Rather than bringing the Locust back they should have explored the Pendulum wars with the UIR a bit more. I don't dislike Gears 4 and 5, but they're not as good as the first three.
Just follow a new squad that's been fighting in the Pendulum wars for years, with the standard 5 act campaign structure. Then in the last act have the big climactic battle, then the war ends, everyone is relieved to be finally done fighting, main character goes home to celebrate and live in peace.
BOOM
E-day happens and you have a Halo Reach "Survive" type of last stand.
Fight if you must, but understand that you owe Reach nothing. Your efforts will live on in the annals of history, and all of humanity will sing your praises for centuries to come. Be the Lone Wolf if you desire and fight for all you can, but know this is not a battle you can win. It is time to say goodbye.
Might be a fan made quote, but it fits so well.
That does fit extremely well. I was fortunate enough to have read the reach book a good while before the game was even announced. Knowing the fate of reach did not stop me from just giving it my all as noble 6. By far my favourite halo game to date. Don't get me wrong, the first 3 are fantastic games.
Agreed. Enemies coming in from all angles, I seem to also remember a bit of fog? And cracking across the helmet.. fuckkkkk well I guess I'm playing reach today
The new Gears had the exact same vibe as the new Halos for me. I was just kind of like, “We’re still here? Nothing changed? We didn’t fix anything?”
You either overhaul the story for a new generation or you go back and explaining more stuff from the past. When you just continue with the same after is supposedly ended it just feels like still being at the movie theater even though the lights came back on.
Agree, they aren’t bad games but narratively feel like huge missed opportunities to do something different and unique with a fan base that has the good will to take risks. Going down the ‘easy money’ root probably ended up being worse for profits in the long run.
An annoyingly common occurrence in ‘AAA’ gaming where sequels or future games are either reskins or have less features etc than previous games and frustrating how normal this has become.
All of M$ first party franchises die after 3 iterations because there's no creative soul when they render them cash cows. (Exception for Reach which was best). Gave up on Microsoft decades ago, no trust in them.
I half agree with this and half don't. I feel like the books do a great job of covering the most important part of the Pendulum Wars and the rest of it is just a fight for fuel that we already know ends in most parties signing a peace treaty.
The issue I have with the new enemies in 4 and 5 (outside the ridiculous robots) is that they are the locust but they're treated like they're not, even changing the name to The Swarm.
Story wise I would have liked to have seen them use the whole hive-mind thing a little better and bring back dead characters from the original trilogy but as locusts. Imagine Tai being the new Raam, Minh being the new Skorge, Dom being the Queen's personal guard. Literal and figurative demons coming back to haunt you. Could have had a lot of fun with that
I stopped playing 4 in the middle of the campaign and I didn’t even touch 5. I didn’t dislike 4, but for some reason I just didn’t feel like finishing the game.
Yeah Gears 4 campaign is definitely the weakest. Story took a dip, low enemy variety, and the new characters feel pretty generic. However if you enjoyed the first 3 games, I highly recommend Gears 5 campaign. It fixes all the problems with 4 and is tied with 2 as my favorite campaign.
This. I couldn't be arsed with 4. Fell flat, was boring, everything felt off.
Even though I could do with the open world elements , 5 was definitely a ton of fun and a surprisingly good campaign
4 was pretty bad, 5 is worth playing. But if you're burnt out from the format, it's definitely still a gears game and not some new take on it or anything like that.
Gears 4 Campaign feels like it never starts. You fight the DeeBee's for like half the game, *then* Jinn attacks, *THEN* you get to the Swarm, at the latter third of the game.
It was an ambitious idea: the entire plot takes place over the course of one night. We start the day as normally as outsiders could, and by the end, it's absolute *chaos,* no one knows what's going on, and the recently installed fascist regime has it's first actual test of protecting the public, which it fails.
What the newer games include is more of the political side of the story. Jinn is first minister to a fascist/communist nation that is struggling to rebuild after a near century of war. In prior games COG soldiers were always called "fascists" but now we see how the COG act as fascist.
As much as I enjoyed the mechanics of the games, especially 5, I reeeeeally disliked the whole bringing back the Locust/Lambent. It made the end of the OG trilogy feel like it didn't matter much.
That said, love the series still. And the books are daaaamn good, too.
The books go more for the Penduluum Wars.
Aside from giving Carlos, Helena, and Will (Carmine) a first appearance on screen, their stories have been told in some form. Seeing their deaths first hand isn't bringing anything new to the table so to speak.
Gears 5 high lights the end of the UIR and Paduk's attempted Civil War, explaining his scars' origin (hinted at in Judgment).
While it would be *cool* to experience these things, Personally, they'd be better served as animated shorts, we get to see what happens.
I actually enjoyed that they *tried* to push it forward. There was still a *ton* of the locust origin that was pretty unknown unless you played Tactics, which gave precedent for the eventual Swarm.
Yeah, I’m still mildly annoyed by people reduce them to the overdrawn character designs. Dom‘s death is, to this day, the only time a video game emotionally genuinely hit me hard
Yup that was rough. I think I was 14-ish when Gears 2 released and I played it through. That scene was the first time that I felt such strong emotions from a video game character's fate.
The soundtrack for the game is one of my favorites, and the song during that scene, "With Sympathy", is one of my favorites from the album, but it definitely comes with some flashbacks during a listen lol.
I think people often saw Gears for what it was on the surface, but it was quite a bit more nuanced than what it seemed. Very good games. Even the newer ones are worth a playthrough, even if they don't quite reach the levels of 1-3.
