What. A. Slog.

I’m making a list of my favourite things about this game, and so far, I haven’t bothered to get a pencil.

When I was a teenager, and the boy I liked introduced me to Gears of War, I told him that I easily get lost in game worlds.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “in this one, you just walk forwards”.
Skip to six years later, and that boy is sitting next to me on the couch as we ride a skiff around the desert/ice world, lost, and lamenting. Why is Gears trying to make me think? This is not what I came here for!

I couldn’t care less about side quests which is a very anti-Simone thing to say, since I’m a completionist at heart. But when sailing the skiff makes me drowsy, there’s nothing I want more than for the Swarm to become acquainted with my Overkill. Thankfully, for the sake of my weary completionist heart, those side quests appear to be not only be optional, but also not tied to any achievement or game completion stat. So, I can rest easy tonight.

Act 1. Let me tell you, I was excited. Disregard my disregard of the story, but things were moving. Things were interesting! My gun was blazing, and I was on fire. There’s a scene in Ephyr where everything is ablaze (I don’t know why) and there a juvies everywhere. Kyle’s on the sky road and I’m doing my best to stay alive on the ground, but my leg is stuck under something that fell on me (can’t remember why). I’m shooting them one-handed, probably with my Talon, and they just keep coming at me. Suddenly, a juvie jumps on me from behind and starts pummelling my face. If Kyle doesn’t shoot it in time, I’m a goner. It is the most intense scene in the entire game (bar one which I’ll get to later). It set a standard we expected from the rest of the game that it didn’t even attempt to deliver on. In fact, this is the one and only time I recall having gameplay and cutscene merge into one.

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In the first half of the game, we were introduced to the skiff. This contraption has special powers, I tell you. Never have I been so incredibly sarcastic and sassy towards an inanimate object. But the skiff, the skiff will do that to me.

Now those that are familiar with our podcast will know that I tend to marvel at good in-game snow. Good snow is hard to do! Gears snow looks damn good. And the ice looks ever better. However, if my mission objective is on the other side of this ice map, and my radar is picking up a collection of side mission, Imma tell you right now, Simone is going to get confused. There’s no time to enjoy the scenery with so many objectives vying for my attention! I mean, look at the beauty in this picture. I didn’t even remember how beautiful this was because I was too busy seeing red and trying to get off that stupid skiff.

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There were many times after a big battle that it would become get-back-on-the-skiff time, and I’d haul the mulcher I’d won onto the skiff for safe travels. But you see my friend, once we reached our next destination, I’d forget right quick about that mulcher on the skiff because I was too excited to get off the wretched thing and run into the next battle.

Honestly, there is nothing wrong with the skiff itself. And I personally love most in-game vehicles. But with the skiff comes open-world opportunities. And I don’t want your open-world opportunities in my Gears game!


So, from a beautiful ice word, we move onto a beautiful red dust world. Beautiful in the same way Crait is beautiful. You wouldn’t want to live there, but the aesthetics are Instagram-worthy. Kind of like Australia earlier this year.

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The coolest thing was that walking on the red sand left footprints. It was smooth and the child part of me wished they could experience the sand themselves and roll around in it.

The awe that both Kyle and I had on this plant lasted a while, but unfortunately, we suffered from skiff-fatigue here too, where by the end of it, we couldn’t wait to stop seeing that red sand. What was smooth had become coarse in our minds; it got everywhere.

Finally, in the very last act, we escaped lookalike-Crait and headed into the next dystopia, where we met the most boring boss I’ve ever faced. A Demogorgon-like snake with a beak and a tentacle tongue (ok, maybe not quite like a Demogorgon). These tentacle tongues would pick up people at will and shake them about a bit, until someone shot the tongue enough for the Demogorgon to drop them. There was no real danger, no tension. Just patience. Occasionally, the beak would snap at you, but it was easy to dodge and often missed. The final time we faced this beast, I nearly considered going to bed out of boredom (and to prove a point to the game gods) but we got through it in the end, and lasered the crap out of its face. I’m yawning just thinking about it, and that’s not because it’s nearly bedtime.

