Hello. This is another poem for your viewing pleasures. (For all 2-3 of you that actually read this, for the rest of you, there are no boobs here, move along.) I again wrote this one, and again, I wrote it at night and I really like it. I wrote it a few weeks ago. I wonder what meanings the lot of you can perhaps find. By the way, every word used was used deliberately, there are no mistakes on my part. Everything was used as intended. Make of it what you will.
Hello. For this post, I've decided to share with all of you, (the internet) a poem that I myself wrote. I never really intended for this poem to be read by others but then I figured why not? Keep in mind that I wrote this a 0100 hours (that's 1 a.m. for all of you time-noobs) and I wrote it in about 20-30 minutes and have left it unedited for my own artistic and personal reasons. SO WITHOUT further ado, here it is.
Origination
By Joseph Lee the Giorgi
When an apple falls from a tree, it does not remember which tree, only that it fell, and many apples will argue why.
Some will say that it was a great and sudden boom with a loud thud of great and mysterious thunder that caused the fall.
Some will say that it is the caterpillar's fault.
Some will say that the tree was angry and cast them aside.
But the apples can not find out which tree that they came from. They know only where they are sitting, but not which tree they came from, and so they will argue more.
Some will say that the apples came from multiple trees.
Some will say that all apples come from one tree and that the other trees are really pear trees and should be ignored or destroyed for the sake of the great apple tree.
Yet still, many apples will begin to say that there is no tree and never was,
and so the apples will always argue why they fell, when they fell, and from which tree they fell.
Because of this, there are many different kinds of apples.
And the apples will argue and bicker and fight eachother, because their tree is better than everyone else's tree.
This will continue happening until a hungry animal comes along and eats them all because they were too busy being Dumbasses "apples."
If you've watched any films or video games as of late, you've undoubtedly witnessed super-bright, horizontal light. This is something called lens flare. To quote Wikipedia: "Lens flareis the light scattered in lens systems through generally unwanted image formation mechanisms, such as internal reflection and scattering from material inhomogeneities in the lens." If this didn't make sense to you, it basically means that lens flare is unintentional light that is warped/scattered/hazed due to a camera or lens.
It looks something like this typically in films/games.
Now camera technology generally overcame this sort of dilemma around the 1980s-1990s because we as people generally like to see what we're filming/photographing. We also don't naturally see lens flare like this, in fact, stop reading this and go stare at your nearest light fixture. (If you're wearing glasses, take them off.) If you've become blind, we recommend you stop reading this. If you didn't become blind, you'll have noticed that you don't see lens flare like that in real life, unless you perhaps wear glasses like I do, but it still doesn't look like that, but according to hollywood and big game developers, it does. It should be noted that all of this new, hip lens flare is digitally or purposefully added. One (us) might ask why.
Now J.J. Abrams is considered the king of lens flare for the two Star Trek films that he directed which are rather notorious for their ridiculous overuse of lens flare. Since then, numerous other films and video games have followed suit, primarily from the sci-fi genre, because apparently in the future all lights will be super-bright and always on, even in broad daylight. It has become quite a trope.
Now I know why these guys wear all those damn sunglasses all the time.
Now films and games have gone way overboard with this bloody lens flare (in my opinion at least). For example, the beginning of the destruction porn film Man of Steel was FULL of lens flare. I actually couldn't tell what was happening onscreen and I felt as if though I needed some sunglasses, and I'm sure I will if I even feel like going to see Michael Bay's lens flare/hot chicks/unrealistically huge explosions movie (this time with a small cameo by the teenage ninja mutant turtles) just after seeing the trailer.
I'm not saying that a bit of lens flare here or there is necessarily bad, but you can't expect me to believe that every single potential source of light in a film is going to blind the camera with lens flare, that's just ridiculous! It makes even less sense in video games, especially First Person Shooters, because more often than not, the player's character's face isn't a damn camera, nor is he/she viewing the environment through a camera. As stated earlier, you can't just naturally see the sort of lens flare generated in these movies and games.
That lens flare is in no way realistic, and if it was, those goggles would be TERRIBLE for sneaking.
Now I know that some people will read this and think that I'm just being overly critical and that this lens flare thing isn't a big deal and barely noticeable, but for people like me, it is immediately noticeable and it is very distracting, like subtitles for many people (I personally love subtitles!) It really catches my attention and ruins any sense of immersion in the film, for me it is almost as bad as seeing wires or microphones in the shot. I can only hope that this whole "EVERYTHING MUST HAVE LENS FLARE AT ALL TIMES" thing is just a fad, and I really hope it is. Otherwise, we better get ready for a future filled with lens flare.
