“So often the legacies that we leave behind… are not the ones that we intended.”



I’ve oft reviled the common dismissal of Gears of War, the usual claims of its immaturity and lackluster integrity tainting the reputation of an otherwise harmless exploration of the succulent majesty of chainsaws. The most grating insults toward the game revolve around the absence of a mind-blowing narrative, sincerely a hammy tongue-in-cheek horror romp, Evil Dead if it bulked up and started donning power armor. I heavily despise this general mindset, but its particular usage toward the Gears franchise has an even more powerful sting in my private life. A personal anecdote may not be a flawless shield against the typical reasoning, nor do I feel it should entirely invalidate this opposing point of view, but I can only hope it at least stokes some tender thinking in the minds of those willing to explore quality outside of conformist fashion.

I first forayed into the world of Sera at the mere age of seven, a timid child who had owed prior gaming experience to Nintendogs and Crash Bandicoot. The Xbox 360 introduced me to the far more violent depictions of varied genres, among these titles being the lauded (and terrifying) Bioshock, and an impulse buy which changed the course of my existence, Halo 3. But before even these, I was toying with the original Gears of War, under the supervision of my father, equally enamored by the gory, gut-splitting chainsaw action as I was. I can gleefully recall my father playing through a particularly difficult portion of the game for me, waking up one morning and seeing that the incomprehensibly impossible chapter had been bested bringing unimaginable joy to me. As bittersweet as these memories are, they aren’t the solitary motivation behind my fond veneration for the thrilling series.

My cousin, Adam, would frequent our household when I was younger, particularly comfortable with myself and my older sister. I can recall a plethora of pleasant memories with him, but none so dear to me as our time playing Gears of War cooperatively. The reality that I never got to take down the mustache-twirling big bad and achieve a hero’s victory alongside Adam is a nauseating truth to accept, and an indication as to what makes this story so effective. The blatant theme of Gears of War is brotherhood, but more specifically, how and where that brotherhood manifests and bleeds into other facets of life.

“We fought through the long twilight. We built a new prosperity. The world the new C.O.G. has ensured knows no war, no suffering.”

Each game in the franchise dangles a thematic lure, a proverbial link to the story that lies ahead and a foreshadow of the consequences of your mistakes. The first entry of Gears of War deals in the reverb of isolation, stressing the importance of the illumination of light and the subversive nature of darkness. Gears of War 2 is tonally reflective of its predecessor, an expansion in technology leading to extensive battlefields and a heightened feeling of inclusion in a grander conflict, the war you’ve always been a cog in. In many respects, Gears of War 2 is the just and proper conclusion to the Locust War, and by association, the entire conflict of the series. Gears of War 3 was created for two separate rationales, the first, to properly embody the three act structure of first person shooter narratives, and the second, to discard this entire convention by its conclusion. I believe that Gears of War 3 leads perfectly into the eventuality of The Swarm, the destiny of Kait Diaz, and in fact, perfectly mocks the entire justification for the conflict shown throughout the series.

As the glow of victory swoons over the battlefield, Gears of War 3 climaxes with a supposedly hopeful image of the survivors basking in their hard fought victory, a neat resolution to a conflict which toiled for years. At the time of release, and even today on the surface, this may seem like an exemplary finale, placing a perfect bow on the trilogy’s central struggle. For the most part, I believe this is an impressive ending, and it takes on a renewed meaning following Gears of War 4, the journey of Marcus and his son to rediscover the revulsion of darkness. Anya’s promise of a better ‘tomorrow’ is an ambition that outlived her, and though the defeat of the Locust threat on a global scale remains a staunch victory, their return in the form of The Swarm wholly invalidates the trance of triumph which we share with our cast of warriors. It would be better said that though we defeat the threats of yesterday, the nightmares of tomorrow are far more frightening at their core.

“It slashes its way out of its cage, and then… and then it’s new and beautiful.”

Kait’s stake in the plot of Gears of War 4, a conflict motivated by her own personal fight to save her mother, mirrors the facets of brotherhood which have brazenly marked Gears of War‘s story, an examination of motherhood, and to some extent, fatherhood. The intimate journeys which J.D. Fenix and Kait Diaz must embark on both lead down separate paths to distinct doors, two individuals united by love, but bound to starkly divided origins. The granddaughter of the Locust Queen and the son of the war hero who ended her reign form a strangely poetic duo, alarmingly ‘Romeo’ and ‘Juliet’ at a glance, but unabashedly representing one of the series’s newest thematic lessons. The Swarm are a bastardization of the Locust Horde, touted as being an evolution on their genealogy, but in reality, are simply impure off-brands of their predecessors. This contemporary enemy seeks legendary validation, ruthlessly hunting down Kait’s mother for her royal ancestry, and whittling away what’s left of the Coalition of Ordered Governments to destroy the spine of their victory. In their efforts to carve a new legacy, the Swarm viciously corrode the tenants of their ancestors, symbolizing the transition between global war and rural war.