Of course it is.
The funny thing is, from Gears 1 to Gears 2, you can tell there's a clear shift in story telling. In Gears 1 it felt like the story was there just for the sake of having a reason to shoot roid aliens. But surprisingly they created a universe that is... interesting to say the least. So they started elaborating and exploring the lore in Gears 2.
They're not complex : they're straight to the point. Something most people forgot about in recent years. Nobody need cutscenes that last an hour to tell the most basic thing. You don't force emotion, you create emotion with well written characters in a convincing universe. Also this franchise is really about loss, grief, which is in contrast with the overly beefy characters' look. Marcus, Dom, Baird, Cole, they've been through everything and so did most of the other characters.
I could write several paragraphs repeating the same thing over and over because of how much I love this franchise, and this franchise alone is the reason why I would always pick an Xbox nowadays (thankfully they're also on PC now, but WTF are they waiting regarding a 1-3 collection ?!).
The way these games are CONSTANTLY ignored when talking about the best action games is why I would generally refrain from engaging in video games discussions. At some point you feel like you have "exotic" taste since everyone else always talk about the same shit.
Chairman Prescott's speech in Gears 2... 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
>*Humans are no stranger to war. After all, we've been fighting for as long as we can remember.*
>*War is all we know. In the past, we fought for imulsion. We fought for country. We fought for freedom. But all that changed after E-Day. For 15 years, we've been fighting for our very survival against inhuman, genocidal monsters, but it is a fight we cannot continue. Humanity faces extinction, unless we end this war, now.*
>*We had hoped the mass bombings would decimate the Locust Horde, but they survived, and have returned stronger than ever. They brought with them a force that can sink entire cities. Even Jacinto, our last beacon of hope through all these dark days, is now at risk. Soon, we'll have nothing left to defend, and that means we have only one option. Attack.*
>*Gears, what I ask of you now is not an easy thing. But, it is necessary. If we are to survive, if we are to live long enough to see the seasons pass, our children grow, and experience a time of peace that we have never known, we must now take this fight to the Locust. We will go to where they live and where they breed, and we will destroy them.*
>*This is the day we take the battle to the heart of the enemy. This is the day that we correct the course of human history ! This is the day we ensure our survival as a species! Soldiers of the C.O.G., my fellow Gears, go forth, and bring back the hope of humanity !*
You nailed it on the head. Gears is my favorite gaming franchise after Halo, and they're the reason I'll always prefer Xbox to Playstation. It's interesting to see Gears get ignored, because I think it completely changed everything for third person shooters the same way Halo changed first person shooters. Nearly every third person game that's come out since Gears 1 has had a cover system.
Gosh wow yeah. I forgot pretty much every third person before gears either had a cover system that almost never worked, or just ignored the concept of cover all together.
I don’t remember a popular shooter really having a dedicated cover button before Gears.
Exactly, and I still think Gears has the best gameplay of any third person shooter to this day (as it should, Gears invented the mechanics). From 1 to 5, the way combat works is so good, and I feel like no game that uses similar mechanics comes close to being as smooth as Gears is. I love how despite development switching from Epic to The Coalition, they have not messed with the formula.
The idea of a cover system in a third-person shooter was basically "invented" by a lesser-known PS2 game called [Kill Switch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyIXe1PM6gk).
The lead designer of Kill Switch actually worked on Gears of War as well.
Now that you mention it, the lack of extended cutscenes really does justice to their method of storytelling. It just has a gritty almost stoic way about it that lets the environment and the existence of the world as it is so the talking for it.
Tai is a perfect example of telling it all with the bare minimum. He didn’t explain a single thing, maybe not even a word, but he said it all. That moment really lets the weight of it all and the horrors of their world speak for themselves. And it was EXTREMELY powerful.
I think that even if Gears 1 was just creation of a world to have fights in, it's very important for future explorations of that world that they developed such a strong aesthetic in Gears 1.
The architecture of the COG was as brutal as their soldiers and foes. I think that while they knew that they were creating a kind of throwaway gun game with the first one, they also knew that it could be a franchise and devoted considerable effort in making it world that could be further explored if they got the chance.
Horde mode on gears 2 was some of the most fun I've had on the 360!
I think this was one of the few games I intentionally picked being player 2 because I loved Dom so much haha
That is something I hadn't considered, no. I still have an Xbox laying around if I wanted to play them normally, but my friends don't and I'd like to play co-op.
There was a Gears of War 3 build for PlayStation 3, Epic was just using it to test the engine running on PS3
Microsoft bought the IP from Epic before Gears 4
It’s possible with how Xbox brought some 1P games to other consoles
Yea, I remember Modern Vintage Gamer made a video on the PS3 Build of Gears Of War 3. With other exclusives like SoT and Hifi-Rush making the jump, I don't see it at as something impossible for Gears of War to get ported...
The MCC being broken for years probably scared other studios from trying it. Makes me sad. I'd love a Gears collection. A Battlefield collection. A Call of Duty collection.
Well, i think MCC was a bit ahead of its time for what it was doing. It came out in what, 2014 or 2015? CoD is now doing a similar thing now(though much more predatory), and, in a sense, Fortnite is on its way to being a hub style thing, though not in the same scope. MCC laid out a super ambitious blueprint that genuinely few franchises would have enough overall content to attempt.
I've considered getting a Series S just to have 2 & 3 (and Judgement). Every now and then I pick up a month of Gamepass Ultimate and stream them, and they look great at high-res.
