@ntm:As far as when Jeff mentions it as silly, I am sure it's mainly because of the attitudes of the characters. That part has never bothered me though, to be honest. The characters are kind of silly, but I like 'em. Marcus is the leader who is often sarcastic and funny, Baird is the complainer but is technically gifted, and Cole Train is hilarious. Dom is the only character that, before the second game, I couldn't really discern as his own character.

None of that really bothers me though. They are a rough and tough military squad and they're all bros. What does kind of bother me are the logical inconsistencies with the plot that I mentioned in my last post. It's hard to understand why the locusts would take prisoners. The resources used to torture/maintain prisoners, especially considering they had huge boats for it, don't seem negligible. Then they planned to flood the underground and kill the lambent? But wouldn't all those prisoners die too? I'm confused as to why keeping prisoners is more beneficial than simply killing the humans and taking over the surface. I guess the developers just wanted that Maria/Dom scene? Anyways, I still enjoy playing the games. They're fun, and they do have some good story beats/ideas that keep things going and keep you invested. I'm looking forward to finishing 3 (maybe Judgement too), and then playing Gears 4!

I KNEW I couldn't be the only person grabbed by that line. Every time I hear "Sweet Emotion" I hear it as "Sweet Emulsion" and my brain immediately inserts a "Look at all that juice!"

@ntm: We all take different information from same material. Like I said before, if it works for you then all other opinions do not really matter. A lot of things I like that many people deem as dumb and you know what?! That's fine.

@huntad: In the end of 'processing' them (which is what it was called), they would be lobotomized. So they would die one way or another, and it was to break the prisoners, but what's weird, is that I don't know how it could affect anyone other than the prisoners, other than those that come upon the tortured, like Delta Squad in two, with Tai, and Maria; that could be a tactic to try and make those that invade the locust denizens lose morale and go home and surrender. The one inconsistency however that I find, now that I play through them again, is that they didn't seem to quite have the story down in the first to the second, because there are a couple of times in the first game which Dom and the others think that the war ends, both when they use the lightmass bomb once they go under ground the first time, and then near the end, and Dom seems to be unfazed with his wife still missing, talking about what he's going to eat, and asking what he'll do tomorrow. That said, stuff must have leaked far before two's release, because I remember before two even came out, they already have a Gears wiki, and it had talked about how Dom's wife was missing, and he was looking for her. There are a few mentions/hints at what he's doing aside from getting an armadillo vehicle once you go to the stranded area in the first.

I actually have a real fondness for Gears of War's story and characters. Its never gonna focus to hard on those aspects cause it knows its a video game and that comes first, but I think whats there is pretty good.

@the_nubster: I agree with some of what you said but I feel that overall the dissonance you speak of is ever present in all games as a necessity of them being interactive pieces of media. Joel for instance may not take glee in killing anyone, but plenty of emotional moments are followed by him shoving a shotgun barrel into a looters face. Moments of scripted tension are followed by Ellie idiotically walking right in front of oblivious infected. Uncharted is legendary for it's insane bodycount that is never really mentioned. This latest game had the best story of them all, but it never veered too far away from these two brothers looking for some old treasure, oh and also killing hundreds of heavily armed militia. Mankind Divided tries to put forth a very tense atmosphere like time is of the utmost essence because of these bombings, but there is always time to lift up some fridges or hack every single laptop in a residential building.

This dissonance comes at a cost of weighed gameplay. I would argue that out of all those examples Gears of War is actually the most accurate and least guilty. I am much more likely to imagine these trained soldiers are able to shut that part of their brain down after a "sappy moment" and murder a bunch of locust because that is exactly what they were trained to do. This is why Gears 3 was such a great game in terms of story for these characters. Dom was first motivated by finding his wife, then he wants revenge, and in the final game you can tell that he is emotionally spent, that for a long time this 500lbs of muscle and balls has been operating on autopilot and he finally lets go. We all like to crack jokes about Marcus taking the bandana off but that can also be seen as a pivotal moment. This is a man who only knows how to be a soldier, how to follow orders and get the mission done no matter what. Throughout all these games he has always been moving forward. Now, after all is said and done and after everything and everyone he has lost along the way him taking off that bandana and finally letting some of those emotions begin crashing down on him is a poignant moment - if you want it to be that is.

