you were above ground in an abandoned factory or below in the emulsion-soaked world of the Horde, you felt like you were walking through the ghost of a world humanity had leeched for everything it was worth. A civilization once proud and strong now broken and empty. It was beautiful without being distracting, post-apocalyptic without being cliché. It was the perfect setting for fighting an enemy bent on human extinction.
In other words, it felt like Gears.
And like the mission Marcus Fenix and friends were on, Epic pulled it off — against odds — without making chainsaw guns look ridiculously out of place.
So how did the Coalition measure up in Gears 4 and 5?
It was a mixed bag.
The cover system took a step back. In the original games everything was intuitive. Moving from cover to cover, sprinting through fire: at higher difficulty levels the games rewarded precise timing and punished blatant stupidity. But more importantly, Marcus or Baird went where I wanted them to go. In Gears 4 and 5 I found transitioning from cover to cover to be hit or miss, moving around corners wasn’t as smooth, and I ended up accidentally standing in the line of fire when I meant to dart across it.
And I found myself too often in open space, relying on clumsy jumps and rolls to avoid incoming fire or a charging Warden, or conversely jammed into a corner with my AI friends with nowhere to go to as a Scion one-shot me over and over. The latter was I attribute to poor level design, while the former was a combination of design and environmental assets that were too easily destroyed. The takeaway is that Gears is a cover-based shooter, and to be deprived of it seemed like a violation of the series’ most fundamental principle.
Guns was an area where the new Gears shone, in 4 and 5. Franchise stalwarts like the signature Lancer and the demanding Longshot were retained, with the former being as perfect as it ever was and the latter actually improved (headshots in general were a tad too easy to come by, but still extremely satisfying). Newcomers like the Embar and the Markza were vigorous and fun, while the Dropshot and the Overkill were fresh and effective once you got the hang of them. And I must give a special, sultry, bedroom eyes, here’s-my-room-key-in-my-underwear mention to the irreplaceable Boltok pistol.
Best gun in the game.
The exception was the Claw. That gun…like…I don’t…that reload time? Jamming as a part of its functionality? I kind of cried a little when I was forced to use it.
The atmosphere of Gears 4 and 5 marked the sharpest departure from the original trilogy. Both games opened on bright, sunlit battlefields. The grit, grain, and desolation of the original trilogy was gone, and I missed it.
The continuity between levels was gone, too. No matter where I was in the original Gears, I felt like I belonged there. One battlefield flowed seamlessly into the next, and whether it was in a mine cart, a broken courtyard, or driving through bombed-out streets, the game flowed from battle to set piece to boss like a river. Like A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin, every chapter packed a unique punch.
It wasn’t the same in the new Gears, particularly Gears 5 (apart from Act IV). Part 5 started in the tropics, then moved to a frozen wasteland, then a desert. Maybe the idea was to showcase the excellent graphical capabilities of the Xbox One, but the transitions were too jarring and made the settings less memorable. (And that’s without even talking about sandbox element that slowed Acts II and III to a crawl: just…no. This is Gears. I want to be shot at constantly, not leisurely saunter toward a question mark on a compass.)
I think it says a lot that I remember more of the set pieces and environment from the original Gears I’m over a decade removed from than I do of the new games I just finished.
The original trilogy wasn’t known for complicated characters or a gripping plot, instead going for tired stereotypes (Cole Train) and conventional plot devices (“let’s restore power to X while the aliens shoot at us”). Despite that there was a concrete charm to Marcus’ growling frustration and Baird’s general lameness, and a step-by-step functionality to the narrative.
Gears 4 sacrificed stereotypes for blandness, and Gears 5 did little better. JD Fenix (son of Marcus), the protagonist in Gears 4, was shockingly conventional. He was friendly, affable and plain (I thought he was voiced by Nolan North at first). Marcus’ gravelly, sandpaper — and — nails growl was replaced by JD’s plain, indistinct chirp. I think it was telling that the game’s best line was delivered by Marcus, now the ultimate NPC, and not a playable character: “Aw, they’re messin’ up my fuckin’ tomatoes!”
