By all means, think that brodie. But... those stories are steeped in nostalgia and folk think they have a greater amount of depth and pathos than they do. It was slow music mixing to make it seem like there were weighty emotional beats between bouts of blowing shyt up. There was nothing 'down to earth' about these storylines bruh.
It worked for what it was at the time. But just like God Of War 1-3... they do not age well. Or more... they are easy to age out of. There wasn't grit. There was just viscera. Dudes built like refrigerators fighting alien-fridges with guns that had chainsaws on them.
Why is there a chainsaw on a weapon intended for mid-range engagement? Because 'fukk yeah!'... but literally zero other reason. Because that was the design philosophy then - it didn't have to make sense it just had to be cool.
'Cool' has changed.
If Kratos was still spending all his time delivering his dialogue at max volume and bouncing between beheading enemies to threesomes in 2023 it wouldn't hit either.
So if Marcus Fenix rocks up in his whiteboy durag looking like he does 3-a-days at the gym and leg day is Nevuary 31st, rushing in like Leeroy Jenkins to chainsaw an alien when he has a perfectly functional automatic rifle... it ain't gon hit. The medium has moved past that being a AAA concept.
You gonna tell a story about an endless, senseless war and the nature of the ground troops forced to throw their lives into the abyss for a goal they'll likely never live to see... then you need to tell that story with some care. Not just throw edgelord environmental design and bootleg Metallica riffs at it and call it a day.
So explain Doom, Borderlands, Like a Dragon Bruh, Breath of The Wild, are they not AAA.
Your idea for what Gears should become is god awful. Everything you’re saying about “edge lord” (which the game wasn’t) is what you want with your “pathos” . The Gears trilogy story was actually good, solid moments broken up by levity, you are overly playing up the dude bro narrative.
- Dom’s & Maria’s Story
- Tai’s torture
- Marcus sense of duty vs family
- Carmine living up to the family name
- Coke acceptance that his glory days are gone
- The disparity of losers in the Pendulum Wars & scavengers
- The flooding of Jacinto
They were buff, so what, they’re soldiers, their sizes had nothing to do with story. Honestly breh it just sounds like you want depressing shyt for no other reason than being depressing. That ultimately leads to lazy characters whose actions are driven by a theme and not the narrative. DMC V, Resident Evil both proved you don’t need that oversaturated “pathos” wrought in AAA gaming, it leads to following trends which are never successful. Halo 5 did it and that game was trash. Everything you’re suggesting means dumping everything that made Gears unique and turn it into something it’s not.
Neil Druckman really got y’all nikkas over a barrel when it comes to “AAA” gaming narratives. It likes saying let’s reboot Fast and the Furious and make it more like Godfather 2.
