Gears of War 3

[GamerMan316]

Should She Be Chainsawable?



It's not a given that a war video game will have female fighters. If Gears of War 3 does, the game's designers will have to decide if they will grant their heroines equal opportunities to experience the game's signature actions...

...such as chainsawing people in half and being chainsawed by them.

We don't know if this new female soldier pictured above in the Gears of War 3 trailer — and confirmed to be Anya Stroud, to you Gears fans — will be playable in the new game. Lead designer Cliff Bleszinski did tell NBC Late Night host Jimmy Fallon last night that "we have female soldiers finally in the game, by the way... a lot of the fans have been asking for that one for a while."

If you were on the Gears of War 3 design team, what decisions would you make regarding the female soldiers?

Gears of War 3 will be out on the Xbox 360 in early April 2011.

[Astrex]

Now how comes the women have normal peoples bodies where as the blokes seem to have like really wench feet and massive forearms 

[GamerMan316]

Cliff Bleszinski Meristation Gears 3 Interview

Part 1

Part 2

[GamerMan316]

Another cool gamesradar feature

Things you may have missed in the Gears 3 Trailer

So the Gears of War 3 trailer has finally landed. But what do we think of it? We think it's great actually. It might not have the immediate impact of the announcement trailers for the first two games, but after repeated watches it really gets into your head.

Because after repeated watches, you get to read between the lines and realise what's really going on in it. It might look like just another chunk of carnage-strewn Gears warzone, but it actually reveals a lot about the state of things in Gears of War 3. A hell of a lot. Here's what we've found.

UPDATE:

It's been brought to our attention by Cliff Bleszinski's Twitter feed (and about 300 of you lot) that the blonde female Gear is officially Anya from GoW 1 and 2. Great news we say. Should create even more interesting tension between Marcus and Dom, if our interpretations of the trailer turn out to be correct.

Another new setting


This might look like just another war-torn city, but after paying closer attention it becomes apparent that the crowds of torched humans died while fleeing from something. And they appear to be trying to shelter from the sky. We reckon this has to be the scorched part of Sera, the majority part of the planet that was wiped out by the COG with orbital lasers in an attempt to finish off the Locust back before the start of the first game. The petrified bodies aren't the victims of the Locust; they're the victims of the rest of humanity.



But why are Delta out here, in the post-apocalyptic remains of the forgotten part of the planet? Two possibilities. Either they need something that was left behind out here, or they just have nowhere else to go. We reckon the latter at the moment. After sinking Jacinto at the end of Gears 2, humanity won't have much left in the way of a home. The fact that they're introduced as literally on the run seems to back this up:



Dom's mega-beard



This means a few things. Firstly, AWESOME! Secondly, Gears 3 is set a good while after Gears 2. Probably another six months or so, which would explain how things appear to have gone just so badly to sh*t for Delta. And third, it's a sign that Dom has let himself go. He took all the emotional brunt of Gears 2, culminating with his reunion with lost wife Maria in that scene. Evidently he's still reeling from that. In fact we suspect he's in a complete mess.

Look how he reacts to his impending death by Locust bullet:



No shouting. No snarling. No attempt to fight back. Just a look of peaceful resignation on his face. And check out the bodies his gaze is drawn to. A mother and young child. Dom has given up, and just wants to 'go home'.



Tension between Dom and Marcus



Marcus has carried Dom's pain for a long time, but we think it's straining their relationship now. If Dom is falling apart as we suspect, Marcus is going to be pissed off, both at the lack of discipline and the loss of his best friend. Check out what happens when Marcus saves him with his brilliant new pump-action, double-barreled shotty. Not a word. Not a helping hand up. Just a scowl, and then away he goes. Instead, Dom is looked after by...

Un-named female Gear Anya



A female soldier. Doing actual shooting and stuff, rather than just answering the phones. Excellent! We're not sure whether there have always been female COG Marines, or whether her appearance is down a new "Screw the women and children rule, all hands to the pump" philosophy within the COG, but either way we're glad she's here. And is it just us, or does she seem heavily modelled on Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica?

