Playing through the Gears of War series and while I have seen THAT scene in GoW 2 in the past out of context, this is the first time I've seen it in context. And uh, not much better.
To be clear, the scene I'm referring to is Dom finding his wife. Turns out she's been captured/tortured for months/years and is now basically dead and Dom has to put her out of her misery by shooting her like a lame horse. Dom concludes the cutscene with "I WANNA KILL THEM ALL" and that's more or less it.
You can see Epic attempting some form of "mature" storytelling, although why they would do that with a series that has been as indulgently juvenile as Gears is beyond me. Feels like the way they go about doing this is equally juvenile. Dom spending the whole game basically a speaker through which "WHERE'S MARIA" comes out of robs him of basically any character he could've had (not that anyone else is much of a character but still). We basically don't know anything about Maria other than "she's Dom's wife", which, like, isn't a character. I've no attachment to this person that I have never seen or interacted. The storytelling is nowhere near strong enough to make me care about Dom's wife THROUGH Dom. I guess Dom's voice actor was decent in the scene, but that alone can't carry the whole plot beat.
Then the death scene happens and it's one of the more blatant cases of Fridge-Wife storytelling.
Despite this being an 11 year old game, we've had far better attempts at more nuanced storytelling around that time. I know the scene developed an infamy with plenty of derision from such a contrived story beat, but while I was ready to see it in a somewhat different light having played through the first and second games for context, there doesn't seem to be much there. Remarkably, that scene falls just as flat just watching it on YouTube out of context vs in-context.
(also shout-outs to how wild it is that this same company would move on to become those Fortnite devs)
Thoughts on the scene? For the people who played it at release, did it have a real impact or was it clunky back then as well?
To be clear, the scene I'm referring to is Dom finding his wife. Turns out she's been captured/tortured for months/years and is now basically dead and Dom has to put her out of her misery by shooting her like a lame horse. Dom concludes the cutscene with "I WANNA KILL THEM ALL" and that's more or less it.
You can see Epic attempting some form of "mature" storytelling, although why they would do that with a series that has been as indulgently juvenile as Gears is beyond me. Feels like the way they go about doing this is equally juvenile. Dom spending the whole game basically a speaker through which "WHERE'S MARIA" comes out of robs him of basically any character he could've had (not that anyone else is much of a character but still). We basically don't know anything about Maria other than "she's Dom's wife", which, like, isn't a character. I've no attachment to this person that I have never seen or interacted. The storytelling is nowhere near strong enough to make me care about Dom's wife THROUGH Dom. I guess Dom's voice actor was decent in the scene, but that alone can't carry the whole plot beat.
Then the death scene happens and it's one of the more blatant cases of Fridge-Wife storytelling.
Despite this being an 11 year old game, we've had far better attempts at more nuanced storytelling around that time. I know the scene developed an infamy with plenty of derision from such a contrived story beat, but while I was ready to see it in a somewhat different light having played through the first and second games for context, there doesn't seem to be much there. Remarkably, that scene falls just as flat just watching it on YouTube out of context vs in-context.
(also shout-outs to how wild it is that this same company would move on to become those Fortnite devs)
Thoughts on the scene? For the people who played it at release, did it have a real impact or was it clunky back then as well?
