Gears of War story

Any of you addicts interested about the stories behind your favorite fix...? Or are you all just hopping over all the cut scenes in a desperate attempt to acquire that next elusive "ping!"?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

As most of you probably know I've played Gears 1 & 2 on a regular basis ever since their respective releases... and I have just spent some very productive days at work goofing off researching the Gearsiverse and coming up with amazingly interesting ideas. No, I mean it! You'll be interested. Amazingly.

I have a theory that suggests there will be at least two more Gears games making a grand total of four in the trilogy.

I have a theory that suggests that the Gears games are actually anti-war.

I have a theory that the Locusts are not really our enemy and that we'll end up fighting side by side.

Which one would you like to hear first.....?

Locust story please!

loony lefty!
I am sure they will milk as many games out it as they can!
You never said what those books were like?
Are they aimed at kids or adults?

I'm not fussed, Lefty... LAY IT ON US!

I can't see the books being aimed at sprogs if the games are 18 rated. Mind you, I had Terminator, Aliens and Robocop toys when I was a kid so chances are they coud be.

Ooooer, hang on a minute... I didn't think anybody would actually ask... I'll have to get my sh*t together now...

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.... If you, dear reader, have not played through Gears 1 and/or 2 AVAST MATEY!!! There be spoilers ahead!

Why the Locust are not the real enemey:
Actually this is the most obvious one and probably the least fun. But I'll present my clues first:
Gears 1 ends with the Locust Queen saying "...They do not know why we wage this war. Why we cannot stop..." blah, blah.
One of the collectables in Gears 2 is a Locust artifact, like a frisbee with three legs, which Baird does a partial translation on: "As far as I can tell, there's some kind of mantra on the artifact, about the queen making drones, drones protecting Nexus... and I'll have to work out that last part a little later..."
Going down in to the Hollow for the second time we discover that the Locust are actually fighting another front against the Lambent, "lambents" being any locust creature who has been too exposed to immulsion.
And the kicker... In a cut scene in Gears 2 we see members of Delta Squad fleeing a group of lambent drones. One of the drones is killed as he is leaping on to their lift platform... a viscous flourescent substance runs from his body and UP the wall to join the remaining lambent.

In saying that the humans do not understand why the Locust must wage this war and why they cannot stop the Queen must be implying that there is another motive other than the obvious one. The obvious motive is the destruction of the human race on Sera. And what would commit the Locust so hard? Possibly only their own survival? A danger to their survival could come from another enemy or the destruction of their environment. This has lead many to assume that the humans mining of immulsion has caused the Locust to erupt. So what's the connection between Locust and immulsion?
In Bairds translation of the artifact we see that drones are made (made?!?) to protect the Nexus. Why would the Nexus need protecting... and from what? We have to assume that the drones and Nexus were around a long time before the COGs incursion. I don't think the Nexus needs protecting from them. "Protecting" the Nexus might simply mean keeping it manned and functional. The Nexus sits in the middle of a huge lake of immulsion. The only way in or out is by one solitary highway.
Last but not least after seeing that cut scene of what has to be assumed is immulsion flowing from the dead drone back to the group, who doesn't jump to the conclusion that the immulsion itself is somehow sentient and active... and maybe even has it's own agenda.

The Queen refers to all Lambent as infected. They are infected with immulsion. She not only desires them dead but has even planned for it with the flooding of the Hollow - the destruction of their own fortress. The sinking of Jacinto becomes the means to an end. Nexus sits in an ocean of immulsion. It's a plug. A fort. A watchtower. A gate. Manned with its army of drones it's somehow been keeping the evil immulsion in check. Humans have agitated or woken up the immulsion with their drilling and their wars and their lightmass bombs. You'd better watch out... 'cause here it comes. The only way to stand against such an enemy is to stand together. Human with Locusts... against The Immulsion.

And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

So, it's the slime from Ghost Busters II?!

