Buster's Ancient Locust Theory (A Bad Imitation of Joveus/BChaps)

Gears 5
#10

Has there been any sort of explanation as to how the Locust managed to create a functioning society in just 80-odd years? Between the architecture (both new and old), the hierarchy, the language, the religion, etc, realistically there’s no way all of those things could be created and spread out over such a long distance in less than a century.

And what exactly is the deal with the Locust/Swarm hive mind? I k ow the Swarm for-sure make use of a hive, but the Locust are described as being like that too, but their actual society shows the opposite. No individual drone in a hive mind would have any distinct personality or quirks, they’d essentially be mindless slaves to the queen, but Rise of RAAM and the fact that the Locust have a religion separate from the queen at all to speak of shows that they are capable of independent thought free from Myrrah’s (and presumably Kait assuming the Scions still work the same way as the former Locust) control and can act on their own and do their own thing. Basically, a hive mind doesn’t allow for free will.

The way the Locust and Swarm actually work as a species seems to change with every new game, unless there’s an obscure detail I missed in a book or other comic.

#11

Mostly, all of the Locust would’ve come from the same place, and as Myrrah commands them (like we hear even in Raam’s Shadow) they have a connected hive mind like the Swarm.

This is because they’re all connected to the same mind (Myrrah/Matriarch) but they’re not all under the same command in a Hive Mind, simply able to receive orders from the Queen and be compelled. Like an Ant colony.

#12

As a disclaimer @Joveus did the thread.

@BChaps copied it over from the old forums to keep the history alive.

#13

Yes, but I still gave credit to both because if it was not for BChaps I (and maybe many others) would not have ever read Joveus’ work.

#14

Maybe.

But it’s kind of like giving Webster’s credit for all the words in it.

Title is ok.

@Joveus who to my knowledge is done with the game, is fairly solely responsible for the research.

#15

Yes I understand that, and sorta, if I never had Websters there’s a bunch of words I would never be able to comprehend. Or say recreations of The Time Machine by HG Wells, it’s one of my favorite books, but if nobody ever re-published copies I would’ve never read it.

#16

Lol.

I’ve always loved your sense of humor.

Are you still working on your book?

#17

Yessss…

I played through Gears 2 again recently to refresh my memory as I’m working on a section in that era of Gears, but I had been getting caught up with other projects I’m working on, as well as a major stint of depression in my IRl life atm. But I do hope to finish it by the end of 2020 or 2021. It’s just fallen on a backburner for me as Gears has bummed me out recently.

1 Like
#18

Wish you well my man.

You were writing some good stuff as last I saw.

Life always gets in the way.

It’s what life does.

Always smile and enjoy for a bit.

You have some mad writing skills brother.

I’m not a writer. Always jealous of creativity.

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#19

lol…yeah.
I know more about the lore than the average player…but that’s about it.
If you put me head-to-head with anyone who actually cares about the lore, I’d fail miserably :stuck_out_tongue:

side note…it sucks that we don’t have people taking up Parasidian’s old role of diving deep into the lore to find stuff.

3 Likes
#20

That’s not a proper hive mind then. Common drones in a proper hive wouldn’t have any autonomy to speak of, unlike the Locust. The Locust (meaning before any Swarm stuff) don’t behave like they’re actively controlled a la the Zerg from Starcraft or the Flood from Halo, more like soldiers following orders. The brief bit in G5 where Kait takes control of a handful of Swarm creatures in Oscar’s village is closer to true hive behavior since the creatures in question are straight up mindslaves, but this contradicts previously established Locust social behavior as seen in the Rise of RAAM, Could be interesting if Kait possibly has greater control over the Swarm than Myrrah or Reyna.

I’m probably just reading too much into it and it’s most likely that TC and Epic just didn’t know how hive minds actually work, but call the Locust/Swarm that anyway.

As for the Locust all coming from the same place, that arguably makes the size of their society make less sense. Granted, Sera’s size has never actually been stated, but if we assume it’s like Earth, they’d be traveling through tunnels by foot for literally years if not decades to establish anything even a quarter the size of their holdings in the lore. They have a continent-spanning network of territory that would have to be mapped, tamed, and outposts or towns built upon, presumably on foot or with only simple vehicles since realistically they wouldn’t have anything like cars in the Hollow, and accompanying supply lines and communication to and from their start point and each link in the migratory chain.

For reference, just look at how long it took the United States to acquire as much territory as it has, with the tech available to us in the real world. The window of time given to the development of the Locust just doesn’t work under scrutiny.

#21

Agreed.

@Joveus always had my respect by caring enough to dive deeply.

You have mine (and always will) by caring (and thinking far enough ahead) to preserve it.

1 Like
#22

However, the Locust are more brutal than humans, the Hollow is relatively flat and they do have technologies/mounts available. And the US taking so long to expand was more political than anything. I believe there was a law in place that said no one was able to break ground on territories West of the Louisiana purchase for so many years, while the Locust just constantly expanded.