The thing is, you need to enjoy what you're playing to make those small connections. I enjoyed Last of Us well enough, but I wasn't blown away by it and as such that scene everyone talks about with the giraffes had zero impact on me. I glanced, said OK, and moved right along. Thats not the games fault, and it's not really mine either, there was just a missed connection on a personal level. Incidentally the entire urgency of the winter period is what I found the most appealing and humanizing in that entire experience.

@mordukai: Sure, I understand that, and differing opinions don't bother me so much personally (unless it hurts another person [which, in this case doesn't so much have to do with video games]), but I think we should be stating it correctly. I know there are those, maybe most that understand when we talk about something, we're giving our opinion and assume that others know, but it helps a lot when we add the 'in my opinion' bit in, instead of being so matter of fact about it. For instance, your comment basically stated that the games stories are dumb, and sure, by some standards it is, but by others it isn't. I was simply giving a comparison from what is factually there, one is more simplistic to the other, as you stated Gears is like a blockbuster movie, which I presume is similar to that of Transformers or what have you, and I think factually, there's quite a lot more to Gears than there is to those types of films. I would use the word 'dumber', that comes both from opinion, but also a bit of fact (though perhaps another word, like simplistic could be used) when comparing what the two have.

I think there are a few different reasons but the most important one being tone. Gears has for me has always been a series that takes itself and its world too seriously. While I haven't played any Gears title since the 3:rd one, hence my memory is a little hazy, they've always struck me as just a bunch of loosely connected scenes that never really come together to form a cohesive whole. They don't really build off each other to form a plot as much as they feel like "a bunch of stuff", and they can be thrown around in any order without making a difference. Now Doom was in a way exactly the same thing. However what Doom has going for it is that it acknowledges its own inherent silliness while simultaneously understanding what it is that makes Doom a cool, fun experience. It's a game about murdering demons from hell and that's it. The game never tries to justify Doomguys actions by giving him daddy issues or whatnot.

I would've been fine with the characters just being stupid meatheads in Gears of War but at some point I feel the game is asking me to take them a lot more seriously than that. I would personally love to see a Gears that embraced it's own Warhammer 40k ridiculousness to a much greater extent.

I only played GOW2 but I don't think the story is helped by the one dimensional characters in the game.

@ntm: they don't lobotomize all of them. Some can be seen working as slaves in distances. Locusts assuming that people are going to come looking for people in the denizens, therefore lobotomizing a select few is kind of a stretch, but even if it is true it is never touched on by the game at all after Dom finds Maria. Also, there is no guarantee that lobotomizing a person will result in them dying, and shooting them would be far more successful and less costly.

Blah... I don't think there's a logical explanation for this one within the plot's structure. Oh well, I can move on, lol. I never noticed that Dom's wife was missing before the events of Gears 2. I thought she was kidnapped right at the beginning of 2. Weird..

@ntm: Simplistic would probably be too much a soft word for internet talk. Don't you know that everything you say on the internet is a matter of fact and you're always right.

On any case. I fully agree with you on that case.

@huntad: I'm pretty sure that through all the pain and torture they go through, after a lobotomy, they most likely die (chances of survival would be slim anyways), and I'm not sure money has anything to do with it in this case, so 'costly' has nothing to do with it, unless you meant something else. Yes though, they do also use them as save labor. I said that was a stretch, but it's the only explanation I can come up with that makes any kind of sense as to why it would have any effect. It's also possible that they interrogate them, it's just never touched upon, nor is the locusts ability to speak in sentences beyond a few phrases. It doesn't really bother me too much to be honest, but yeah, it could be answered with more detail, which just means it's up to the players imagination with what they have to go on. As for Maria, she went missing before the first game. I would explain it in my own words, but there's more than I want to write down. I recommend reading this though! It's all there, it's covered in the games to some degree, and in the novels and comics.

story is OK, writing is bad. The dialogue is exposition heavy and lifeless, with some bright spots here and there. It's just bland triple A popcorn action; which plenty of people don't mind. However the vocal minority (aka Jeff and other cognoscenti) tends to complain about these types of games because there's just SO MUCH like it out there. It doesn't stand out.