Kait, who was in Gears 4 for but took JD’s spot in Gears 5, was more interesting. While nothing too dynamic, she was well-voiced and likable, and felt like more of an individual than JD. I was also more interested in her relationship with her mother than I was with JD’s relationship with Marcus (Marcus didn’t seem to like JD, and I totally got that).
The supporting cast was forgettable, with the possible exception of Fohz in Gears 5. He started as a predictable dick but evolved a little as the game moved on.
While Kait’s personal story served as the main narrative vehicle, what surrounded it…I don’t know. The plot shifted a lot. It started as an outlaw story, then dabbled in mystery for a while before finally committing to “let’s save the world from the Swarm” In Act IV of Gears 5. It wasn’t until then that I got the sense of being humanity’s last, desperate chance of survival (that was the spine of the original series’ narrative). Before then the games flirted with ideas but didn’t commit to anything.
This was exemplified in the fertility program. After the war Marcus and company won 25 years ago, humanity needed to repopulate. The government started a controversial fertility program based on the notion that babies were too important to be left to chance. It was a fascinating concept that I didn’t see coming from a Gears game. The problem was it didn’t go anywhere. I only got a tantalizingly brief glance at it in both games, despite it having a major impact on the Fenix family. To follow that thread and even incorporate it into Kait’s story would have been a bold and daring choice.
Finally, the Locust horde was eradicated in Gears 3. Obviously, it had to return in Gears 4, and it did (except now it’s slightly different and called the Swarm). But there was no single moment where this happened, no grand reveal.
In Halo 4, one of the few things 343 did right was this: “The Forerunners have returned.” If you played it, you know what I’m talking about. It was a singularly cool moment that defined the post-Bungie Chief’s nemesis. In Gears 4 the new Locusts needed a similar exclamation point, a moment where you smiled grimly and put your controller in a death grip because things were about to kick off. A “buckle up” moment. That didn’t happen. Instead the Swarm just kind of oozed into the game, almost without me noticing. It was a missed opportunity.
There’s a lot I could talk about in the new Gears. New enemies, a light dusting of RPG elements (RIP Dave, you got a raw deal). But I’ll leave that for you to discover.
Now I want to talk about when the new Gears got good, and how it gave me hope that The Coalition might knock the next campaign out of the park.
It began in Act IV of Gears 5, after a generally ho-hum act III. From the moment the chopper landed in New Ephyra, the game started to build. The Swarm push was on, the stakes were high and the threat was real.
About 20 minutes in I was stuck with my squad trying to fight off a Swarm onslaught (because something something Hammer of Dawn). It was intense. There were Hunters with torque bows, Scions with Drop Shots, and nests (emergence holes) disgorging enemies. I’d revive an ally, snap back to cover, run along a little wall, Drop Shot nest, dive away from a grenade, chainsaw a grub that got too close, and in general partied like it was 2009.
Coupled with this was the environment I’d been missing. A desolated, deserted, destroyed city. The ravaged backdrop brought back that old Gears feel without it feeling recycled.
As the act progressed, the best laid plans of humanity were mangled by a Swarm horde with a rage and focus I hadn’t seen since Gears 3. It felt like humanity was losing. It felt desperate.
It was awesome.
Here in Act IV of Gears 5 I found the new Gears to be everything I wanted it to be. Fast-paced, bombastic, engaging, gritty and visceral, with just the perfect dash of Marcus Fenix, who was absent for far too much of the game (“Ah for fuck’s sake!”). It also had its some emotional moments (and one intense bout of claustrophobia).
Gears will never be as fresh and new as it was, and that’s not The Coalition’s fault. But it can be as good as it was, and I know because I’ve seen it in Act IV of Gears 5. If they can take that one chapter and apply it to an entire campaign, Gears 6 will easily rub shoulders with the original trilogy.
As the game ended, Kait and I found ourselves contemplating the cost of our victory: an obliterated cityscape, the activation of a dangerous weapon of mass destruction, and the prospect of humanity’s extinction. And here, after some twenty hours of campaigns over two games I thought for the first time that hey, maybe The Coalition does stand a chance after all.
Maybe there can be an Illmatic 2.
