The Gear that Keeps Turning

So first I want to apologize about all of the Gears of War posts so far but this will be the last one for a while, that I plan on of course.  Also I apologize for the delay, I've been a bit busy.  But in addition the usual spoiler warning goes into effect with this post.  So here we go.

Last week we saw the launch of Gears of War 3, and also the end of the franchise.  With this end comes a lot of questions, and a lot of answers, but not only about the storyline.  For example Gears of War was a franchise both every unique and very familiar all at the same time, whether it was the unique cover based, third-person shooting or the underlining story of the game, where there are two sets of primary dominant species on Sera, the Humans and the Locust.

Today I'm going to dissect the second of those impacts, the story.  For any of us who have read the Gears of War novels by Karen Travis you know that there really is a lot of back story to this universe.  And just by looking at the first game, before the back story became as big as it is now, we can tell that it is just hinted as to how big it could be.  The first Gears of War book, Aspho Fields, was released almost a month before the second game.  Aspho Fields, for those who don't know, covers the events leading up to the development of the Hammer of Dawn and ultimately how Marcus, Carlos, and Dom became Gears.  This is coincidentally the first time we meet Bernie, Carlos, Adam Fenix and Helena Stroud.  Like I said a lot of back story.

Aspho Fields by Karen Traviss

All 3 novels were written by Karen Traviss, and coincidentally so was Gears 3, I personally tribute her the reason that Gears 3 had such a focus on its story.  BUT the big point here is that if it were not for Karen Traviss would we have the Gears of War story we have today?  Probably not, mainly because she did do so much of it, even if Epic decided to hamper her creativity by adding limitations to her stories and forcing a lot of major elements or events to occur (which probably did happen).

Why is this important though?  It's important because Gears of War has a rather unique story to drive it, like I mentioned earlier, there are 2 dominant species on the planet.  It's almost a classic war of technology vs. nature, actually I lied, it IS a classic war of technology vs. nature.  On one side we have the COG with a very high tech military, including a satellite weapons system, and on the other theres the Locust, whose vehicles are quite literally subterranean animals with saddles.   But then we add in our secondary humans, the Stranded, they almost act like a morally grey middle ground, same goals as the COG but a lot more lawless.

Saddle Up

So to me the 3 initial factions act upon basic human nature, the nature to advance, the nature to survive, and the nature to conquest.  Where we have the COG, Stranded, and Locust respectfully.  I draw this conclusion because of what each faction ultimately stands for.  While the war itself is almost a message telling us that if we want super advanced technology we can't forget about where we come from as a species.  Nature is something to preserve because it is scary.  I mean for example there are plenty of things that can kill a human, from a spider the size of your finger to a bear 3 times the size of you.

For example, this could kill you.

This historical value of the Pendulum Wars in Gears can also teach us a valuable lesson.  The lesson here is that fighting over fuel is just plain silly, as is a huge land grab or even a small disagreement.  The COG and the UIR fought mercilessly for almost 100 years to end up being attacked by an enemy that quite frankly didn't care.  One of my favorite quotes from the game is where Adam Fenix says "What if our next enemy doesn't think like us?  We need to be prepared for a situation where this is the case."  This quote really hits home the fact that no matter what you need to be prepared, and both the COG and UIR were not.

So next we enter the Lambent, they are quite literally a parasite upon the world, like a giant mushroom that can also infect people.  Very similar to the green goo in Killzone 3 encasing the entire world in poison.  The Lambent represent a more feral side of human nature, one that doesn't really conserve or care, it just consumes all in its path.  There is a lesson to learn from the Lambent however, be mindful of your actions and their repercussions.  Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and people need to be mindful of this.

The appropriate reaction to this is "Awwwwww"

Now I'm not trying to shove a political lesson down your throat our teach you some big humanistic lesson, because frankly I don't care, I also don't actively try to preserve nature.  All I'm trying to make a point here is that sometimes it pays to take 2 seconds to critically think about a situation before just jumping right in and trying to solve the problem.