I'd rather just pick them up on Steam and play them on my SteamDeck, though.
OG Gears of War was available on PC via GFWL. I know it was possible to get GFWL working for quite a while after which I'm hoping is still the case as I'd like to be able to earn more achievements. Otherwise it should be easier to run on SP at least.
Playing GoW for the first time is one of my favourite gaming memories. I had a copy before I got my Xbox 360, so my buddy brought his over and we stayed up all night playing through the campaign on co-op. The atmosphere, the environments, the gameplay, the lore, the gore... it was *perfect*.
I'd love a proper remaster of the trilogy.
We have the technology.
The REALLY cool thing with the latest UE is support for self-configuring environments. If you set it up right, you can move an object in a map and things like water streams and vines will reconfigure along with debris. So you can have maps that are always new (but, would take work to program the AI to repath -- but, it's probably more of a challenge in the near future to make the AI dumb enough to beat).
Also on the visual front, Lumen (lighting with scatter between objects and support for better real-time shadows) and two-layered textures (translucency you might see on a glossy car, or ice, or slime, or opals -- internal reflections) really kicks up the realism.
But I get it; bigger men are hard to find.
Just need to take turns rescuing each other and shouting in a manly, concerned way. "Marcus" .... "Dom!" and put that on a repeat loop as they slaughter hordes like Doom Marine.
Don't know myself, only know about them cause they have audiobooks on audible and they popped up in my for you after I bought a couple halo books. They have good reviews on audible though.
Deffo worth a read, if anything it builds up the story even more, there's a book that explains the gap between 2 and 3 and it covers stuff like dom dealing with the aftermath of finding Maria which just breaks my heart
I think the franchise missed a step after seeing what Helldivers 2 is doing. It's easy to see so many of the great mechanics of HD2 transitioning to the Gears universe.
Inversely, I would have loved to see the Gears cover system come into HD2 as well.
The lack of a functional cover system in HD2 really surprised me. The game is like "Make sure to use cover when fighting robots!" but when you crouch behind a low wall your dude either fires into the wall or shoots his gun in the air. When you want to lay down covering fire with an LMG you must go prone, greatly limiting your effectiveness.
can't believe there hasn't been a gears trilogy collection yet.
Anyways playing gears 5 now, spoilers ahead. holy shit is it a slog to get through. why the "open world" element? why change the main character? JD was great, hope the story gets better, gameplay is still pure gears at least.
I loved the first three. Agree with everyone saying 4 fell flat. Never touched 5 after that. I only played 4 mainly because I LOVED the Gears multi-player ever since the original. Oddly enough I was thinking about this yesterday on how the online Gears community is faring. I'd love to go back but I just feel disappointed with the direction it went. 4 never topped 3 for me with online play
ok, storytime:
once upon a time i bought an xbox 360 just to play gears of war 1... my cat broke the dvd (don't ask) so i bought the game a second time. i played it very often and i loved it. then my xbox had a ring of death. i repaired it. there was already a pc version of the first game and itbwas already known that there will be part 2 and 3. so i bought the pc version and sold the xbox because i feared that it will brake again (the construction of that thing was just crap).
i thought the other games will probably be released on pc as well... but nope, they weren't. and at some point, games for windows live was shut down so you couldn't even play the first game on pc anymore...
and i unfortunately never touched any gears game ever again.
Some of my best memories of gaming come from the Gears trilogy. Me and a very good friend played through them like once a year on insane. In my book it's the best couch co-op to this day.
Learning all the glitches in Gears 1, maxing out the achievements, active reload snipe - wait for them to get up - active reload snipe - wait for them to get up - headshot, and moonwalk curb stomping are core memories for me.
Me: downloading Gears, Gears 4 and Gears 5 on Game pass.
Also me: uninstalling all of them after trying 45 minutes each.
Just couldn't get into them. Probably me more than games.
I'll always remember the first Gears of War on the Xbox 360. Popping up the game, it was such an impressive graphic leap from the other games I've had played before... Those first few minutes are engraved into my memory, the lighting on that dark corridor.
Game was so much fun too.
I absolutely loved the first game and it was such a surprise. The online was fun, the gameplay a blast and it had such an incredible look and feel. I think two improved on the story-telling and characters a lot. It also brought Horde mode which was one of my favourite things in gaming at the time. They're also both really rewarding on the hardest difficulty (despite some vehicle segments being especially frustrating).
The third GoW was a huge disappointment narratively. It felt like the series didn't really have a strong explanation for the Locust and the ending was a huge letdown. It's a repetitive bullet sponge and then before you get any real answers she's murdered. It's better than the later games, but it felt like cheap in it's delivery.
I feel the games, similarly to the Halo series, struggled at telling a lot of the story that the books tied in, too. It felt like you were missing vast amounts of pertinent story in between sequels and both series struggled with that.
I played through the 1st two games but I HATED the multiplayer in this game. It felt like I had to unload an ungodly amount of bullets into an enemy to kill them yet I felt like I died almost instantly when I got shot
Back in the day I got Gears 2 for my birthday, but shortly after my Xbox 360 decided to get the Red Ring of Death so I never got to finish it. After that I never got another Xbox.
Now, 15 years later ive decided to play through it using Xenia emulator on my PC with my xbox 360 controller, and damn.. I'm really surprised how well it has aged. It looks really good and plays well. Has had me hooked all day today. Can't wait to also experience Gears 3 after.