Note though, her protection of Dom. Do we smell a redemptive relationship in the air? We reckon we do. Cue even more complicated relations between Dom and Marcus. Our guess is Marcus being all "Go for it" and Dom holding back because of loyalty to his dead wife.

Loads of Locust



Once again, the COG plan to wipe them out has failed. Badly. And this time they're really on the rampage, presumably trying to hunt down the last of humanity and exterminate it now that it's wiped out its own last safe haven. Expect the message of flawed humanity being the architect of its own destruction to be even more prevalent in Gears 3.

Cole and Baird are back



Yay! We knew they would be, but it's nice having their safety confirmed.

Massive Lambent beasty



It's already been leaked by our sister magazine Edge that Gears 3 will feature huge tentacled monsters that will pull you out of cover. Well here's where you meet them.



Note though, that the soldier it pulls from the battlefield is a Locust rather than a human. This backs up the implication in Gears 2 that the Lambent (a new strain of Imulsion-mutated Locust) are a race all of their own, with no love of their original species. We've long-held a theory that the humans and Locust are going to team up against a common foe (corrupt COG or Lambent) in Gears 3, and we reckon this trailer confirms it. Notice how everyone, Locust or human, turns round to start shooting the crap out of it? That's symbolism right there, that is.



It's all about Dom



One of the biggest things we take away from this trailer though, is just how much Dom is focus of it. Comparatively, Marcus is barely seen, and Cole and Baird even less. Building on Gears 2's plot-line, we think Gears 3 is going centre around Dom's continued emotional landslide and the friction and distance is causes between him and the rest of the squad in the run up to the end times.

It's backs-to-the-wall time



Symbolism time again. The trailer ends with Delta alone and pinned down amongst hundreds of Locust and Lambent. Make no mistake, Gears 3 is going to be brutal and probably pretty dark. Jacinto is gone. Maria is gone. Hell, for all we know at the moment, COG contact could be gone and the squad could be hauling ass through the post-apocalyptic ash of outer-Sera in a desperate bid just to hide and survive.

Note though, that the female COG appears to be at least a semi-permenant member of Delta now, being as she is the only previously unseen character fighting along with them. Let's just hope she isn't a Carmine.

But what do you reckon? Is there anything we've missed? Have you interpreted things in a different way? How do you see Gears of War 3 going?

[Failed]

wheres C.Carmine ?

[GamerMan316]

wheres C.Carmine ?

With Dizzy somewhere probably 

[Failed]

and Hoffman.

[nCogNeato]

wheres C.Carmine ?

With Dizzy somewhere probably 

and Hoffman.

and Maria.   

[nCogNeato]

Now how comes the women have normal peoples bodies where as the blokes seem to have like really wench feet and massive forearms 

That's sort of why they didn't put female playable characters in the first 2 games.  They couldn't get their character designs to work ingame.

I'm curious to see how it works (or doesn't) in Gears 3.

[nCogNeato]

Should She Be Chainsawable?

This is going to be a PR shitstorm.

If she's not given equal treatment (good and bad), then game-savvy feminists are going to raise hell about Epic and Microsoft being sexually bias.

If she is given equal treatment, we're going to be seeing a lot of smear news campaigns featuring stories about videogames encouraging violence towards women, which will includes video clips like this (but with a woman on the receiving end) ...

Good luck, guy in charge of Epic / Microsoft Public Relations.   

[Jurassic Parky]

Gears is godly, nearly as godly as Dom's beard.

[Jaynestown]

Since I always play as Dom when playing Gears online, have a I got to grow a beard between now and next April? 

[Handshakes]

They best let me chainsaw Anya to smithereens.

She deserves it for being such a lame character and forced romantic element into the game's storyline.

[GamerMan316]

Just under a year until its released and you can already pre-order Gears 3 on play.com.

[GamerMan316]

A member on the epic forums has changed the music on the Ashes to Ashes trailer, replacing the original music with Hurt by Johnny Cash (as requested by Rod Fergusson) and for me, it makes the trailer a lot better, check it out.