These Gears Laugh at Monkey Wrenches

Remember that post about Halo and its universe I love so much? I know it's been a while. Here's the short version: Halo is a universe (technically, only a galaxy) that is at once fully formed and left open to conjecture. It's amazing, and will be Bungie's legacy for a long time to come.

There are two similar video game franchises worth mentioning: Gears of War and Call of Duty. I find myself torn between Gears and Halo as my favorite. CoD...will be saved for the end.

I've been reading a Gears novelization, Anvil Gate, and I've been trying to figure out why I like it so much better than any of the Halo books, when I have reciprocal feelings about the games. It's an issue of emphasis.

First though, we need to talk about Gears a bit. Because it'll make me happy, that's why. Gears of War is set on the planet Sera way out wherever it is, in a far-flung future that I don't think is given a number. Fuel and lives are the only resources really worth discussing.

Everyone wants fuel. If only a few have it, then some diplomatic friction can result. The Pendulum War lasts for 79 years. Almost eight decades of continuous fighting and nearly two whole generations who have known nothing but war. The Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) is the main political entity for our purposes. Their soldiers are called Gears. I think that's clever.

The COG...acquired a satellite-based laser technology that shifted the battle in their favor. It's called the Hammer of Dawn which only matters because it's a damn cool name. Even after all that time fighting, humans never got the chance to find peace; Murphy doesn't work that way.

Emergence Day is known around the planet as the day the Locust left their underground homes. Imagine the meanest person you've ever known with the hide of an elephant and the temper of a primed granade--that's a Locust. They attacked everything, everywhere. Twenty-five percent of the human population died in the first day and the uglies handily beat humans at every turn for a full year. We enter the world fourteen years after that.

With Sera in its 94th year of continuous warfare, with ever-diminishing odds of survival (never mind peace), what is it that allows those left to cling to sanity? Gears pokes its head into the psychology of war, suffering, and death. The player is handed the world, but has to figure out the characters.

Halo hands you a character and dares you to figure out where he fits into the galaxy.

I don't know which approach is more compelling, but medium always matters when telling a story. The fifth-grade adage of show-not-tell applies to all things. Showing a world is easier--more intuitive at least--through an interactive, visual medium. Illustrating the insights and nuances of a character is a task better-suited for the written word.

While compelling in any form, Halo found precisely its niche in video games. Gears is not a franchise to be taken lightly, but it shines most brightly with a little help from Karen Traviss and paper.

Call of Duty, excepting the most recent iteration, Black Ops, 'cause I've not played it, is comparatively boring. CoD is exactly what you'd expect from a first-person-shooter. It's fun and visceral and stressful for the sissies like me. It's also pretty predictable. The characters don't matter and could largely be transferred from one iteration to another without much noticeable change.

CoD is a blockbuster that rakes in millions of dollars every year, and may just generate a bit of flame in the comments, but this year's version stops mattering right around the time next year's is announced.

Some creations push a medium forward. Halo did a lot of the legwork. Gears has added some depth. CoD will come out next year, too.