Gears 2: Out helljumping the helljumpers

[Ford Prefect]

I'm curious about the definite link between New Hope, the Sires (obvious Locust) and Mount Kantus and the Kantus monks - the changes in Locust culture (and probably the queen herself) are probably mankind's fault. The old chairman (who wouldn't authorise the use of vehicles to get up Kantus but would authorise experimenting on 15yo girls) and the Queen are both using their entire species in a war to seize the future, and the monks, the gears, the lambent, and all the crazy shit is just the fallout.

The Queen has always been an enigma for me, simply because I felt like it was impossible for her to actually be Locust. She gives such great speeches, with perfect english, which seemed extremely unusual. I was entertaining the idea that maybe not all female Locust are huge armoured tanks who can't see and with raging hormones ala the Berserkers, but at the same time there was always this niggle that she wouldn't actually be a Locust. Her appearance in Gears 2 makes this seem quite clear (Cole's line in the throne room is amusingly appropriate), and the stuff going on at New Hope just adds to that. There's a medical file there which talks about a girl getting all crazy with her fingernails turning into claws and so on, and my friend and I said to each other 'irritable? Berserkers are irritable'.

I'm reminded of how Carmine asks Marcus where he thinks the Locust come from. New Hope had both myself and my friend questioning how much involvement the COG had with the Locust, with he especially positing that the Locust as they are now being the end result of the fucking around at New Hope. I don't think it's quite as simple as that, though it is fairly clear that the Sires are some sort of proto-Locust. It's actually really curious and I want to see the answer to all these connected questions, myself. I haven't been this intruiged by a game's plot for a long time.

[Havok]

Where and when is Earth in regards to Gears? Time wise.

[TheMuffinKing]

Where and when is Earth in regards to Gears? Time wise.

As far as I know, it is never mentioned.

[Admiral Drason]

I like to think that Gears is in a Universe along the lines of Warhammer 40k during the age of Strife when the colonies of man were cut off from one another. This is purely speculation of course. But with no mention what so ever of any space lift capabilitise its as if they lost the ability to travel from star system to star system.

[Darksider]

Is sera ever mentioned to be a colony of humans from earth, or is it the human homeworld in the GoW universe?

I just assumed the humans had evolved on sera, not come from some where else.

[apocolypse]

I like to think that Gears is in a Universe along the lines of Warhammer 40k during the age of Strife when the colonies of man were cut off from one another. This is purely speculation of course. But with no mention what so ever of any space lift capabilitise its as if they lost the ability to travel from star system to star system.

I like that. I had often wondered why the hell the humans don't just leave. They must have been dropped off at one point, so why not just pick up and go? I thought maybe it was pride ("you aren't driving us off!") or something, but somehow being cut off and unable makes more sense.

[TheMuffinKing]

I like to think that Gears is in a Universe along the lines of Warhammer 40k during the age of Strife when the colonies of man were cut off from one another. This is purely speculation of course. But with no mention what so ever of any space lift capabilitise its as if they lost the ability to travel from star system to star system.

I like that. I had often wondered why the hell the humans don't just leave. They must have been dropped off at one point, so why not just pick up and go? I thought maybe it was pride ("you aren't driving us off!") or something, but somehow being cut off and unable makes more sense.

This is pure speculation, but maybe they can't leave because the pendulum wars on Sera were a small part of a broader conflict. Perhaps the rebuilding of other planets is taking place or something, that could explain how they were cut off.

[Stark]

Inventing baseless nonsense and meaningless parallels to 40k is worthless. They never mention another planet and their tech is Vietnam + lasers + cloaking robots. The closest to extraplanetary business is Carmine talking about 'Risea or one of the moons'. It's worthless to invent nonsensical explanations for why they can't leave when they simply obviously have zero ability to do so (particularly after the loss of their entire civilisation).