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I was expecting the final boss to be against the Swarm Queen thing, like at the end of Gears of War 3. But no, this beast was the end.

The cut scenes are truly a work of art, and I highly recommend watching the 4.5 hour cutscene movie MKIceAndFire have created. Kait’s facial expressions had me hanging out for each new cutscene and we’d both fall silent as the scene ensued.
The in-between scenes of character development were unfortunately uninteresting, over-dramatized and sometimes just downright confusing. If there was an explained reason why douche-JD became nice-JD after his accident, then both Kyle and I clearly missed it.

This fact can be ignored, however, because we both developed excessively big crushes on JD, whether it be for his beefy baldness (Kyle’s sexy checkbox) or his gentle, protective voice and dialogue (my sexy checkbox). Kait on the other hand was a bit two dimensional, although I appreciate The Coalition’s decision not to make her overly macho.

Please know that I am not usually this sour towards a game, and I wouldn’t be this disgruntled about Gears 5 if it weren’t for the cheap emotional grab at the end.

The Cheap Emotional Grab

At some stage, Kait’s grandmother, the Swarm queen (or something) attempts to murder both Del and JD. You only have time to save one… which one do you chose? Oh, and you’re given a time limit. At this moment in time, I’m the one with the controls, because I’m Kait and I have the gun. Kyle and I took a few seconds to recover from our shock of having to choose sides before both making the decision to save JD. I hate situations like this, so it came as no surprise that hiccupped back tears straight after my decision, not because I was sad over Del’s death, but because I was pressured into making a life or death decision I wasn’t mentally prepared for. I was shook, and full of adrenaline.

So, Gears squeezed a tear out of me. But not because the story or deaths were meaningful, but because it’s easy to make people feel something when they have to choose who lives and dies, and then watch the consequences. Emotional manipulation if you ask me.

The Part Where Simone Tries to Remember the Storyline

Hi, I’m Kait and my mom used to be a Gear but she died in the last game… or did she?

My grandmother is the queen of the Swarm apparently and can control part of me with her mind. She whispers weird things to me… This one time, I entered the mind of one of the Swarm against my will and tried to kill all my friends. Luckily, it only happened once and the implications of it were never resolved. I might have killed my Uncle.

JD is the son of Marcus Fenix (important dude). He used to be a cool guy but became arrogant for no reason suddenly. During an early battle involving the Hammer of Dawn, he risked his life and died to save everyone. Except that somehow, he actually did survive! He now spends his life being soft-spoken and on the verge of apologising all the time.

Our mission is to bring the Hammer of Dawn back online because it’s quicker and easier than shooting every Swarm dude individually. It requires satellites to be in the right place and correctly line up with the stars or something. It appears that not all these satellites require Outer Space as their living environment, because the first one we free is under a frozen lake. The second one is inside a rocket which we did send off into Outer Space. So, I’m still a bit confused about that.

Through all this, I’m struggling with the fact that the Swarm Queen is my grandmother. It all could be very emotionally confusing, but no one really discusses it so I’m pretty sure my metal stability is sound.

After many many trips on the skiff, all the satellites are free and we wait for the stars to align to kill the Demogorgon. Once he has been dispatched, I face my grandmother (who looks really good for her age) and she dangles JD and Del in front of me and forces me to chose which one to save. Despite having gone through an enormously long mission to free satellites with Del, I decide to save JD because there’s a lot of sexual tension there that still needs to be resolved.

And here's what actually happened

So, a Final Thought Just Occurred to Me

If I’d decided to save Del, that means JD is dead…
Despite what the player chooses, the only way to keep cannon is by ensuring that JD is not in the next Gears game. Does that mean we’re getting completely new characters next time around? This is, in some ways, still the death of JD, no matter who I decided to save.
Suddenly, I’m not looking forward to a Gears 6 anymore…