Gears of War: Difference between revisions

Besides dealing with the humanoid footsoldiers there is a great deal of focus on monstrous creatures you have to face such as the dinosaur-like Brumak (with a cannon on its back and chainguns on each arm), the crab/spider-like Corpser and the "monkey-dog" [[Zerg Rush|Wretch]]. Alongside that, the games are about building atmosphere and drawing you into the moment, investigating abandoned warehouses and exploring a labyrinth of underground tunnels. These are not games to play in the dark.

 

 

----

* [[Driven to Suicide]]: {{spoiler|Tai Kaliso was captured by the Locust in ''Gears of War 2''. When he's found, we see him covered in large cuts and wounds. Marcus hands him a shotgun to arm himself so they can move on, but Tai shoots himself in the head with it}}. [[Gory Discretion Shot|The damage is not seen]].

* [[Dynamic Entry]]: In the first two games locust can enter the game space via Emergence Holes, stable channels to their tunnel network. However in the third game, they do away with that and practically explode out of the ground. There is an award for taking out a locust while it's airborne.

* [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]: {{spoiler|In ''Gears of War 3,'' despite Marcus' cynicism at the end of the game, Anya heartwarmingly tells him mankind has earned its tomorrow}}.

* [[Easter Egg]]: There are a bunch of silly gags that can be found, such as a toaster ("Who wants toast!"), a cowboy hat wearing Corpser and a giant Lambent chicken!

* [[Establishing Character Moment]]: Nearly everyone of Delta Squad gets their moment, but no one beats Cole's introduction in the first two games. The first game has him challenging an entire squad of Locust by himself until he gets reinforcements. In the second game, well, he ''is the reinforcements''. ''Nobody'' stops the Cole Train, baby!

* [[Expy]]:

** The Kryll bear more than a little resemblance to the nocturnal creatures in ''[[Pitch Black]]''.

* [[The Faceless]]:

*** [[The Chick]] - Valera

*** Team Pet - Jack

* [[Finishing Move]]: Characters who've lost their [[Hit Points]] will often be incapacitated instead of killed, allowing for a stress relieving curb stomp. The second game introduced unique finishers with individual weapons. The third [[Up to Eleven|takes it up to eleven]] where you can ''continue'' them to gain more experience as well as giving each weapon an unlockable special execution.

* [[Follow the Leader]]: ''Gears of War'' inspired a wave of third-person shooters and/or [[Take Cover]] games that is still ongoing, like ''[[Army of Two]]'', ''[[Mass Effect]]'' and ''[[Transformers War for Cybertron]]''. Similarly, it's also almost unthinkable these days to play a shooter without a "Horde"-inspired 'endless waves of enemies' mode.

** There's also indications in the ''opposite'' direction; more than one scene in ''Gears of War 2'' and production interview gave us signs that Marcus and Anya [[Ship Tease|have more than a strictly professional relationship between them]]. Naturally, the novelizations and subsequent ''Gears of War 3'' outright confirms this.

** Baird and Cole are also very close, to the extent that Cole was the only person Baird really cared about before he met Marcus and Dom.

** [[Futurama|Bender]] is Marcus Fenix.

** [[Saints Row|Manuel Orejuela]] is Dominic Santiago.

** The Locust have become gradually weaker as the series has progressed. In the first game it took almost a full 60-round mag of Lancer assault rifle fire to kill a single basic Locust drone, making them one of the toughest basic FPS mooks ''ever''. In the second game, it only takes about two dozen assault rifle rounds to kill a Locust drone. By the time of the 3rd game, they can be dropped with only about a dozen bullets on Normal difficulty (about 15-20 rounds on Hardcore), making them on par with "standard" FPS soldier mooks.

** Boomers are somewhat weaker in ''Gears of War 2'', going down after only 1-2 clips from the Lancer (even on Hardcore) instead of 3-4 clips like in the first game. They're even weaker in ''Gears of War 3'', going down after only a little over 2/3rds of a full mag from the Lancer. This is largely due to the fact that in the first game they were basically [[Boss in Mooks Clothing]] and always showed up in pairs. The sequels would have more "Boomer" types (including the Mauler, Grinder and Butcher) and more would appear at one time.

* [[Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me]]: With the previously mentioned meat shields and with the Mauler's indestructible Boomshields (that also double as roadblocks for larger enemies in Horde Mode). A Boomshield will actually protect you from ''a charging Berserker'' in the third game, although the recoil makes you drop it.

* [[Ludicrous Gibs]]: Not so ludicrous in the amount of gibs, just ludicrous in how much the average multiplayer match in it will have.

** When you fight the {{spoiler|Lambent humans}} in Mercy, some can be clearly heard screaming "Kill me!" when they attack you.

* [[Million Mook March]]: The beginning of ''Gears of War 2''

* [[Mission Control]]: Features prominently in both games. Normally, Anya's the one providing intel, advice, orders and even [[Unresolved Sexual Tension|comfort]]; there are times where other characters take on the role, though they are distinctly lacking the comfort aspect. Delta Squad loses contact with [[Mission Control]] a depressing number of times throughout both games, though. In ''Gears of War 3'', a variety of characters take on the role, from Anya to Dizzy to {{spoiler|Adam Fenix}}.

* [[Mooks]]: It's raining Locust!

* [[Once an Episode|Once A Game]]: Every game so far has featured one "horror movie" level, with plenty of tense atmospheres, foreboding scenery, and nonstandard enemies. It was in the Lethia Imulsion Facility in the first, the New Hope Research Facility in the second, and Mercy in the third.

