Gears of War 3: brothers to the end

Gears of War is one of my favorite franchises. And one of my favorite things about it is a specific part of the story. But to talk about that would be to talk about spoilers.

So, after the jump, spoilers ahoy!

I now give you one more chance to turn around. After this, there will be spoilers about an important part of Gears of War 3. Consider yourself warned.

I believe it’s the end of Act III when Dom jumps into a fuel truck and blows himself up to save his comrades. You don’t have to be a genius to see Dom’s sacrifice coming. In fact, the second that the instrumental version of the Mad World cover by Gary Jules comes on, its pretty much a given that Dom is about to exit stage right. It had much more of an effect on me than I expected.

Most of the Gears franchise is based on Marcus Fenix. Marcus is a standard badass with attitude. For the most part, he’s forgettable. Most of the story is forgettable. An enemy emerges from the ground and is attacking mankind. There’s another enemy that threatens both. We used satellites to attack them, killing our own people as well. We used a giant bomb to attempt to blow them up. Now it’s down to the last push and the story ends. Pretty standard stuff.

The characters in Gears of War are pretty standard as well. There’s Baird, the smart-ass tech guy and Cole, the loud mouthed ex-thrashball star. Anya is the voice in your ear until Gears of War 3. Most of the rest of the NPCs are interchangeable. Every character in Gears of War comes and goes, from Baird to Cole Train to Dr. Adam Fenix, except for Marcus and Dom.

Dom is with you from the beginning and you follow his story to the end. Though you don’t really have a back story on Marcus or Dom outside of the standard stuff, the story presented by Dom within the time frame of the Gears franchise is more interesting than Marcus’. It’s much more personal.

I was angry and upset for the loss of his children. I was there with him when he found his wife. I picked him up after countless falls, just as he did for me. I spent dozens of hours playing as him in co-op campaign and countless more in Horde. That’s why Dom’s death had an effect on me. RIP, buddy.

Click here for the previous Gears of War 3 entry.