What interests me about Kantus and the Locust (given their obvious link to New Hope) is they go out of their way to point out that the Locust appear to have been down there for a long time (long enough to use labour camps to uncover ruins/arefacts/etc) and this doesn't seem practical given their strategy and repeated near-defeat. Even the position of their nexus directly over a lambent-creating imulsion pocket strikes the player as deeply stupid. The elder Fenix is clearly closely related to the Locust in some way and a direct link between COG and the Locust was pretty obvious from even the first game. If you treat the Locust as not a single species and their culture or structures as not necessarily theirs, there's a lot of scope for Gears3 to have some pretty fucking wierd shit going on. It's been what, 14 years since E-day, but how much of their motives and culture are really their own? Why the fuck do they speak grunty monster-English? I dig that nobody bats an eye at the Locust stealing heaps of trucks, given their lack of industrial base beyond GIANT MUTATED CREATURES.

But let's face it - the real question is 'what the fuck is with imulsion being self-mobile'. The lambent (which we barely see) are clearly not simply exploding wretches anymore.

[Ford Prefect]

Where and when is Earth in regards to Gears? Time wise.

Never mentioned.

Inventing baseless nonsense and meaningless parallels to 40k is worthless. They never mention another planet and their tech is Vietnam + lasers + cloaking robots. The closest to extraplanetary business is Carmine talking about 'Risea or one of the moons'. It's worthless to invent nonsensical explanations for why they can't leave when they simply obviously have zero ability to do so (particularly after the loss of their entire civilisation).

It's fairly clear that if they are colonists (which seems plausible), they have been on Sera for a very long time indeed. They had cities across the entire planet. In any case, Earth is obviously irrelevant to the Serans, given they never ever mention it. Their history and home is that of Sera.

But let's face it - the real question is 'what the fuck is with imulsion being self-mobile'. The lambent (which we barely see) are clearly not simply exploding wretches anymore.

As I said to my friend during that scene 'oh snap!'. As if we need more angles to think about. It's starting to make my head spin.

[The Vortex Empire]

I like to think that Gears is in a Universe along the lines of Warhammer 40k during the age of Strife when the colonies of man were cut off from one another. This is purely speculation of course. But with no mention what so ever of any space lift capabilitise its as if they lost the ability to travel from star system to star system.

I like that. I had often wondered why the hell the humans don't just leave. They must have been dropped off at one point, so why not just pick up and go? I thought maybe it was pride ("you aren't driving us off!") or something, but somehow being cut off and unable makes more sense.

Why assume that there's any other world they have? When they say, "Humanity is on the brink of extinction", that suggests that they're all there. Seeing as Earth is never mentioned, it's safe to assume Sera is the human homeworld.

[apocolypse]

I like to think that Gears is in a Universe along the lines of Warhammer 40k during the age of Strife when the colonies of man were cut off from one another. This is purely speculation of course. But with no mention what so ever of any space lift capabilitise its as if they lost the ability to travel from star system to star system.

I like that. I had often wondered why the hell the humans don't just leave. They must have been dropped off at one point, so why not just pick up and go? I thought maybe it was pride ("you aren't driving us off!") or something, but somehow being cut off and unable makes more sense.

Why assume that there's any other world they have? When they say, "Humanity is on the brink of extinction", that suggests that they're all there. Seeing as Earth is never mentioned, it's safe to assume Sera is the human homeworld.

That is a good point. I was operating under the belief that it was the same as the current universe (Earth is the homeworld and then colonized out) and thought the phrase was a bit odd, but when put in that context it does make more sense.

[CaptHawkeye]

Inventing baseless nonsense and meaningless parallels to 40k is worthless. They never mention another planet and their tech is Vietnam + lasers + cloaking robots. The closest to extraplanetary business is Carmine talking about 'Risea or one of the moons'. It's worthless to invent nonsensical explanations for why they can't leave when they simply obviously have zero ability to do so (particularly after the loss of their entire civilisation).

.

I used to think that COG had some kind of rudimentary space program going at Jacinto to keep the Hammer of Dawn network over the planet maintained and safely active. It doesn't look like that's the case upon Gears 2. Which plays into why COG flipped to an offensive rather than defensive strategy over the past months.

The Dawn satellites are old, very old. While they were probably built for extensive longevity, they might very well be at the end of their usefull lives. Succumbing to things like rocket fuel exhaustion, parts failures, and ammunition depletion. COG doesn't have the numbers to secure the whole planet, and the Hammer is the only thing that keeps the Locust from getting a foothold on the surface.