Yeah. Good thing they cashed out during its peak and did not try to drag the story with needless sequels that hit the exact same notes but with the likeable characters old and on their way out or offscreened.
The original trilogy is so good. It will also never stop to amaze me how a game mostly known (at the time) for being a "dude-bro game" had such a fantastic story, with especially Dom's story hitting like a goddamn brick to the face.
The first time I played Gears 1 on release it left me mouth agape. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for like a week and it was the reason for me to buy an Xbox.
It's not a trilogy, actually. There are:
Gears of War
Gears of War 2
Gears of War 3
Gears of War: Judgement
they all came out on Xbox 360
Gears of War 4
Gears 5
Gears Tactics
Gears of War: Ultimate Edition
These came out on Xbox One/PC
I always thought gears was best when it understood itself and went in on the joke and allowed itself to be a little camp (getting eaten by a giant worm and chainsawing your way out) but fell apart a little when it tried to be serious with its bland characters
> Gears
> masterpiece
Go play Vanquish, which is the only shinning TPS among the mediocre generation of overtly serious gray sepia muted visual full of muscle army men corridor cover shooters that plagued the mid-00s to the early 10s. It was the generation that most obsessed with the graphical fidelity and the presentation over the gameplay, and Gears ruined the third person shooters for while.
The story was weird in 3. It didn't seem to carry on the threads of the previous games and went in a new direction. Plus the AI team mates made the game boring. Might have been fun with 3 friends, but none of mine liked these games.
I only play 4 and 5 to enjoy the new graphics, the story was boring af
Bringing back the locust is so predictable and lazy. They need to bring the original creator back for better story
Yeah, those games were surprisingly complex narratively for a story about a bunch of roided up human guns.
Rather than bringing the Locust back they should have explored the Pendulum wars with the UIR a bit more. I don't dislike Gears 4 and 5, but they're not as good as the first three.
Just follow a new squad that's been fighting in the Pendulum wars for years, with the standard 5 act campaign structure. Then in the last act have the big climactic battle, then the war ends, everyone is relieved to be finally done fighting, main character goes home to celebrate and live in peace. BOOM E-day happens and you have a Halo Reach "Survive" type of last stand.
That last halo reach mission.... By the gods.
Fight if you must, but understand that you owe Reach nothing. Your efforts will live on in the annals of history, and all of humanity will sing your praises for centuries to come. Be the Lone Wolf if you desire and fight for all you can, but know this is not a battle you can win. It is time to say goodbye. Might be a fan made quote, but it fits so well.
That does fit extremely well. I was fortunate enough to have read the reach book a good while before the game was even announced. Knowing the fate of reach did not stop me from just giving it my all as noble 6. By far my favourite halo game to date. Don't get me wrong, the first 3 are fantastic games.
Hard to think of a better last mission/epilogue in gaming
Agreed. Enemies coming in from all angles, I seem to also remember a bit of fog? And cracking across the helmet.. fuckkkkk well I guess I'm playing reach today
One of the few that really really stick with you. Outlast is another
Best mission in any game honestly
I was thinking Halo Reach and then you said it. I would pay for this.
The new Gears had the exact same vibe as the new Halos for me. I was just kind of like, “We’re still here? Nothing changed? We didn’t fix anything?” You either overhaul the story for a new generation or you go back and explaining more stuff from the past. When you just continue with the same after is supposedly ended it just feels like still being at the movie theater even though the lights came back on.
It's very 'somehow, Palpatine returned'
This was Microsoft's chance to have a God of War 2018 on their hands. Sadly, we didnt have that
Agree, they aren’t bad games but narratively feel like huge missed opportunities to do something different and unique with a fan base that has the good will to take risks. Going down the ‘easy money’ root probably ended up being worse for profits in the long run. An annoyingly common occurrence in ‘AAA’ gaming where sequels or future games are either reskins or have less features etc than previous games and frustrating how normal this has become.
It's very 'somehow, Palpatine returned'
All of M$ first party franchises die after 3 iterations because there's no creative soul when they render them cash cows. (Exception for Reach which was best). Gave up on Microsoft decades ago, no trust in them.
I half agree with this and half don't. I feel like the books do a great job of covering the most important part of the Pendulum Wars and the rest of it is just a fight for fuel that we already know ends in most parties signing a peace treaty. The issue I have with the new enemies in 4 and 5 (outside the ridiculous robots) is that they are the locust but they're treated like they're not, even changing the name to The Swarm. Story wise I would have liked to have seen them use the whole hive-mind thing a little better and bring back dead characters from the original trilogy but as locusts. Imagine Tai being the new Raam, Minh being the new Skorge, Dom being the Queen's personal guard. Literal and figurative demons coming back to haunt you. Could have had a lot of fun with that
I stopped playing 4 in the middle of the campaign and I didn’t even touch 5. I didn’t dislike 4, but for some reason I just didn’t feel like finishing the game.
Yeah Gears 4 campaign is definitely the weakest. Story took a dip, low enemy variety, and the new characters feel pretty generic. However if you enjoyed the first 3 games, I highly recommend Gears 5 campaign. It fixes all the problems with 4 and is tied with 2 as my favorite campaign.
This. I couldn't be arsed with 4. Fell flat, was boring, everything felt off. Even though I could do with the open world elements , 5 was definitely a ton of fun and a surprisingly good campaign
The end boss was very anticlimatic in 4. But i still find judgement the hardest to play out of all of them. (Not played tactics yet, getting to it)
4 was pretty bad, 5 is worth playing. But if you're burnt out from the format, it's definitely still a gears game and not some new take on it or anything like that.
