Finished the game earlier today. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot. This is indeed, probably Epics best, most polished game they've ever made. Gears 3 is indeed "we get it right this time." I don't even know where to start.
In general, I felt that there was a reduction in "setpieces" from Gears 2 and that helped the game a lot. I know it's nice to see explosions and shit everywhere, but in Gears 2 it felt very excessive in order to justify the grander scale of it all. Which is great, but this felt more refined. The encounters so much more refined. Refined is the word of the day.
I cared more for the characters this time around. I think the facial animation has a lot to do with it, I was fairly impressed with it overall. The scenes where Adam Fenix died and Dom died really provoked the emotion and made me go "Damn." Dom died so early it felt, and that felt real to me, they didn't save it for some massive blowout of events at the end of the game to give you some sensory overload.
The entire first act was perfect. Multiple perspectives on what the world has now become, the mental weakening of the characters, Dom and Cole specifically, really set the stage. Everything is established very well, from the new threat to the state of the Locust. You get acquainted with the new characters, Sam and Jace, pretty quickly. It also made me realize how much I liked Baird. Epic definitely stepped up the quality of the dialogue this time around and it was apparent as soon as you heard Baird speak for the first time in Act 1. The bit where he tells Sam he really doesn't like her as they're about to slide off was hilarious.
I liked the part where Prescott died. He always seemed like a prick and the game played up on that well, bringing some good closure to Prescott's role as a character throughout the three games. He was not underdeveloped, nor overdeveloped as a character, and I like that. The Anvil Gate standoff was fucking sublime. Possibly the most intense moment in the entire campaign. I was completely immersed in it the entire time, despite how it was just an obviously three-tiered barrage of Locust, I honestly gave it my all and felt like I was fighting for survival with that last gate, scrounging for ammo while rolling away from Grinders as my co-op buddy softened them up as much as he could in the previous gate with the turret. The Lambent Zerker was also a really good boss. It was like playing Snake in 3D with guns. Probably my favourite boss in the series by far (RAAM might edge him out just cause RAAM is motherfucking RAAM).
The intro to Act IV with the Ashes To Ashes chapter was great. They pulled off the mood mastefully, with the Han-Solo'd-bodies of humans and all. Griffin was great. I loved Ice-T's voice acting and how he helped make the character this awesome post-apocalyptic bawse of bawses. What I did not like was how he teased his revenge on Marcus. Never came. I don't give a fuck if it's obvious DLC, it's a cocktease and a dead end branch of the plot. Minus points.
Imulsion as the flood a parasite was something that went in line with my predictions ever since it's mention in Gears 1. It made sense and kept me listening, but at this point, there was very little of the game left and I was kind of begging for answers at this point. A big one and a small one..
Why does the Queen look like a human? They questioned it in Gears 2 and then never again.. why was there no follow-up to their queries within the game? It's an inconsistency that was glossed over, and if it was intentionally glossed over then that's fucked up because it's a huge sticking point in the game. Is she Marcus' Mom? Is she a defect that spawned the Locust or a sympathizer? Why are the biggest questions that are raised in every person's head (my presumptions confirmed by a hundred people in this thread wondering the same) gone unanswered in the entire story arc? Or is the delivery of that answer so unclear that it went over so many people's heads? These are not things you leave to imagination or to supplementary media like books and comics. In the steroid-induced rage from seeing his father dematerialize in front of him, I kind of expected Marcus to get some answers out of Myyrah before he killed her, but nope, nothing. Stab and move along. Hopefully the data disc he gave Baird has the rest of the plot in it. Overall, I expected a lot more face time with the Queen to elaborate on stuff, but was left drawing blanks.
Remember in Gears 2 when the imulsion from a dead lambent flew up and was absorbed by another Lambent? What happened to that? Why did that never happen again? I thought for sure that'd be a feature of the lambent in Gears 3, fallen enemies somehow contributing to the surviving. Nope. If someone can clarify, feel free to do so because I've got nothing.
The ending outside of the quibble with the Queen was masterfully done though. The beach, the fragment of soldiers surviving, the line about not wasting time on war from Adam Fenix, Anya's "tomorrow" line, everything. Kudos to the people who orchestrated that.
I feel like Gears as a franchise has potential. If any of my questions are going unanswered because they are answered in books/comics/etc, I think that's a flaw in the handling of the lore from within the games. If the game I buy does not give me the complete story, I'm not sure why I bought an incomplete narrative. Halo is guilty to that too, but the games hold up independently quite well. The Gears aesthetic, the absolutely GORGEOUS architecture, and the top-of-the-class weapon aesthetic design all have the makings of a cohesive universe, it just doesn't feel quite there because they choose to make a lot of it much more mysterious than I'm comfortable with.
It may sound harsh, and Cliffy has already got quite upset over even the presence of criticism in this thread already, but those things are very small drawbacks to this game I enjoyed a lot. After Gears 2, I pretty much swore off this franchise between it's shit multiplayer and the difficult to replay campaign but Gears 3 has made me a believer again ever since the beta. It's also one of the best looking games on any platform, period. Cheers to Epic for this monumental game, which I hope will set standards for content and production values for games in the future. Really confirmed my beliefs that Epic is one of the few leading devs this generation, alongside Valve, Bungie and a few elite others.
tl;dr: (10-whydoesthequeenlookhuman)/10, 3 > 2 > 1.