* [[One-Hit Kill]]:

** The One Shot in the third game; [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|it's faithful to its name]].

* [[One-Man Army]]:

** Technically a squad of four, but just two of the squad still ended up practically ''single-handedly deploying the destruction of the enemy'', {{spoiler|twice}}, barring the occasional need for transportation (although they end up transporting themselves more often then not).

** Surprisingly, the events of "RAAM's Shadow" turn out as one for the Locust. Yes, the COG has lost hundreds of Gears and civilians, but the evacuation of Ilima City was largely successful and RAAM was nearly killed by Zeta Squad.

* [[Quad Damage]]: The Mutators in ''Gears of War 3'' has one called "Super Reload". If you manage a perfect active reload you get several powerful effects: the affected ammo from the reload does not drain from your primary ammo cache, once the affected ammo is depleted it still gives you a full clip of regular fire (single shot clips like the Boomshot basically gives you two shots back to back), there is no time limit on using the affected bonus and instead of a 10-20 percent damage increase it does literally about a '''500 percent''' damage increase. It's so powerful it makes regular assault rifles (especially the Lancer due to high firing rate and clip size) more valuable than the Silverback minigun.

** Everyone is absolutely enormous, and spouts [[One-Liner|OneLiners]] without irony. They have ''chainsaw machine guns''. If you hit a button at the right time, they can reload their gun '''hard''' and make the bullets come out stronger. This game will make a man out of you, even if you're a woman.

** Anya and Samantha are every bit as manly as their male teammates. Seeing Anya scream and cuss as she chainsaws a Locust in half will remove whatever doubt you may have that her upgrade from [[Voice With an Internet Connection|control operative]] to [[Action Girl]] may be a plot contrivance.

* [[Shoot the Medic First]]: Those damn Kantus Priests!

* [[Short-Range Long-Range Weapon]]: The Longshot sniper rifle fits this trope well, except for one particular sequence in ''Gears of War 2'' (see [[This Is for Emphasis, Bitch]] below).

* [[Shotguns Are Just Better]]: You'd be hard-pressed to find somebody online in any of the 3 games who doesn't primarily use the Gnasher, and oftentimes [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|don't take very kindly to people using anything else]]. Epic themselves have admitted that the Gnasher is overpowered, and that they would like to nerf it, but they won't because of the enormous backlash they would receive from the Gnasher purists who make up a large part of the community.

* [[Shoulders of Doom]]: Pretty much the whole Gear armor kit should prevent any kind of movement whatsoever if it were even vaguely realistic.

** The Kantus has the same ability and trademark pose as [[Doom]]'s Arch-ville.

** The nature of the Kryll turns the game into a [[Homage]] of ''[[Pitch Black]]'' for part of the Act 2 of the first game.

** There's an achievement for killing 10000 and 100000 enemies in the first two games, respectively, called "Seriously!?", alluding to one of [[John Dimaggio|Marcus's]] [[Kim Possible|other roles]].

** In ''Gears of War 3'', earning the Onyx medal for the number of times you executed a nemesis (Someone who kills you 5 times without you killing them) will award you with the title "[[The Princess Bride (Film)|My Name Is Inigo Montoya]]".

** In ''Gears of War 3'', the medal for 500 MVP awards is [[Brutal Legend]].

** The "Architect" medal has a picture of the skull from the Crimson Omen wearing a white suit, like the Architect from ''[[The Matrix]]''.

{{quote| '''Marcus''': The Golden Rule of Gears: [[Take Cover]] or die.}}

* [[Taken for Granite]]: ''Gears of War 3'' features the city of Char filled with crowds of people who have been flash-fried into statues of ash, the first real depiction in the games of the absolute hell the Hammer of Dawn counterattacks have caused.

** Brought back in ''3.'' While Marcus and Baird are now getting along, there is considerable friction between Baird and Sam in the first Acts, with them throwing all sorts of sarcastic quips at each other. The nature of their rivalry is implied to stem from Sam being Dom's new [[Love Interest]]. {{spoiler|They ease up considerably after Dom's [[Heroic Sacrifice]].}}

* [[That Makes Me Feel Angry]]: Marcus sometimes shouts "Now I'm pissed!" upon being revived, and some Locust in Campaign may shout "RRRRRAAAAAGE!" while attacking you.

* [[X Meets Y]]: Horde 2.0 in ''Gears of War 3'' is Horde Mode from the second mixed with [[Tower Defense]] elements.

* [[You Are in Command Now]]: Marcus

* [[Your Head Asplode]]:

** Done by headshots from almost all weapons in ''Gears of War'' if they hit your head when [[Critical Existence Failure|it does enough damage]] to deplete your [[Hit Points]]. They even sell ''an action figure'' of a Drone with its head a-sploding.

* [[Crapsack World]]: If the games didn't make it clear, the horrible event in the books really will show how terrible a place Sera is, even before the Locust emerged.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: A lot of the characters, but Baird does it the most.

* [[Fantastic Racism]]:

** While the townspeople of Pelruan and the Gorasini have every reason to hate Stranded, thats no reason to be mean to and attack Dizzy and his daughters.

* [[Ludicrous Gibs]]: Whats happens to {{spoiler|Helena Stroud}} and {{spoiler|Carlos Santiago}}.

* [[Machete Mayhem]]: The Pesanga scouts are fond of this.

* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: Bernie went on one against her rapists. She got real good with using her knife during it.

* [[Skeleton Government]]: Basically all that is left of the government 15 years after E-Day is Prescott.