This article is my attempt to share with the people of the internet one of my favorite shows to watch. It is a show filled with humor, action, glorious music, and more hilarious humor. It is a YouTube show and it is called Doraleous and Associates. It is written and animated by a talented group of individuals that is also responsible for the infamous YouTube series Battlefield Friends. (You can watch the first episode of this adventure below.)
Doraleous and Associates follows the fantasy adventures of a warrior called Doraleous and his rather quirky associates as they attempt to solve problems and save the day. The show started a few years ago but lost traction as it wasn't acquiring enough views to be profitable enough to keep creating. In light of these circumstances, fan support was overwhelming and a Kickstarter campaign (Kickstarter is a website where someone can acquire funding for a project through private individuals on the internet, it's worth checking out.) Anyway, through this campaign, the creators, known as Hank&Jed Motion Pictures, were able to raise enough money to fund a series of episodes to continue this awesome series.
The first episode of this new season just came out a few days ago and it was entirely worth the wait in my opinion. I'd recommend watching it after watching pretty much every other episode in the series for maximum enjoyment. This post is only to share something that I enjoy very much and would like to share with the people of the internet. I've posted the newest episode (as of this moment) in video form below. If you enjoyed their videos, you should give them a like and subscribe. I know this was a shorter post but there isn't much else to say on this matter, but I hope we've improved your day a bit today.
We've all probably experienced a beloved character dying before: Obi-Wan at the hands of Darth Vader in Star Wars, Mufasa in The Lion King, Wash's untimely demise in Serenity, the red shirts at the hands of pretty much everything in Star Trek, the many enjoyable characters of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, and Sean Bean in almost every film he's ever been in.
Some of these characters were well built up and their deaths meaningful to the fellow characters and the audiences who have watched their films, time and time again. This practice can also be found in many video games, but there are a few video game character deaths that made absolutely no sense within the context of the games. In this article, we'll be taking a look at five video game character deaths that just failed to make sense. Just in case you, the dear reader, are an idiot didn't see the MASSIVE SPOILERS warning at the top of this article, this is your final warning: there will be spoilers. It is inherent to the nature of this article, so you've been threatened warned.
1) Kat
The first character on this list is Kat a.k.a. Noble 2 from the Xbox360 video game Halo: Reach. Kat is a genetically-enhanced super-soldier, a brilliant military strategist, remarkably good at making babies hacking computers, but terrible at making sandwiches driving (don't let her get in the driver's seat EVER).
In fairness to Kat, the UNSC marines surrounding her aren't much better at driving... or anything, really.
Kat is the spartan that players probably spend the most time with, and typically end up liking the least. Putting questionably annoying features of her character aside, she is still a fictional walking tank made of bad-ass. Beyond her genetically enhanced body (notice she's taller than all of those marines in the picture above) she is also wearing a state of the art, half-ton suit of spartan armor with a personal energy-shield generator and a robotic left arm designed for the ultimate hand job to do everything a genetically-enhanced spartan arm can do. Or she can punch through tanks if it's that time of the month. She's also part of an elite team of other spartan badasses (Noble Team), so she's rarely without support.
Over the course of the game, players watch as their team is slowly whittled down to the last man, each character trying to die in a more heroic way than the last one. Noble team is fighting back a massive Covenant (those are the bad guys) invasion of the planet Reach. It's basically outlined at the beginning that everyone is going to die and we, the players, are going to find out.
Right before Kat's death, she's busy having a conversation whilst Noble team evacuates from a building but is shot in the head and dies mid-sentence. Sad music plays and the team recovers her body, but the whole time I was watching this I couldn't help but scream bullshit. To further elaborate, she was in her spartan armor and there was absolutely no reason for her shields not to be working, AT ALL. The gun used to kill her was a Covenant, standard-issue needle rifle. Normally, this weapon takes several shots to even pierce someone's shields. But here, the rifle merely fires one shot (video evidence below).
Why, for any reason, were her shields not working? Did Kat suddenly decide to go green for the environment and power down her shields while not in combat? (They were still running away from a combat situation, mind you.) Or were the developers and writers just being lazy? All evidence points to the latter. Either that, or the rifle had an epiphany and became the most powerful gun in the universe. She couldn't have taken a few shots or a grenade to the face perhaps (hint: an additional part to the level)? It changes the story in no way other than adding plausibility and consistency.