#23

The Hollow isn’t flat though, as seen in-game across multiple games. And the Locust war dawgs had to be broken and tamed, and some are outright genetically modified like the Brumak. Stuff like that subtracts even more time from the already tiny window available.

#24

Well I said relatively flat, and yes it subtracts time but we ourselves went from horse-drawn carriages to the Autoban in 60~ years.

#25

Locust = not a hive mind, just all connected to the Queen. She used Spotters and some tech to see through their eyes and maintain control. But she still needed to use radio broadcasts to keep the Locust morale up, since she couldn’t put her mind everywhere at once.

Lambent = true hivemind, one massive entity.

Swarm = true hivemind, but each individual has some autonomy. Scions are definitely in control. The Warden was able to shrug off Kait’s control and kill who it wanted, despite Kait’s objections.

It makes sense, considering the Swarm seem to be stabilized Lambent who are now controlled by the evolved Locust.

Pouncers, Snatchers, and Carriers all share physiology and shape language with polpys (EDIT: polyps). I think of them as “polypoids,” but TC might go a different route later.

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#26

Are we sure that was actually the case and not Myrrah taking control away from Kait to get/allow the Warden to kill Oscar? While not cutting the connection for reasons I think might be clear. It’s obvious her mind or what remained of it had some control left over the hivemind and seemed to want Kait’s body for her own purposes(something that Myrrah seemingly abandoned to Kait’s resistance at her intrusion attempts and after getting Reyna’s body). Kait remaining connected to the Warden while being unable to stop it from killing her uncle… well, if that’s not an attempt at causing psychological harm and/or intimidation to make Kait more susceptible to giving up or Myrrah’s attempts to take her body over, I don’t know what is.

And I thought/think Pouncers, Snatchers, Carriers are creatures bioengineered by the Swarm with some substance in them that shares genetic code with Imulsion but without the parasitic intentions. A leftover that was not targeted/destroyed by the countermeasure or survived because it was not actually killing off anything(assuming Adam discovered such a thing within Imulsion and did not seek to destroy it as well).

A symbiote, basically. But only compatible with former Locust creatures(seeing as the Brumak/“Swarmak” now has a similar type of pink-reddish goo in the blister-like formations on its body and dies when enough or all of them are destroyed), and the new bigger Swarm creatures have it in them, or capable of being used to modify genetic material or break it down to create something new(Juvies) and evolve it(nests).

But until we know more those are just speculative ideas that may turn out to be wrong.

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#27

It´s kinda weird isn´t it. They created the Hollows as the habitat of the Locust and then they just made the Locust men-made. What a wasted opportunity, but I guess Epic didn´t care much, since New Hope and man-made Locust have been a thing since Gears 2.

Something I noticed is one of the things Dom said in Gears 2. At one point he says, that they don´t know for how long the Locust have been living beneath the surface. Does this mean, that the humans were aware of the inner hollows before? This statement does imply, that they don´t believe the Locust to be native or that they´ve been around for long.

2 Likes
#28

All of those are possibilities. It’s easy to forget that Myrrah is very much still part of the hivemind, if only as an impression. And “Reyna” is just that aspect of Myrrah, in a puppet suit.

As for Swarmaks dying from popping their blisters… They actually don’t, with one notable exception. In the very first Swarmak boss fight (Gears 4) the Swarmak does in fact die when most of its blisters are popped. But it takes an inordinate amount of bullets to do the job. It’s far more efficient to use Torque Bows, Boomshots, and frags to pop those blisters. Plus, the Swarmak is also being clapped by all the stored thunder of a leaky dam, repeatedly.

Every other Swarmak is merely wounded and aggravated by the popping of their blisters. They only die after a Mega Mech cracks open their skull, or after a frag-tagged motorcycle explodes in their mouth, or when a Hammer strike turns them to ash.

So the first Swarmak should be considered a case of bleed-out, electrical shock, and lots of explosive damage.

Also don’t forget when Dom says that the route under Mt Kadar “feels too old.”

Epic loaded Gears 2 with environmental storytelling that told exactly the opposite of the origin story they wanted. And their origin story for Locust (they’re less than a century old) was full of logical holes. But it’s the origin story we got.

shrug

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#29

I guess that’s just a Horde gameplay mechanic then. But it hasn’t been explained or detailed anywhere whether the blisters are actually vital to the Swarmak’s biology after the countermeasure also put them into hibernation or if they’re merely some substance that was eliminated from the body and collected on the outside on those blister formations(why the Swarmak in Gears 4 had them covered in scabs is unclear to me, while every or most other ones we see have their blisters exposed already - a hit registration bug in 4 also once lead me to find out it took several Boomshots to destroy a scab to expose the blister underneath so shooting them isn’t exactly a way to get to them).

And I could swear I read somewhere destroying the majority or all of a Swarmak’s blisters kills it, but it may just have been a piece of information included as a Horde tip since it mentioned they always explode upon death but the one killed in Gears 4 doesn’t when the cutscene begins.