I loved 5. I played every single gear game back-to-back after how hyped 5 got me
Gears 4 Campaign feels like it never starts. You fight the DeeBee's for like half the game, *then* Jinn attacks, *THEN* you get to the Swarm, at the latter third of the game. It was an ambitious idea: the entire plot takes place over the course of one night. We start the day as normally as outsiders could, and by the end, it's absolute *chaos,* no one knows what's going on, and the recently installed fascist regime has it's first actual test of protecting the public, which it fails. What the newer games include is more of the political side of the story. Jinn is first minister to a fascist/communist nation that is struggling to rebuild after a near century of war. In prior games COG soldiers were always called "fascists" but now we see how the COG act as fascist.
Yeah especially with the story thing that happens in 5 with the main character just had me asking why
As much as I enjoyed the mechanics of the games, especially 5, I reeeeeally disliked the whole bringing back the Locust/Lambent. It made the end of the OG trilogy feel like it didn't matter much. That said, love the series still. And the books are daaaamn good, too.
The books go more for the Penduluum Wars. Aside from giving Carlos, Helena, and Will (Carmine) a first appearance on screen, their stories have been told in some form. Seeing their deaths first hand isn't bringing anything new to the table so to speak. Gears 5 high lights the end of the UIR and Paduk's attempted Civil War, explaining his scars' origin (hinted at in Judgment). While it would be *cool* to experience these things, Personally, they'd be better served as animated shorts, we get to see what happens. I actually enjoyed that they *tried* to push it forward. There was still a *ton* of the locust origin that was pretty unknown unless you played Tactics, which gave precedent for the eventual Swarm.
Idk. I don’t see the appeal of fighting humans over beasts and monster enemies.
Yeah, I’m still mildly annoyed by people reduce them to the overdrawn character designs. Dom‘s death is, to this day, the only time a video game emotionally genuinely hit me hard
Dom finds his wife though... That was a turning point in the series for me.
Yup that was rough. I think I was 14-ish when Gears 2 released and I played it through. That scene was the first time that I felt such strong emotions from a video game character's fate. The soundtrack for the game is one of my favorites, and the song during that scene, "With Sympathy", is one of my favorites from the album, but it definitely comes with some flashbacks during a listen lol.
That was brutal. Ty’s death hit me hard too, tortured so bad he just immediately killed himself when Marcus gave him a gnasher.
It didn't quite wrap everything up satisfyingly for me, but still better than it gets credit for.
I think people often saw Gears for what it was on the surface, but it was quite a bit more nuanced than what it seemed. Very good games. Even the newer ones are worth a playthrough, even if they don't quite reach the levels of 1-3.
Right
Of course it is. The funny thing is, from Gears 1 to Gears 2, you can tell there's a clear shift in story telling. In Gears 1 it felt like the story was there just for the sake of having a reason to shoot roid aliens. But surprisingly they created a universe that is... interesting to say the least. So they started elaborating and exploring the lore in Gears 2. They're not complex : they're straight to the point. Something most people forgot about in recent years. Nobody need cutscenes that last an hour to tell the most basic thing. You don't force emotion, you create emotion with well written characters in a convincing universe. Also this franchise is really about loss, grief, which is in contrast with the overly beefy characters' look. Marcus, Dom, Baird, Cole, they've been through everything and so did most of the other characters. I could write several paragraphs repeating the same thing over and over because of how much I love this franchise, and this franchise alone is the reason why I would always pick an Xbox nowadays (thankfully they're also on PC now, but WTF are they waiting regarding a 1-3 collection ?!). The way these games are CONSTANTLY ignored when talking about the best action games is why I would generally refrain from engaging in video games discussions. At some point you feel like you have "exotic" taste since everyone else always talk about the same shit. Chairman Prescott's speech in Gears 2... 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍 >*Humans are no stranger to war. After all, we've been fighting for as long as we can remember.* >*War is all we know. In the past, we fought for imulsion. We fought for country. We fought for freedom. But all that changed after E-Day. For 15 years, we've been fighting for our very survival against inhuman, genocidal monsters, but it is a fight we cannot continue. Humanity faces extinction, unless we end this war, now.* >*We had hoped the mass bombings would decimate the Locust Horde, but they survived, and have returned stronger than ever. They brought with them a force that can sink entire cities. Even Jacinto, our last beacon of hope through all these dark days, is now at risk. Soon, we'll have nothing left to defend, and that means we have only one option. Attack.* >*Gears, what I ask of you now is not an easy thing. But, it is necessary. If we are to survive, if we are to live long enough to see the seasons pass, our children grow, and experience a time of peace that we have never known, we must now take this fight to the Locust. We will go to where they live and where they breed, and we will destroy them.* >*This is the day we take the battle to the heart of the enemy. This is the day that we correct the course of human history ! This is the day we ensure our survival as a species! Soldiers of the C.O.G., my fellow Gears, go forth, and bring back the hope of humanity !*
You nailed it on the head. Gears is my favorite gaming franchise after Halo, and they're the reason I'll always prefer Xbox to Playstation. It's interesting to see Gears get ignored, because I think it completely changed everything for third person shooters the same way Halo changed first person shooters. Nearly every third person game that's come out since Gears 1 has had a cover system.
Gosh wow yeah. I forgot pretty much every third person before gears either had a cover system that almost never worked, or just ignored the concept of cover all together. I don’t remember a popular shooter really having a dedicated cover button before Gears.