[Stark]

Yeah, before we were shown how tiny Jacinto really is, it was open to speculation how much of their industrial base was there. While heavily industrialised, the place is just too tiny and it's likely their industry relies on shit elsewhere on the surface, in the vast stretches of the planet where there isn't a meaningful Locust presence. At worst, all those constantly-crashing helicopters have to come from SOMEWHERE. It's possible the once world-encompassing Hammer network has been concentrated somehow over the meaningful areas as it's thinned out - both the Locust and the humans have their capitals convieniently near to each other.

Then again, the rumoured 'second sanctuary' suggests that the COG guys could have some serious industry stashed away and simply cook up more lines of bullshit to explain where this stuff is coming from.

[Ford Prefect]

It does actually seem to me that humans were using other locations. They seemed too upset about the three cities near Jacinto getting Sinkholed for them to be totally empty.

[Stark]

The nerdling idea that the Locust are everywhere all the time in overwhelming numbers is clearly false; the Lightmass Gambit in Gears1 was clearly a major operation for them, and it was basically defeated by four guys and they took massive losses. The stranded live in both abandoned cities, sunken cities and even the Locust tunnels themselves - there is clear scope for any number of locations to still be secure from the Locust (particularly given their Jacinto obsession, which may indeed be the whole point of Jacinto from Prescott's perspective). The nature of the games simply means the player visits locations linked to the Locust, which gives the impression they're 'everywhere' when this is almost certainly not the case (if only because most of them have to fucking walk everywhere ).

Given the clear gamesmanship between COG and the Queen, it wouldn't surprise me if the Locust don't give a fuck about 80% of the planet. I don't want to blow anyone's mind but it's pretty clear the reason for war and motives for both sides as publicly understood are false.

EDIT - Having played through again to get all those silly collectibles, I'm surprised to see that all the lambent are clearly electric mutants. I'd assumed the reavers, seeders, riftworms, bloodmounts etc were simply imulsion-mutated regular shit, but this doesn't seem to be the case. It's amusing to speculate how many other riftworms might be sleeping around the planet, however.

[Losonti Tokash]

So I got to play with Stark and Flash for a while about 5 minutes after I initially inserted the disc. Playing Horde mode straight off was great considering that I had forgotten how to play and there were all these horrible monsters I didn't remember at all. I like the fact that the torque bow's targeting changes now to show if it will penetrate but it still seemed a bit wonky. Arrows would disappear or whatever occasionally. And did the bow get headshots in Gears 1?

Also because I was playing with two Australians there was a lot of "oh shit you just teleported" and "argh my bullets do not work"

[JointStrikeFighter]

I suppose the other possibility WRT Sera is that it was colonised via STL transit and the origins have simply been lost or forgotten.

As for other cities I had gotten the impression the first game with its ultra high speed rail network running the countryside that maybe whilst Jacinto was the critically important and secure central location that the CoG still had numerous other cities that they used and fought over with the Locust.

The second game more or less confirms that they had more cities in use than just Jacinto although most of them seemed to be fairly close.

[Peptuck]

One thing I liked about Gears 2 was the sort of subtle implication that Sera is a world that, by its very nature, breeds complete hardasses. I mean, dude, razorhail. You have got to have some balls to survive on a planet where winter throws clouds of tank-killing, skin-flaying ice shards at you.

It is quite telling that basically every single male character that appears on screen is fucking enormous. The smallest Gear we've ever seen is Ben Carmine, and even then he's actually pretty big.

I wonder how much of this is due to their training/breeding/diet and how much it has to do with the fuckall huge battle armor they wear. I noticed that in the first game, the Stranded look like puny children compared with even Baird, and even out of his armor Baird would tower over any of the Stranded.

I'm reminded of how Carmine asks Marcus where he thinks the Locust come from. New Hope had both myself and my friend questioning how much involvement the COG had with the Locust, with he especially positing that the Locust as they are now being the end result of the fucking around at New Hope. I don't think it's quite as simple as that, though it is fairly clear that the Sires are some sort of proto-Locust. It's actually really curious and I want to see the answer to all these connected questions, myself. I haven't been this intruiged by a game's plot for a long time.