Kent Hammer wrote:You never said what those books were like?
Are they aimed at kids or adults?

If you can't even read my posts in the Books thread how do you expect to get through a whole Gears novel?

Lefty said:
"It states clearly on the books that they are based on an 18 rated game. Despite the amount of kids who play Gears it's not written for them. Violent military action."

By the way the books don't really add anything to the story behind the games or my theories. They seem to be going off on their own tangent. Just like the film will probably do.

monders wrote:So, it's the slime from Ghost Busters II?!

Spot on! As long as we all do what Egon Spengler did we should be alright.

wouldn't having the locust join forces, just end up doing what Halo & most other 3-way fights end up being? (eg aliens v predator (with humans joining predators) )

hardly epic story telling if so.

That does sound like a very good description of what could happen in the next gears games, i too thought that after seeing the lambent brumack at the end of the Gears 2 that in the next game they would be our enemy, i also thought that maybe humans were invading sera for the imulsion. Is Sera the native planet of the humans in the game?, there is no mention of earth in any of the games, are the locust just defending their own planet fom the invading Humans.

lets hope that if we do join forces with the locust against the lambent that the character is a bit better than the crappy Arbiter from Halo 2.

msross wrote:wouldn't having the locust join forces, just end up doing what Halo & most other 3-way fights end up being? (eg aliens v predator (with humans joining predators) )

hardly epic story telling if so.

Just because they're called Epic doesn't make 'em so.
Personally I think the whole storytelling thing in Gears leaves a bit to be desired. They find a secret lab under Marcus' house and nobody thinks to ask him "WTF!?!". Marcus doesn't even say anything himself!

And don't get me started on the familirities between Gears and Halo.
Wretches = Grunts
Brumaks = Scarabs
Anya = Cortana
Queen = Prophet
The entire inside the riftworm level must have been inspired by the level inside the Flood infected High Charity in Halo 3.

garymason72 wrote: Is Sera the native planet of the humans in the game?, there is no mention of earth in any of the games, are the locust just defending their own planet fom the invading Humans.

lets hope that if we do join forces with the locust against the lambent that the character is a bit better than the crappy Arbiter from Halo 2.

This generation of humans in the game are native to Sera anyway, I reckon. It's been a bit loose about whether Sera is maybe a colonised planet and all the Locust and stuff was there before us but I think that's just because of all the theories that have been floating around. In some of the source books you can find a history that spans at least thousands of years: The Age of Armageddon, The Era of Silence, etc, etc. The main idea though is that this has nothing to do with Earth...

I don't think Epic are going to drop Dom from co-op. He's too much a favourite. Maybe one idea for G3 could be an optional FOUR player co-op (yes msross, I know this would be copying H3!). Two COGs and two Locusts???

Lefty Redbeard wrote:[
I don't think Epic are going to drop Dom from co-op. He's too much a favourite. Maybe one idea for G3 could be an optional FOUR player co-op (yes msross, I know this would be copying H3!). Two COGs and two Locusts???

i think that is probably the most likely, if this is going to happen at all. i dont think it would be too bad, 4 player co-op is good on halo 3, i think the only trouble would be the locust looking too much like the lambent.

garymason72 wrote:

Lefty Redbeard wrote:[
I don't think Epic are going to drop Dom from co-op. He's too much a favourite. Maybe one idea for G3 could be an optional FOUR player co-op (yes msross, I know this would be copying H3!). Two COGs and two Locusts???

i think that is probably the most likely, if this is going to happen at all. i dont think it would be too bad, 4 player co-op is good on halo 3, i think the only trouble would be the locust looking too much like the lambent.

