As a video game, Gears 5 accomplishes its goal of bringing you into another universe and forgetting about your own. A fun experience either through its campaign or multiplayer modes. The game can be a blast at times to play either by yourself or with friends.
But there are a few things that tend to take you out of that experience and make you question things. It may be a mishap in the story, an oversight or design choices that just make you scratch your head. This list will go over some of the aspects of Gears 5 that just don’t quite make much sense. Some story spoilers ahead.
10 10. Cavalier Use Of The Hammer Of Dawn
The Hammer of Dawn is one of the most destructive weapons in the Gears universe. It’s your standard satellite-in-space-that-shoots-down-a-giant-laser-beam weapon. Its use in the universe is depicted as very controversial and for good reason. Minister Jinn, the head honcho of the COG, is very firm in the discontinuation of its use.
So, what’s the first objective of Gears 5? To send up a rocket to continue its use! When that horribly backfires to no one’s surprise then what happens? Try to get it back up and running again. As much as the weapon is painted out to be such a huge risk, the story has no problem utilizing it to a disturbing degree as such a blatant plot device.
9 9. Act 1 To Act 2 Shift
Throughout all of Act 1 in the campaign, you play as JD in the linear Gears fashion. You go from objective point to objective point, mowing down hordes of Swarm in the process. After that’s all done, the game switches the main character to Kait. Why…?
Yes, Kait is technically the main protagonist of the entire game, but it makes the first act seem pointless. Kait’s problems aren’t set up nearly as much as they could be in the first act to justify such a dramatic shift from JD to her. Any time her headaches pop up, they just get brushed aside moments after. You aren’t even around her for the majority of the entire first act either. It’s just a really strange shift in tone.
8 8. Choosing Between JD & Del
The Gears franchise has always had a pretty linear and straight forward campaign. That’s what makes this entry extra weird. During the final act, while playing as Kait, the player has the choice of either saving JD or Del from the hands - or more aptly tentacles - of the new Swarm queen, thus killing the opposite.
This makes no sense for two reasons. One: Putting the choice in the player’s hands in such a character-focused story takes you out of the moment more than adds to the immersion. It should be Kait’s decision or completely out of her control. Two: The canon is completely up in the air as to who actually dies at this moment. Since the campaign leaves off on a cliffhanger, this moment is especially questionable.
7 7. Batista Being A Skin For Marcus
Okay, whose idea was this? Because they have some explaining to do. Taking such an iconic character and slapping a celebrity skin over him is a huge smack to the face for fans of any IP, not just Gears.
Why not just make Batista his own character in the game? It felt like he was marketed that way, considering how much-overblown hype surrounded the character. Furthermore, what is it with getting (former) wrestling celebrities to voice act in video games these days? First, you got Ronda Rousey as Sonya freakin’ Blade in Mortal Kombat 11, now we got Batista spouting lines as a skin of Marcus Fenix in Gears 5. At least it brings him one step closer to living his dream…
6 6. Jack
Let’s be honest. We kind of saw this coming once robots entered the universe. Jack is a big reason why Gears 5 is the way it is. Aspects of the game are heavily built around his mechanics in both the campaign and horde mode.
Just be ready to not play a lick of Gears 5 as him. In a franchise renowned as an excellent third-person shooter, as a playable character, Jack is relegated to flying around, picking up items, and zapping people. It just doesn’t feel right. In addition, Jack is established as being completely replaceable when he replaces Dave at the beginning of the campaign. So why should we even care about him?
5 5. Character-Locked Classes
In Gears 5’s horde mode, characters now have preassigned roles, essentially making the game a character-shooter. In Gears 4, characters were separate from the classes you could choose. So while you might like looking at that sweet Batista skin over Marcus, you still have to put up with the same loadout and class options Marcus comes with.
The nature of this feels very try-hardish, almost like Gears 5 is desperately trying to capitalize on the popular character-role aspect of multiplayer games. The Gears franchise has been around just as long, if not longer, than a lot of the popular games that follow this ‘hero’ system. When you’ve been making waves for over 10 years, it’s weird for a franchise to suddenly start riding them.
4 4. One Character Per Horde Match
If being a hero-shooter didn’t already make little sense, the fact that multiples of the same character can’t participate in a horde game makes absolutely none. If you want to run two JDs, prepare for the game to tell you that that isn’t allowed before it swaps you to some random unselected character that you probably don’t even want to play as once the game starts.
This isn’t Overwatch. This is Gears! And a PVE mode no less. If players want to run a completely unbalanced composition of the same characters, let them! It’d be a lot more fun than having to constantly join and leave games just so you can play your main character or feel bad for the person that was denied before they promptly rage quit.
3 3. The Matriarch In Horde Mode
This boss is just not fun to fight. It’s not even hard, the Matriarch is just annoying to deal with, especially if you aren’t playing as Kait or JD.
When this boss shows up, you don’t fear for the life of your team, you fear for the life of your defenses because it can easily destroy them in a second. It’s the type of boss that just makes you exhale a bored and exhausted sigh because of its wonky AI and kiting mechanic. If you don’t have someone with bleed properties on their weapons or explosives out the wazoo, the Matriarch is just a tedious fight that involves someone running around the map to lure the thing around while everyone else shoots at the weak spot on its back.
2 2. Sentinels/Guardians
The idea of this kind of enemy is alright. It’s the way they behave that doesn’t make any sense. They’re much too random, adding what can feel like a luck-based element to horde mode.
Sometimes, these enemies will comfortably sit across the map all day and fire at you. Other times, they’ll get super aggressive and in-your-face, giving your team all kinds of problems. It’s one thing when a run ends because someone made a mistake, it’s another when you just happen to get a bad enemy spawn you could do little about.
1 1. The Desert Area Storm
In the desert area of Act 3 of the campaign, there’s a storm that forms practically out of nowhere in a specific area. The events leading up to the specific time in which you need to traverse the storm on the skiff could lead you to believe that it’s a one-time thing and it will disappear. It would make no sense for a storm to pop-up out of the blue every time you cross this particular point of the world, right?
Well, that’s basically what happens every time you cross that area of the desert. It serves no purpose outside of the one story-specific mission to just make it arbitrarily harder, and it takes you out of the world each time it happens again. At least there’s no reason to cross this area that often.
NEXT: Ranked: The 10 Best Weapons In Gears 5
