I just finished replaying Gears 5 and I REALLY just have to gush about this campaign a bit.

Half-coherent thread follows... (SPOILERS) #Gears5

The narrative construction of this game is fucking excellent. Everything (plot, character, theme, worldbuilding, etc) is built around two core ideas: Kait's journey and the Hammer of Dawn.

Gears 5 NEVER loses sight of this. Everything is funnelled into these two things.

That clarity of focus is admirable for what's also Gears's most experimental, with its quasi-open world areas in Act 2 and 3. But why this works so well is because The Coalition ties everything back to those two core pillars, regardless of how deep you want to go into the story.

And the result is that you have a sequel - a FIFTH main instalment of the series - that works very well as a standalone entry, which anyone can jump into and enjoy on whatever level they're looking to get out of the experience. That's a tough thing to achieve.

Game storytelling can use macguffins differently to other forms of media because the interactive aspect means a degree of the player's investment can be channelled into what the macguffin lets you do - it's not just about the characters' pursuit of the thing.

This particular macguffin allows you to fire a fucking laser from an orbital satellite and basically insta-kill enemies. HELL YEAH. You love to see it after 3 whole acts building this thing up...

And so, taking it away from you has impact, which then spurs the action of the final stage of the plot which results in the death of two main characters (one of whom you've also spent the entire game looting substantial upgrades for - literally investing in).

And the choice... it was even more devastating the second time round.

I chose to save Del, and I will probably always choose that because, in the following scene, John DiMaggio gives one of the best performances of his entire career when Marcus learns what's happened.

I need to collect these thoughts into a more organised form in an article at some point, but my final verdict on Gears 5 after replaying it is that this is one of the finest campaigns of the generation and it's up there alongside Gears 4 and 2 as the best of the entire series.

I haven’t written much long-form stuff on Gears, but here’s a piece from 2018 on the perfection that is Gears 4’s prologue (also feat. Halo, The Expanse, and A Song of Ice and Fire) https://haruspis.blog/2018/07/15/gears-of-war-4-and-halo-4-a-study-of-prologues/amp/