Unsure. Bloodlines seems to indicate the Hammer was completely randomly targeting things in the vincinity rather than JDs armor, with it eventually stopping its strikes somewhere outside the Settlement.
She was probably worried they’d arrest her right there or something.
But not worried she’d be arrested for going to Azura… or New Hope… or Vasgar… yeah, no. She wasn’t worried about a damn thing but herself
Everyone needs to remember the title of the series: “Gears of War.”
What was the theme of the first trilogy? A bunch of soldiers all following orders to fight an evil, genocidal enemy, after generations of following orders and fighting for fuel. Marcus says again and again that he deserved to be in jail, the COG “must’ve had their reasons, even if they weren’t good reasons,” and Marcus respects the chain of command.
Then Prescott ran away, the COG fell apart, Hoffman grew a moral compass thanks to Bernie, and Delta discovered Azura. The COG lied, and was blatantly evil, and it turns out the Locust were just mutated, oppressed humans. (I still don’t like that last part, but it’s canon, so we have to accept it)
It even turns out that the fuel was the real enemy all along.
Despite all of that, Marcus still stabs the Queen and gets little to no satisfaction out of it. He’s left a broken man, who fought all his life and finally has nothing left to fight for. He learned all these lessons about the COG and the Locust, and he ignored some of it, and he killed Myrrah like a good cog in the machine.
Cut to the new trilogy. What are the themes?
Marcus opposes the new COG. JD and Del oppose the new COG. Kait and her family oppose the new COG. Baird works against the new COG from within, while trying to improve it.
The Swarm and Scions are shown to be irredeemable, because they’re unwilling to let humanity live. So even though they had sad origins that were easy to empathize with, they’ve left no room for forgiveness. They would rather die than stop fighting.
OG Delta takes the kids back to Azura: opposing authority because they understand that Jinn is biased.
Everyone finds out JD shot people who might’ve only been attacking robots: JD, understandably, feels guilt. Because his namesake and heroes never shot rioters (Dom charged food rioters and beat them down, but he didn’t shoot them).
Kait realizes that her mind is being attacked by the Swarm. If she goes back to the COG, they’ll dissect her. Marcus backs up her decision to go look for answers, once again opposing authority.
JD and Fahz redeem themselves by coming to Vasgar, behind authority’s back, to do the right thing. They successfully launch the Hammer.
When Fahz asks if someone with “real military authority” should be present to take command of the Hammer, Marcus tells him to ■■■■. Marcus and Delta have decided that “real military authority” has no right to superweapons, and only the calmest, smartest minds should be allowed to use it.
AND FINALLY: last but not least:
When Jinn demands that Kait be arrested, every single member of OG Delta, and every new member, all point their rifles at Jinn.
That moment at the start of Act 4 shows how Gears of War has resolved the themes of the first trilogy, maintained its connective tissue, and grown to explore more important, more relevant themes. The OG Delta characters have all learned that authoritarians are not to be trusted, and soldiers should do more than blindly follow orders. They are no longer cogs in the machine.
Gears of War 5 was about soldiers doing the right thing, even when it might cost them everything, even though they know they have to fight alongside the COG or die.
Also, the Hammer disintegrated a lot of drones who were 50+ feet away from the laser. Getting on top of the minotaur would’ve fried JD or Lizzie within seconds. They did their best in the seconds they had, and it wasn’t enough.
Now, let’s focus on the scene that was stupid and didn’t work: the choice to save JD or Del. Where was JACK?!!?
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Jack had a Windows update and had to restart.
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This is the only part I disagree with. The Hammer was still fairly close to the Drones when it disintegrated them(about an average human’s height, it looks like to me) and it doesn’t change some of the issues present within that scene. JD could very easily just have been killed but he somehow survived.
As for where Jack was, I could ask the same for why Paduk just wandered off after leaving his beacon to Kait, JD and Del. There’s no good reason I can imagine other than plot… and it kinda leaves a hole in it.
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