I don't think having 4 player co-op would be bad, ( & certainly not copying halo 3 - more like copying Goldeneye ) - the 360 has 4 controllers why is there only 1 game that supports that? - multi-co-op is the way forward on games now, & gears 3 really cant continue with a 3rd ep without some big overhaul so it points to 4 player co-op (regardless of which characters are in it).. - I did see somewhere that the woman in a book/comic would be a playable character (was it here or somewhere else?) - certianly they would need more characters if that where the way to go..
Actually, they could have large open battles with the 4 chars & then have them split up into 2 parties, which do work together to get through 'door open puzzles' type things. - essentially so the two people in a team have to do something to allow the other two to move on, which then reciprocates later on) - quite how that would then work in single player, I'm not sure

What I was saying was that the overall story isn't particularly good, neither the originality that "some" people say nor the quality reasoning (as you've said above) of story decisions..

i think 4 player co-op would be a great thing even if you didnt play as the locust, gears has at least 4 good characters anyway, Marcus, Dom, Cole, Carmine or Baird, all potentially good playable chraracters, i mean who wouldnt love to be able to play as cole

Clearly there's been some experimenting going on from both sides (there's a human research centre in Gears 2 that has weird locusts bursting out of glass stasis tubes at you). And of course the locusts are doing experiments on humans (lke Maria and possibly Tai), it wouldn't surprise me to find out Adam has a hand in that.

Obviously Adam knows something we don't, and that the humans are doing/aggravating something bad that the locusts are trying to stop. How Adam found out is a mystery and why he didn't warn the humans when he still seems to sympathise with them (at the end of G2 you hear him say "what have you done?" which he wouldn't do if he just wanted all humans dead as it'd be obvious they'd react as such) is also odd.

The other thing is the infected, whatever has caused the infection is probably hereditary (it'd be hard when a locust got infected a) for him to escape as the others would lock him up/kill him and b) he'd know he was going to turn on his caste and would try and stop it himself knowing he'd be fighting against his own kind). Because of the hive style of the locusts, there's probably an infected queen somewhere pumping out infected babies.

What's odd is that whatever the humans are doing, I don't see why the locusts would turn on them in such an explosive way when they're in the middle of a civil war. If the locusts are having a problem with the infected, surely they'd try and sort the human problem in a way that doesn't take up a massive proportion of their resources. Also, if they're having a problem with the civil war, it's easy to assume that the infected have a similar size force. Considering the force that was shown on ED, there must be a LOT of lambent somewhere, either that or some kind of secret weapon.

I think, adding up all that info, that there's something that the infected have that's made possible/more powerful by humans, though their force is actually smaller. Therfore the locusts are trying to wipe out the humans so that whatever the infected has isn't as much of a threat. Adam found out about this and started trying to find a way to help the locusts (whether he found out first or was aggressively recruited first I dunno). I expect the experiments where the humans are crossed with locusts is supposed to be some kind of solution to a big problem the locusts have, maybe humans react differently to imulsion or something and the locusts want locusts that have that reaction. The Queen's little speech at the end hints that she knows she's had her day and even though she's tried, she doesn't think she'll be remembered for any good she's done so the locusts have probably about had it. That leaves the lament which are probably hiding out around their secret weapon somewhere and about to strike! Adam's bit after the credits also hints that humans have done something to bring about their own doom.

God knows though.

Damn, that's way longer than I meant it to be!

Digi, Digi, Digi... I CAN call you Digi, can't I?
Glad to see your as much of a geek as I am about this!

Although I AM going to try and shoot you down in flames I hope you'll take my post for what it is, just another enthusiast trying to make his point the winning one! It's great to bounce ideas of other people because then you get to see things through other people's eyes and realise stuff you might have missed yourself.

This reply might be a bit tricky to read through, it refers back to Digital's text by numbering the paragraphs. Readers might have to hop back and forth to get a bit of continuity...

Paragraph 1:
I’m still a bit stuck on the Sires found in the New Hope Research Centre. They certainly appear to be humans who were exibiting Locust traits but I’m not convinced that’s the whole story with them.
But what leads you to believe the locusts were experimenting with people? The characters in the game mention torture, the vehicle they find Tai on is nicknamed the Torture Barge… I’m not saying your wrong and of course the designers might just be letting us think the Locusts are evil bastards… well, they ARE evil bastards, but I don’t see anything to indicate they were experimenting on people. For what purpose and to what result?

