1) Every Gears of War Ever
Epic Games set the scene well, I’ll give them that. They painted a picture of a franchise that would be haunting and desolate. A lone, honourable struggle against insurmountable odds. A game depicting the real isolation and sadness of war. Yes, it was that trailer (featuring the drab tones of Gary Jules’ version of Mad World) that had us foaming at the eyes. It turned out to be a pretty good game, but did it really deliver on its promise? Not really. Epic was left with only one choice – to raise the stakes for the sequel.
So, they did, by giving us a ludicrous side story about Dom Santiago’s wife being taken prisoner by the Locust. And when (after intermittent moping about on the battlefield) they finally do come across her, she’s not in a good way. Despite Marcus’s best efforts, which basically consist of saying “it’s okay Dom” when it clearly isn’t, he’s left with no choice but to blow her head off and cry for nine seconds. Do we care? Not really. And why should we? After half an hour later, he doesn’t even seem that fussed.
This is a game where you play as men the size of Russian bears, with voices deeper than a cello in a cave, who have strapped chainsaws to the end of their guns. Any attempt to humanise them through having a dead wife is completely pointless, when giving characters this unsophisticated some depth would have basically been as simple if you’d just showed them struggling to tie their shoe laces.
Epic tried to one up themselves yet again in the third instalment, and even had Dom sacrificing himself, though again in an explosive set piece so overdramatized it made the Die Hard franchise look like a high-school art project. He grew a cool beard though, so I guess we connected on some level.
What do you guys think? Cheap storytelling, or emotional materpieces? Has any game made you actually bawl? Let us know below!