And while I’m complaining about Gears of War 2…
November 12th, 2008Epic actually paid someone to write this story? Without giving anything specific away, let me list off a few complaints:
- The game borrows heavily from several different popular series including Star Wars, The Matrix, zombie movies, and probably others that I’m not mentioning here. I suppose this is to be somewhat expected, as this is a very well-mined genre, but still…
- There are a few jumps in the storyline that are made without much explanation at all. You’ll know what your current mission is, then suddenly you finish it and you’re told that you need to go somewhere else even if you’re not really sure why.
- As far as I can tell, there’s a critical plot point in the game that undermines the entire reason for continuing onward. When it came up, I wondered if I understood it correctly. It becomes a crucial focus of the game, and indeed, I understood it correctly, but was left sort of dumbfounded as to how this could actually be the direction of the story as it basically made no sense. If you’ve played the game, you probably know what I’m talking about.
- In addition to this, seemingly crucial plot advances/twists are left somewhat unexplored and therefore unimportant to the storyline, despite the fact that they’re originally played up to seem important… I guess they plan to explain them more later? (Though I believe people said the same thing after GoW 1).
- The dialogue is, for the most part, terrible. This is, unfortunately, the least damaging part of the writing.
The game is pretty well polished and at least a story is told in a somewhat interesting way. I don’t mind if every loose end isn’t tied up at the end of a game, though it would be nice if they could figure out a way to actually tell a full story within the scope of a single game. As it is, I feel like we learned very little about some of the more interesting reveals and instead we get basically the framework story of finding another way to try and wipe out the Locust horde.
Posted in Impressions, Jeff, Xbox 360 |
November 12th, 2008 at 7:54 am
I like the game and I’m fond of the MP, but I agree the campaign is not very good. (Haven’t quite beaten it, but I have only two chapters in the final act left to go.) My big complaints: disjointed story, terrible writing, often difficult to tell where you’re supposed to go, and not enough of the core gameplay I like about Gears — and when the gameplay is standard Gears, it feels lazy somehow.
I hadn’t noticed until you mentioned it, but you’re definitely right that there are major plot pieces put forward that never get addressed, unless it happens in the last two chapters. I’m pretty sure I’ve guessed at least one of them, though.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:22 am
I believe you guys missed the intentional macho buff dialogue satire.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:25 am
Laesp-
No, I got that. That’s actually not the worst part of the dialogue, but it’s also why I said that the dialogue is actually the least damaging part of the writing.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
On the plot point that undermines the whole purpose of the story: it was a head-scratcher for me too, but if you stay through the credits, you’ll quit scratching.
November 15th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Nick-
I watched to the end… I still don’t think it makes much sense, particularly the motivations of people after we hear it.
Let’s put it this way… what are the motivations for the Locusts vs. the motivations for the humans after the plot twist? If you look at it this way, it becomes sort of apparent why the rest of the game makes no sense.
November 15th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I beat it tonight in co-op with my roommate. I was pretty underwhelmed by the campaign. MP is fun, at least.
November 16th, 2008 at 3:12 am
Rob-
Campaign is fun, especially in co-op. Just has problems.
I still haven’t been able to give the multiplayer much of a spin. People keep saying Horde mode is a lot of fun, but when I tried to play it earlier today it gave me problems.
November 16th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Spoiler - what it seems like to me is that the humans were tricked into sinking their own city, as the voice of Adam Fenix suggests. Sets up the third nicely, and since you mentioned that it didn’t make sense, it offers a sensible explanation (they weren’t supposed to do it at all).
November 16th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Nick-
Yeah, but weren’t the humans trying to prevent the Locusts from doing that originally? What exactly were the humans fighting AGAINST after that? Were the Locusts suddenly not interested in sinking the last human city?
November 17th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I think the implication was that with the humans surrounding Jacinto, and the worm gone, the Locusts tricked the humans into sinking their own city, thus achieving their goal despite their current inability to do so. I think the Queen at one point said something like “we have another way to tear down your cities.” The Locusts, as far as I could tell, were still trying to sink Jacinto, but after they captured it as they weren’t evacuated from their own cities yet. This is why the humans felt they should sink it themselves, ahead of the Locust evacuation.
The Adam Fenix post-credits voice suggests the deception, and the Queen thus far has expressed more intrest in killing humans than protecting the Locusts.
November 17th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Nick-
But this is exactly my point… The first part of the game is focused on humans trying to prevent the sinking of Jacinto and Locusts attempting to do so. The second part of the game suddenly reverses the roles with really no clear reason why. So, Marcus hears his dad on a recording say to sink Jacinto and suddenly everyone is on board with the idea? The Locusts then, miraculously at the same time, realize that what THEY were working toward should be prevented (at least from the Human’s perspective.) If it really was just a trick, why bother even fighting the Humans any more? The humans clearly seemed set on sinking the city with the advice of just a single recording, so it’s not like the Locusts needed to throw up roadblocks and sacrifice their lives if that’s really what they wanted.
And as long as we’re already deep into spoiler territory here, I’ll just add that we learn absolutely nothing about the civil war within the Locust horde, nor does it end up playing much of a significant role in the game. It’s just thrown in there with seemingly little cause and a sort of interesting quirk in the story ends up fizzling out with no consequence.
November 17th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Didn’t the Locust queen also say that it was a shame that (Marcus? Humans generally?) hadn’t taken the same path as Marcus’ father? Can we really trust Adam Fenix anymore?
November 18th, 2008 at 6:30 am
The reason the humans bought the idea of sinking the city was that it would kill the Locusts, but only if they did it immediately. I agree that doing so because of a recording of dubious origin was extremely thin, but as far as videogame storytelling goes, it’s not particularly offensive. As for the Locust rank and file, it’s probably a matter of them not knowing what the humans intended and the fighting was merely shooting each other out of habit. Again, the Queen doesn’t seem to care much if Locusts die.
The Locust “civil war” did need a lot more explanation.