Paragraph 2:
I’m with you here. Definitely we have not seen the last of Adam Fenix and he’s definitely been involved with the Locust a long time. He may have been kidnapped to begin with but I think he’s collaborating in some way although still possibly a prisoner. This might explain why he hasn’t been able to communicate with the other humans. Or maybe he’s deep, DEEP down. Maybe he’s learned of a bigger picture, what you call: “that the humans are doing/aggravating something bad that the locusts are trying to stop” and what I think of as my Evil Immulsion theory. Maybe he’s just been so out of touch that it was only with the actual flooding of the Hollow, the destruction of Nexus, that he actually realised something was going on “up top”. The regret in his voice implies that the Gears have just made the situation a whole lot worse…

Paragraph 3:
Not sure why we should think becoming Lambent is hereditary…? In Gears 1 we learnt that wretches turn lambent when they’re exposed to too much Immulsion. In Gears 2 we see a lambent drone die and “something” leave his body to join other lambents. In the finale we see the effect concentrated Immulsion has on a Brumak… that’s not hereditary.

Paragraph 4:
Good reasoning here. But if I go back to my theory then I don’t think the Locusts were fighting a civil war to begin with. I do think the humans were doing something to aggravate a threat to, at least the Locust, but quite possibly even the whole planet, ie: mining Immulsion, which the Locusts tried to stop with extinction. But the Immulsion got uppity and took matters into it’s own hands and started “possessing” the nearest things it could find…. Locust.
Your thinking about the Locust and Lambent having similar sized forces was interesting… but let’s not forget that all sides here, Humans and Locust, have suffered huge causalities since E-day. The last thing we did in Gears 1 was to set off a Lightmass bomb. It might not have done what we wanted but it must have devasted a huge part of the Locust population. Marcus states late in Gears 2 that all this extra activity from the Locust, sinking cities and forays into Jacinto is because the Locust are desperate… this might indicate that there aren't that many of them left.

Paragraph 5:
I agree with nearly all of your last paragraph, I’m just coming from a different direction where the “secret weapon somewhere” is actually the Immulsion itself acting under it’s own agenda.
But I didn’t understand this bit: “I expect the experiments where the humans are crossed with locusts is supposed to be some kind of solution to a big problem the locusts have, maybe humans react differently to imulsion or something and the locusts want locusts that have that reaction.” Are you talking about the experiments in the New Hope Faciltity…? They were run by humans not Locust and there’s no direct indication (yet!) that it even involved the Locusts in anyway. The research could well have been going on during the Pendulum Wars long BEFORE E-day. Some people have even offered the idea that those experiments were the origin of the Locusts…. But as I said right at the beginning I’m not decided on them yet…

OK, mate, enjoying this immensly. Your turn.
Or does some else want to pitch in...?

You utter cranberries, I can't read this because it'll ruin GoW2 for me!

I already ruined GoW ages ago by reading up on it on wiki

I wouldn't worry about it, mate... we've written so much text by the time you get to the end of a post you'll have forgotten what there was at the start.

Sweet. Mind you, I hear the plot takes a firm back seat to the action so I don't supposed I'll be ruining too much by having a quick read.

There's a plot? Where did you hear that?

Cliffy B, but he was probably lying

Digital Acumen wrote:the hive style of the locusts, there's probably an infected queen somewhere pumping out infected babies.

Kerry Katona.

Lefty Redbeard wrote:Digi, Digi, Digi... I CAN call you Digi, can't I?
Glad to see your as much of a geek as I am about this!

he likes to be called Thomas more

monders wrote:

Digital Acumen wrote:the hive style of the locusts, there's probably an infected queen somewhere pumping out infected babies.

Kerry Katona.

You mean someone actually wants chip shop?