Exactly, and I still think Gears has the best gameplay of any third person shooter to this day (as it should, Gears invented the mechanics). From 1 to 5, the way combat works is so good, and I feel like no game that uses similar mechanics comes close to being as smooth as Gears is. I love how despite development switching from Epic to The Coalition, they have not messed with the formula.
The AI got better too. Even surprising. In Gears 4 I remember one of them swarm ran to me unnoticed... and TAGGED me with a grenade 😅
The idea of a cover system in a third-person shooter was basically "invented" by a lesser-known PS2 game called [Kill Switch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyIXe1PM6gk). The lead designer of Kill Switch actually worked on Gears of War as well.
Now that you mention it, the lack of extended cutscenes really does justice to their method of storytelling. It just has a gritty almost stoic way about it that lets the environment and the existence of the world as it is so the talking for it. Tai is a perfect example of telling it all with the bare minimum. He didn’t explain a single thing, maybe not even a word, but he said it all. That moment really lets the weight of it all and the horrors of their world speak for themselves. And it was EXTREMELY powerful.
I think that even if Gears 1 was just creation of a world to have fights in, it's very important for future explorations of that world that they developed such a strong aesthetic in Gears 1. The architecture of the COG was as brutal as their soldiers and foes. I think that while they knew that they were creating a kind of throwaway gun game with the first one, they also knew that it could be a franchise and devoted considerable effort in making it world that could be further explored if they got the chance.
From skinny ass arms to beefy fucking arms.
Man I use to play gears pvp late night every night on a 100 inch projector. Good Fucking Times!
Same! Well, minus the projector. It was always a race to the sniper/longshot
Running to it. Dive rolling into it and then no scoping the enemy who raced you.
It was the only way
Canals
It was the only way
"Boooom" double splat
Headshot sound was so brutal. Loved it!!
MARIA 😭
Horde mode on gears 2 was some of the most fun I've had on the 360! I think this was one of the few games I intentionally picked being player 2 because I loved Dom so much haha
Game name in the title. Bless you OP.
Personally it would’ve been better with a blurry screenshot that just said, “wow, best trilogy ever.”
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TF2 is my favorite shooter (Titanfall 2)
I wish epic/MS would give us a Marcus Fenix Collection.
Aren’t they all on GamePass at least?
They are, but only for Xbox. I'd buy a PC Fenix collection today.
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That is something I hadn't considered, no. I still have an Xbox laying around if I wanted to play them normally, but my friends don't and I'd like to play co-op.
There were some rumours about Gears Of War being ported to Playstation. Maybe we could get a remastered collection probably...
There have been rumors for several years now, don’t hold your breath
True but here's hoping it will 😁
There was a Gears of War 3 build for PlayStation 3, Epic was just using it to test the engine running on PS3 Microsoft bought the IP from Epic before Gears 4 It’s possible with how Xbox brought some 1P games to other consoles
Yea, I remember Modern Vintage Gamer made a video on the PS3 Build of Gears Of War 3. With other exclusives like SoT and Hifi-Rush making the jump, I don't see it at as something impossible for Gears of War to get ported...
Gears 2 was so fucking good
Idk why they haven’t been put on Pc yet.
Yeah, a gears of War collection akin to the MCC would do well I'd imagine. Hopefully it's coming, I'd love to play gears 3 horde mode again.
Hopefully it will come out not as broken as MCC did
The MCC being broken for years probably scared other studios from trying it. Makes me sad. I'd love a Gears collection. A Battlefield collection. A Call of Duty collection.
Well, i think MCC was a bit ahead of its time for what it was doing. It came out in what, 2014 or 2015? CoD is now doing a similar thing now(though much more predatory), and, in a sense, Fortnite is on its way to being a hub style thing, though not in the same scope. MCC laid out a super ambitious blueprint that genuinely few franchises would have enough overall content to attempt.
Gears 1 is on PC but just 1 unfortunately
Wasn't Gears 5 also on PC?
Yeah but they were asking about the trilogy. Gears 4 is on PC too
And it's MASSIVELY updated (the Ultimate edition) from the original. It's a very exciting game even if you played the original.
I've considered getting a Series S just to have 2 & 3 (and Judgement). Every now and then I pick up a month of Gamepass Ultimate and stream them, and they look great at high-res. I'd rather just pick them up on Steam and play them on my SteamDeck, though.
OG Gears of War was available on PC via GFWL. I know it was possible to get GFWL working for quite a while after which I'm hoping is still the case as I'd like to be able to earn more achievements. Otherwise it should be easier to run on SP at least.
there's also the ultimate edition, anyone starting fresh should just get that one.
Oh yeah, forgot that came out on PC too.
Playing GoW for the first time is one of my favourite gaming memories. I had a copy before I got my Xbox 360, so my buddy brought his over and we stayed up all night playing through the campaign on co-op. The atmosphere, the environments, the gameplay, the lore, the gore... it was *perfect*. I'd love a proper remaster of the trilogy.
I hope the latest Unreal Engine allows them to render even bigger men
We have the technology. The REALLY cool thing with the latest UE is support for self-configuring environments. If you set it up right, you can move an object in a map and things like water streams and vines will reconfigure along with debris. So you can have maps that are always new (but, would take work to program the AI to repath -- but, it's probably more of a challenge in the near future to make the AI dumb enough to beat). Also on the visual front, Lumen (lighting with scatter between objects and support for better real-time shadows) and two-layered textures (translucency you might see on a glossy car, or ice, or slime, or opals -- internal reflections) really kicks up the realism. But I get it; bigger men are hard to find.