My personal pet theory is that the Sires may have been the result of mucking around with Locust DNA. Maybe the guys at New Hope were trying to create a human/Locust hybrid, and Myrrah was the result? I can't help but draw parallels between the huge tentacle-like thingies on Myrrah's back and how both the Sires and Lambent Brumak both tended to have crazy tentacle growths as well.

In fact, I'm 99% sure that Imulsion is behind just about all the crazy stuff running loose in the Hollow in the first place. Perhaps the Locust were engaged in controlled Imulsion-based experimentation and breeding that created the Corpsers and Brumaks and such? We definitly know that Imulsion was flowing into the lake where the giant sea monster was lurking.

When I played through Act 3 again today, I considered Niles' recording, and I wondered if he was talking about transporting subjects to Mount Kadar or transporting them from Mount Kadar? It would make absolute sense if they had been capturing Locust specimens for reasearch.

I dig that nobody bats an eye at the Locust stealing heaps of trucks, given their lack of industrial base beyond GIANT MUTATED CREATURES.

I find this kind of interesting. The Locust are very curious, as they rely heavily on beasts, at least for war-fighting and some transport, even though we know they have enough of an industrial base to produce some firearms (torque bow, hammerburst, boomshot, etc.) and they developed their own computers, but they also loot a lot of COG technology as well.

At the very least, the Locust are really good at adapting their critters to combat. Reavers have to have some kind of engine or something inside of them, considering how they explode when killed. And the Seeders...well, there's no way you can explain the Seeder as anything except a creature specifically bred for combat support.

[Stark]

In fact, I'm 99% sure that Imulsion is behind just about all the crazy stuff running loose in the Hollow in the first place. Perhaps the Locust were engaged in controlled Imulsion-based experimentation and breeding that created the Corpsers and Brumaks and such? We definitly know that Imulsion was flowing into the lake where the giant sea monster was lurking.

They don't have the obvious swirly green 'magic' effect going on, though. Playing through act 4 again, all the lambent now look this way, so if the sires etc are imulsion based it must have been very controlled experiments (which isn't impossible given the rustlung thing and what you learn at New Hope). Both the Queen and the human movers (Fenix, Samson and the previous Chairman) are intent on controlling the future in some way, and that future is apparently imulsion-related.

When I played through Act 3 again today, I considered Niles' recording, and I wondered if he was talking about transporting subjects to Mount Kadar or transporting them from Mount Kadar? It would make absolute sense if they had been capturing Locust specimens for reasearch.

The way the computer talks suggests to me that Niles and company decamped for Kadar at the end of the program, as it's unsure of what happened there and they never returned. I'm not sure if it's possible to use the dates on journal entries to work out what timeframe we're looking at for the base being abandoned - it certainly seems to be pre-E-day, because while scientists were unhappy with the project they didn't say things like 'HOLY JESUS WE'RE MAKING LOCUST WHY WOULD WE DO THAT'. Elder Fenix also knows way more about the Locust than is publicly known, so it seems likely that Samson's interference spurred them to the surface (probably by introducing the queen).

[Ford Prefect]

I wonder how much of this is due to their training/breeding/diet and how much it has to do with the fuckall huge battle armor they wear. I noticed that in the first game, the Stranded look like puny children compared with even Baird, and even out of his armor Baird would tower over any of the Stranded.

Becoming a Gear might have the requirement of 'fuck-off huge linebacker'. Their armour is pretty tanky but I don't think it actually adds all that much bulk - you can sort of see Marcus without it on and he's not significantly smaller. Funnily enough, Dom and Cole might not wear armour on their upper arms simply because they can't fit their biceps in.

My personal pet theory is that the Sires may have been the result of mucking around with Locust DNA. Maybe the guys at New Hope were trying to create a human/Locust hybrid, and Myrrah was the result? I can't help but draw parallels between the huge tentacle-like thingies on Myrrah's back and how both the Sires and Lambent Brumak both tended to have crazy tentacle growths as well.

My friend has this assumption that the Locust are the end result of the experiments at New Hope. It does honestly sound like they're turning that one girl in a collectable file into a Locust, and Sire is a curious thing to call the Sires. Sort of expanding ont hat, it might be that the Locust are hybrids of Sires and humans, but I'm not really happy with that particular hypothesis. It is of course clear that the Locust and Sires are closely related. At the very least though, I think the Queen is almost certainly the result of Samson's work at New Hope.