The last remnants of the true Locust leadership, Kait and Reyna Diaz, have bypassed the prior war’s divisions, or died in the process of seeing this new conflict sprout, respectively, but the nightmare persists because it has to. Gears of War is wholeheartedly mocking the dream that ‘tomorrow’ will be any better than ‘yesterday’, it shuns the idea that a conflict this anguish-inducing and wide-reaching could possibly be resolved in a single fight, by a single machine. If it wasn’t The Swarm, another uninhibited, dangerous threat would inevitably sprout from the power vacuum of the Locust War, simply because the humans on Sera are unable to wrench themselves from this vicious cycle.

“I always wondered what I’d say to you if I ever saw you again, but… we always run out of time.”

Gears of War 3 left many fans with a hushed, but loving bookend to a story which surpassed its feasible quality in spades. The disquieting roar of the Hollow had been ‘forever’ silenced, and the surviving souls of Sera had evolved into endearing personalities which appealed to a vast, diverse audience of players. Though the franchise never pledged a groundbreaking narrative lecture, it never had to, managing to provide a peculiarly wholesome cast of characters, each sporting their own humorously outlandish personas. The bounty of Gears of War‘s public success is owed, in large part, to its stereotypical band of heroes, an ironic victory of inclusive storytelling and broader representation.

The simplicity in stereotype of Gears of War‘s heroes and villains leads me to an outlandish, but feasible, bit of speculation I have about the symbolic meaning of the Sera conflict as a whole. The Locust represent a twisted image of Nazism, led by a disenfranchised individual with glaring ties to the opposite side, and the diverse bastion of the C.O.G., though flawed, represents the greater good of the Allies. Besides contextual evidence and the blatant similarities, I don’t possess concrete information to solidify this mark of speculation as a factual thesis, but this belief does tie into my appreciation for the Swarm as a menacing faction. They are, by this definition, the distinct parallel to post-war Neo-Nazis, an underground force whose objective is based around a lack of validity, a desire for structure and power. This would, of course, tie into the Swarm’s corruption of settlement citizens, turning the ordinary people of Sera into nameless apparitions of their ranks. The representation of pure evil shifts from an emotionless blob of marching pale, branded with symmetrical red symbols, to these same ghastly monsters being bred and cultivated before our eyes. The Locust, like the Nazis, are drawn to genocide through expansionist whims, pushed outward by the Lambent threat, but their Neo-Nazis counterparts, the Swarm, only evoke the murderous portion of this origin, their true goals unclear.

“If we are to live long enough to see the seasons change, our children grow and experience a time of peace that we have never known, then we must now take this fight to the Locust!”

As cliché as that comparison may seem, the speculation of the respective implications of the Locust and the Swarm matter when discussing the entire franchise. The fictitious fascism of a scrambling authoritarian human government is as telling as the homicidal campaign of their former enemy, the fragility of Mina Jinn’s administration finding its own parallels in a different brand of totalitarian structure. Mina’s upbringing in the culture of Stranded individuals stoked a distaste for the disarray of uncivilized human society, striving wholeheartedly to eliminate this pestilence after the war’s end. Her oppressive politics and vicious rejection of the savagery of the Outsiders emboldens a major philosophy of the new Coalition of Ordered Governments, an underlying fear of falling back to the beginning.

The new definition of order in the midst of chaos involves a stark over-correction, the authoritarianism of this new government creating a startling lack of personal sovereignty. This is the other side of the proverbial Seran coin, a deranged representation of the ideal ‘tomorrow’, a world which is too safe for one’s own good.

Gears of War 4, while not perfect, exemplifies the palpable irony of the entire series, an immortal, unending war which mutually strengthens brotherhood and tears it apart. Beyond the monikers of war heroes and the countless severed limbs torn asunder by chainsaw, its simplicity is as plain as a little boy running home to his father when he has nowhere else to go, running from a tomorrow that he never asked for.

Utmost thanks to Joshua Ezzell for the visual additions to this article.

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