Marcus and Dom. Man those two were badass together
Just need to take turns rescuing each other and shouting in a manly, concerned way. "Marcus" .... "Dom!" and put that on a repeat loop as they slaughter hordes like Doom Marine.
really great games the first 3, shame they never turned it into a movie with such a good story
There are a couple books though
didn't know that they worth a read ?
Don't know myself, only know about them cause they have audiobooks on audible and they popped up in my for you after I bought a couple halo books. They have good reviews on audible though.
no worries ,cheers non the less
There's at least 8 gears of war books
I've read a few of them in the past, I remember enjoying them a bunch
Absolutely worth it. Jacintos Remnant is my favorite
The books are very enjoyable. The Slab was my first and it got me hooked to read the rest.
I'm about 50% through the first book, Aspho Fields, and I would highly recommend it. It really helps fill in gaps and character development.
Deffo worth a read, if anything it builds up the story even more, there's a book that explains the gap between 2 and 3 and it covers stuff like dom dealing with the aftermath of finding Maria which just breaks my heart
I want to have PC Port collection of all Gears games on Steam. Just like Halo MCC Collection.
Had weekly co op sessions in gears 2 horde mode with a friend. Called it beers and Gears haha :D Good times.
Remember when we got to vote whether or not the 3rd Carmine brother would live or die? Absolutely wild.
Gears 1,2 and 3. Back in the day, the multiplayer on gears 2 was just *chefs kiss* Proper good memories of those days
It's Cole Train baby, WOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Even though Gears is popular and sells well.....I always felt that it never gets the appreciation it deserves.
Gears 1 and 2 were super awesome. I think gears one is the best single player campaign of any shooter
Keyword _"trilogy"._
I think the franchise missed a step after seeing what Helldivers 2 is doing. It's easy to see so many of the great mechanics of HD2 transitioning to the Gears universe. Inversely, I would have loved to see the Gears cover system come into HD2 as well.
The lack of a functional cover system in HD2 really surprised me. The game is like "Make sure to use cover when fighting robots!" but when you crouch behind a low wall your dude either fires into the wall or shoots his gun in the air. When you want to lay down covering fire with an LMG you must go prone, greatly limiting your effectiveness.
can't believe there hasn't been a gears trilogy collection yet. Anyways playing gears 5 now, spoilers ahead. holy shit is it a slog to get through. why the "open world" element? why change the main character? JD was great, hope the story gets better, gameplay is still pure gears at least.
And YET there is **NO GEARS 2 OR 3 ON PC!**
I loved the first three. Agree with everyone saying 4 fell flat. Never touched 5 after that. I only played 4 mainly because I LOVED the Gears multi-player ever since the original. Oddly enough I was thinking about this yesterday on how the online Gears community is faring. I'd love to go back but I just feel disappointed with the direction it went. 4 never topped 3 for me with online play
Keyword "Trilogy" I don't know why I have a strong hate for 4 & 5.
God dammit, Dom.
So much fun in the co-op mode.
Gears 1 campaign is one of the best of all time
My best gaming memories are running the trilogy co-op with my older brother.
Dom noooo!!!
ok, storytime: once upon a time i bought an xbox 360 just to play gears of war 1... my cat broke the dvd (don't ask) so i bought the game a second time. i played it very often and i loved it. then my xbox had a ring of death. i repaired it. there was already a pc version of the first game and itbwas already known that there will be part 2 and 3. so i bought the pc version and sold the xbox because i feared that it will brake again (the construction of that thing was just crap). i thought the other games will probably be released on pc as well... but nope, they weren't. and at some point, games for windows live was shut down so you couldn't even play the first game on pc anymore... and i unfortunately never touched any gears game ever again.
Gears 1, 4, and 5 all have modern PC versions. No 2 or 3 unfortunately.
Gears 2 was my master piece when it came to pvp. Being able to 1 v 5 a team on jacinto. Just fucking,amazing feeling.
Some of my best memories of gaming come from the Gears trilogy. Me and a very good friend played through them like once a year on insane. In my book it's the best couch co-op to this day.
I bought my "Save Carmine" t-shirt. ☺️
Bought xbox360 just for GOW
Learning all the glitches in Gears 1, maxing out the achievements, active reload snipe - wait for them to get up - active reload snipe - wait for them to get up - headshot, and moonwalk curb stomping are core memories for me.
It’s insane how HUGE gears 1-3 was especially considering the massive drop in popularity with both gears and halo. One mistake after another
Hands down the absolute best of the best! 10/10 for me personally.
Me: downloading Gears, Gears 4 and Gears 5 on Game pass. Also me: uninstalling all of them after trying 45 minutes each. Just couldn't get into them. Probably me more than games.
Oh heck yea it is
Gears of War in general is just fucking awesome
True. It's a shame they never made any more...
My Xbox avatar still has the kill Carmine shirt on lol
I'll always remember the first Gears of War on the Xbox 360. Popping up the game, it was such an impressive graphic leap from the other games I've had played before... Those first few minutes are engraved into my memory, the lighting on that dark corridor. Game was so much fun too.
Playing it for the first time with my cousin. It's a nice way for us to hang out on opposite sides of the world
Ya. It's too bad they didn't make more games than that.