Reavers have to have some kind of engine or something inside of them, considering how they explode when killed.

To be honest I thought they exploded because of their missiles.

They don't have the obvious swirly green 'magic' effect going on, though. Playing through act 4 again, all the lambent now look this way, so if the sires etc are imulsion based it must have been very controlled experiments (which isn't impossible given the rustlung thing and what you learn at New Hope). Both the Queen and the human movers (Fenix, Samson and the previous Chairman) are intent on controlling the future in some way, and that future is apparently imulsion-related.

Imulsion is hell of useful. I imagine that for someone like the old Chairman, Imulsion was probably wanted for power reasons. Perhaps that's what the New Hope stuff was related to: hardier workers for Imulsion refining and drilling, who would resist the mutating/sickness inducing properties of Imulsion. Mak gets gribblified in record time while wading in the stuff (though interestingly, the Corpser from the first game simply died), and Imulsion fumes are probably harmful, but the Locust don't seem all that bothered by long term exposure.

The way the computer talks suggests to me that Niles and company decamped for Kadar at the end of the program, as it's unsure of what happened there and they never returned. I'm not sure if it's possible to use the dates on journal entries to work out what timeframe we're looking at for the base being abandoned - it certainly seems to be pre-E-day, because while scientists were unhappy with the project they didn't say things like 'HOLY JESUS WE'RE MAKING LOCUST WHY WOULD WE DO THAT'. Elder Fenix also knows way more about the Locust than is publicly known, so it seems likely that Samson's interference spurred them to the surface (probably by introducing the queen).

It is now very much clear that Locust started their war for reasons other than 'they are drilling the fuck out of my house'. It's definitely pre-E-Day, maybe even Pendulum Wars era.

[Stark]

Niles and the Queen both use the same rhetoric; seizing the future, turning the corner, key to genetic future, culture without hope sucks, superior species always wins. I think whatever is happening, the New Hope base was deliberately experimenting to secure ... some kind... of ... future... world... species... thing. The war and the propaganda is just noise on both sides.

[SylasGaunt]

The nerdling idea that the Locust are everywhere all the time in overwhelming numbers is clearly false; the Lightmass Gambit in Gears1 was clearly a major operation for them, and it was basically defeated by four guys and they took massive losses. The stranded live in both abandoned cities, sunken cities and even the Locust tunnels themselves - there is clear scope for any number of locations to still be secure from the Locust (particularly given their Jacinto obsession, which may indeed be the whole point of Jacinto from Prescott's perspective). The nature of the games simply means the player visits locations linked to the Locust, which gives the impression they're 'everywhere' when this is almost certainly not the case (if only because most of them have to fucking walk everywhere ).

What I've read of the novel would seem to say similar as there are settlements outside Jacinto for things like farming that have probably been built up in the 15 years since E-day (when most of the planet got the shit blasted and gassed out of it).

I seem to recall that a few of the collectibles that suggest the locust track things like the ebb and flow of imulsion so it could be that it's something they've had to deal with for a long time and they've got plans. It also seems to react differently based on what it's introduced to. The Mak at the end got all huge and mutated, standard locust just seem to band up into their own tribe and try to kill other locust, wretches don't change their behavior much and just explode now.

[Stark]

That's almost certainly related to degree of contact; the lambent wretches had been exposed to imulsion for some time (exposed meaning 'be near'), the Brumak waded knee-deep in it for minutes, and the lambent Locust don't appear to have much imulsion in them or explode. If imulsion itself is volatile, the lambent may either be experimentally created (like the Sires) or simply a result of Locust chilling out near juice all day long. The Brumak and wretches appeared to contain much more (although wretches less than a grenade, which is a pretty small amount of imulsion since it's a superfuel of some kind).

[TheMuffinKing]

I wonder further of the nature of imulsion, especially the scene where you kill a lambent locust drone and his imulsion stream travels back to another drone in his squad. Maybe this opens up some sort of philosophical dilemma.

[SylasGaunt]

And yes all the Gears are fecking enormous.. of course according to the novel their caloric intake is something like 6900 calories a day O_O