ok been wanting to talk about Gears 5 in a more general fashion, I will only be discussing the MP of GOW5 (all other modes are imo way better made)
On the surface level this game feels like every other Gears game, you chainsaw, you wallbounce, you go for Power Weapons… But when you look deeper it becomes apparent that this same has some of the most short sided or “boring” decisions ever made.
First off lets what Gears was, and what it should be. Or in other words why Gears 5 doesn’t work. This isn’t about little tweaks here and there, its more about fundamental design decisions that have progressively sapped every bit of fun from these games.
Gears 1/2 were made with a completely different mindset from the rest of the Gears games, if you just look at some of the basic (and franchise defining) mechanics of this series you’ll quickly realize what they were going for. Why does this game have gore? Because Epic at the time expected players to constantly gib one another in the face. Why does Gears have executions? Because they expected players to be close to you when you were down. Why is the movement in Gears so crisp (as an example Gears is the only game I’ve seen wallbouncing in) because they thought players could use that as a method of getting close to opponents (to get them within gib range)
Then Gears 3 came out… Epic basically saw CoD and thought that Gears needed custom loadouts and strong af rifles, the problem was that this just created an extremely unbalanced game with very stagnant (slow) gameplay, essentially backing away from some of the cool features that Gears 1 started with. Although loadouts have since been removed that whole idea that its fine be passive and sit back and relax with your lancer hasn’t changed. The recent update where TC increased the mag size of the lancer is a great example of this. What was their reason? Because “players couldn’t finish downs”, what they fail to realize is that there was already a weapon in the game called the Snub pistol that was great at that.
Why long range battles are boring for gears and why the Gnasher is the staple of this franchise:
- Gnasher skillgap is far wider than lancer skillgap (which is important as it gives players a reason to play long term to improve their skills)
- Gnasher uses gib+executions whereas lancers don’t utilize this at all (this makes gnasher kills far more satisfying in comparison to lancer kills)
- Gnasher utilizes the movement in Gears better than any other weapon in the franchise, without the gnasher wallbouncing wouldn’t be a thing, and thus Gears probably would’ve died years ago.
Same logic applies to almost all of the lancer wannabes they’ve made over the years (hammerburst, boltok, markza, etc.)
Let’s talk maps:
It is insane that a game with some really good maps turns around and slap us in the face with some of the worst maps to ever grace this franchise. Allfathers, Exhibit, Asylum, hell even Vasgar and Icebound have grown on me over time. Bunker and Pahanu though are easily a couple of the worst maps I’ve ever seen. Too big, too stupid, too unfun for Gears. Even more unsettling on a broader sense is just how boring TC’s map design is.
Icebound. When you look at this map at first it doesn’t seem too crazy, but the ice is probably one of the most poorly thought of mechanics I’ve ever seen in a Gears map, let me explain. in Icebound you can shoot the ice to break it, which makes it a hazard because once a player moves on it they freeze. One mechanic that people overlook is that if you use the Ice Cannon you can refreeze the ice, why is the important? Because it means you could have a map with interesting flank opportunities and map movement. For example, you could have a map where an Ice Cannon spawns on both sides, with a lake or river or whatever you wanna call it going through it, then players could think of interesting strategies as to where they decide to move across said river with the Ice Cannon, making an essentially rare pickup weapon into a utility weapon with interesting possibilities. My point is that its wasted potential.
Let’s talk about weapons:
TC is (and always has) been sleeping on a plethora of great weapons. Scorcher, Mortar, Oneshot, Ink Grenades, Sawed-Off, even some of the GOWJ weapons like Booshka or Breachshot were cool, its like TC intentionally thought of ways to bore their players.
Lets ignore old weapons, lets talk about new. Why doesn’t this game have an Ice Grenade? Just seems like another wasted opportunity. Why isn’t the Stim in MP? instead of giving everything OP rifles off spawn (boltok, hammerburst, markza) why not give them a tool that encourages players to play more aggressively? Think about it, instead of giving players a boltok on each side of Lift or Harbor now you give them Stim, which would make those maps play far more aggressively
Summary:
-Gnasher is what made Gears great, everybody else (including TC) is wrong
-TC has boring map design (no asymmetrical maps in years for example)
-almost every weapon from previous Gears games should be brought back
Ideas (How they’ll come out of this alive lol):
-remove all the boltoks/hammerburst/markza from all the maps in MP and either replace them with Stim (its basically a Halo-esque Overshield) or something better used for pushes (pickups by spawn are meant to give players some help to push for Power Weapons, whereas right now they just punish the enemy from playing aggressively)
-Remove active from lancer/snub (a simple, yet effective nerf)
-Bring back weapons one at a time each operation (would make each operation actually unique for a change)
-Actually put some thought behind maps, don’t just release something because it “looks good”, soooo many cool ideas gone to waste. If you need help TC let me know.
I’m aware that this is an extremely long post, but I needed to explain why I thought the way I did, and a couple paragraphs wouldn’t have done myself nor anyone else justice.