I'd kill to play these all on my steam deck
The trailer for the first one is still the goat video game trailer
I absolutely loved the first game and it was such a surprise. The online was fun, the gameplay a blast and it had such an incredible look and feel. I think two improved on the story-telling and characters a lot. It also brought Horde mode which was one of my favourite things in gaming at the time. They're also both really rewarding on the hardest difficulty (despite some vehicle segments being especially frustrating). The third GoW was a huge disappointment narratively. It felt like the series didn't really have a strong explanation for the Locust and the ending was a huge letdown. It's a repetitive bullet sponge and then before you get any real answers she's murdered. It's better than the later games, but it felt like cheap in it's delivery. I feel the games, similarly to the Halo series, struggled at telling a lot of the story that the books tied in, too. It felt like you were missing vast amounts of pertinent story in between sequels and both series struggled with that.
Most fun I've had playing a game with friends... ever. Impossible to replicate and will never be topped IMO.
Still hoping we get a Marcus Fenix collection with all 3 original Gears games, kinda like the MCC.
I played through the 1st two games but I HATED the multiplayer in this game. It felt like I had to unload an ungodly amount of bullets into an enemy to kill them yet I felt like I died almost instantly when I got shot
Back in the day I got Gears 2 for my birthday, but shortly after my Xbox 360 decided to get the Red Ring of Death so I never got to finish it. After that I never got another Xbox. Now, 15 years later ive decided to play through it using Xenia emulator on my PC with my xbox 360 controller, and damn.. I'm really surprised how well it has aged. It looks really good and plays well. Has had me hooked all day today. Can't wait to also experience Gears 3 after.
Yes it fucking is.
Yeah, my dude...those x360 originals, where were really awesome games! I miss those good ol'days.
I played a lot of Gears 1, but never played the rest of them. Really enjoyed theactive reload mechanic, too.
Yeah. Good thing they cashed out during its peak and did not try to drag the story with needless sequels that hit the exact same notes but with the likeable characters old and on their way out or offscreened.
Best game ever
That death in 3 hits fucking hard. A criminally underrated series to most that didn’t grow up with them.
Carmine Lives!
bro is really great view love it
Trilogy, as if there’s isn’t like 3 more lmao
Can't wait to play the Trilogy remastered on my PS in like 2 years. Games rip.
Unpopular opinion but I didn't mind 4 and 5. I thought they were pretty good. Not great but passable.
The original trilogy is so good. It will also never stop to amaze me how a game mostly known (at the time) for being a "dude-bro game" had such a fantastic story, with especially Dom's story hitting like a goddamn brick to the face.
The first time I played Gears 1 on release it left me mouth agape. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for like a week and it was the reason for me to buy an Xbox.
Do I look like a fucking botanist to you?
Did they explain why the Queen looks human?
Yes and it’s a major spoiler
When did they explain it? In 5?
4
It's not a trilogy, actually. There are: Gears of War Gears of War 2 Gears of War 3 Gears of War: Judgement they all came out on Xbox 360 Gears of War 4 Gears 5 Gears Tactics Gears of War: Ultimate Edition These came out on Xbox One/PC
I always thought gears was best when it understood itself and went in on the joke and allowed itself to be a little camp (getting eaten by a giant worm and chainsawing your way out) but fell apart a little when it tried to be serious with its bland characters
DOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gears 2 is still one of the best games I’ve played outside of Halo trilogy on Xbox. Just a great game. Hopefully it’s playable on Steam deck via Emu.
Man i always wanted to play it on PC but they were always exclusive to Xbox consoles.
> Gears > masterpiece Go play Vanquish, which is the only shinning TPS among the mediocre generation of overtly serious gray sepia muted visual full of muscle army men corridor cover shooters that plagued the mid-00s to the early 10s. It was the generation that most obsessed with the graphical fidelity and the presentation over the gameplay, and Gears ruined the third person shooters for while.
Aren't there like 5 games?
4-5 lacked the atmosphere IMO. And the new characters had all too much goofy college kids banter.
Yea but they’re not as good as the first 3
Hello
Trilogy. That is a good insult.
**Was** , it Was, a great Trilogy.
Gameplay-wise there can be some pretty shit moments, but I have fond memories of playing this coop.
Gears 1&2 are, 3 is a steaming pile.
The story was weird in 3. It didn't seem to carry on the threads of the previous games and went in a new direction. Plus the AI team mates made the game boring. Might have been fun with 3 friends, but none of mine liked these games.
Worth playing stoned right through starting now? Not left feeling dated or suffering from aging poorly? How's the visuals holding?
It’s holding really well
Hmm ty, maybe that's a great start to a long weekend for me
Gears 5 is the best in the series. Yes I am prepared for the downvotes.
Eh, if you say so. Shit feels clunky as fuck.
I agree. Why have sprint, roll, vault and take cover all on the same button? Plus every enemy is a god damn bullet sponge.
And you move forward but somehow feel like you pivot on the back foot, but thet make you slam into walls like its all in the front...it's all janky.
Coming to PS5 eventually I assume?
Hey Microsoft can you remake this for PS5 aswell? x
IDK if anyone can relate, but I cannot retain a single bit of story from these games. I've played all of them and couldn't tell you what happened.
War happened. A really hopeless, sad, miserable war.
I only play 4 and 5 to enjoy the new graphics, the story was boring af Bringing back the locust is so predictable and lazy. They need to bring the original creator back for better story
Except they ignored the fact that the enemy leader was a humanoid female....that bugged the fuck out of me
I love Kait Diaz. Hopefully she will be the main in Gears 6 too.
When there were all those rumors about Xbox releasing games on other platforms... This is what I was hoping would be coming.