2) Roland
Similar circumstances occur in our next video game character: Roland from Borderlands 2. This suave military commando knows what the ladies like (wait, are we done with Halo yet?) and what the bad guys don't: bullets to the face. It is important to note that this character was also one of four playable characters from the first Borderlands game, so he already has some lead-up. In the first game Roland fought overwhelming amounts of enemies, all armed to the teeth and packing quite a variety of heat. (The game is notorious and lauded for having "bazillions of guns!")
He keeps the biggest gun in his pants.
During the story mode (which is really the only mode) of Borderlands 2, the player must infiltrate and kill someone very important to the game's main antagonist: Handsome Jack. Partway through the fight, the player receives backup in the form of Roland personally showing up to help the player. After the fight, everything seems good. The day is won, the objective is complete, and Roland gets to look forward to sexy times with his girlfriend (also a playable character from the first game) Lilith. Then Handsome Jack literally teleports into the room, kills Roland, and kidnaps Lilith. "Oh my, what a plot twist!" screamed some players, we merely gasped at the levels of bullsh*t inconsistency the developers displayed in this cut-scene. Like our previous entry Kat (she's always getting shown up but at least she has plenty of experience) Roland, who during the fight was shown to have active shields and a full health bar, was shot once in the back. WITH A PISTOL.
Either that's the most powerful gun in the universe or it's just a bullsh*t plot device epic case of Diabolus ex Machina.
Unlike Kat, the player has actually played as Roland, and therefore understands just how powerful Roland is. This would basically be the equivalent of Batman taking precisely one punch to the face from Bane in the Dark Knight Rises and dying instantly. On top of this magically instant-kill pistol nonsense, the game is flooded with a series of specialized respawning stations known as New-U stations. These magical devices respawn players at the cost of some money. Roland was hooked up to these during Borderlands and presumably during Borderlands 2 as the developers make no attempt to tell us otherwise. These stations certainly work during Borderlands 2 as the new characters can use these magical devices to cheat death over and over and over again.
Even if we just blindly accept the premise that Roland isn't hooked up to the New-U stations, the developers couldn't have at least killed him in a way befitting of such a great and powerful character? Like a missile from space to the face, death by giant robot fight, sexing to death, or some sort of noble sacrifice for the greater good? All of these would've made much more sense than that pistol nonsense and would've served to display the unlimited resources and power of the antagonist, and if you're wondering how a massive orgy that inevitably kills Roland would display power on the part of the bad guy, you probably haven't tried to organize an orgy played this game before. The Borderlands series is well-known for its hilarious and otherwise nonsensical humor.
3) Adams
Our next character comes from the gameSpec Ops: The Line. This game was looking to be yet another generic Call of Duty clone but then slapped everyone in the face with its amazing story mode that looked at war and heroism in a light rarely seen in any sort of media. We'd certainly recommend a play-through of this game if you've become tired of run-of-the-mill shooters with terribly generic single-player campaigns. The character that we'll be discussing the death of is none other than Lieutenant Alphonse Adams. (We'll just refer to him as Adams.)
The entire story revolves around a Delta Force team that is sent into a ruined Dubai to scout for survivors from a military force sent to evacuate the city. It soon becomes clear that nothing is what it seems and throughout the story, the player's squad (which includes Adams) must fight and kill US soldiers for several reasons that we shan't spoil. The only real question that bothered us was the undisclosed amount of soldiers sent to Dubai, because your spec ops team kills what feels like several hundred soldiers to get to the ending. The game, after all, has to have gameplay, and what kind of game wouldn't pit the player against seemingly overwhelming odds on an almost continuous basis? The answer is no game, because there wouldn't be any intensity or sense of urgency.
Now to the point. Near the end of the game, the two remaining members of your spec ops team, Adams and the player, shoot their way into the main enemy encampment to reach the game's main villain. After killing what feels like hundred or so guys in less than an hour, our heroes find themselves surrounded by the enemy who is requesting their surrender. At this point, I would like you to guess just how surrounded they were. If you guessed anything over like seven dudes, you've guessed too high. The cutscene in question shows a humvee pull up and roughly five guys hop out (still standing near the humvee) and one helicopter hovering overhead. Now in a realistic setting, one could consider this to be surrounded, but when your main characters stage a two-man assault on the front door of an armed military complex and win, it kind of shatters any sense of belief in the premise that they could ever actually be surrounded, especially after they've just got through killing a bunch of trained military personnel armed to the teeth with grenade launchers, RPGs, LMGs, automatic shotguns, and various other powerful weapons. And it's not like these guns just disappeared either. There was nothing stopping either of our characters from offing the helicopter within a matter of seconds with a nearby grenade launcher/RPG and then tossing like a billion grenades at the humvee. Let us remind you that this is pretty much the exact kind of balls-to-the-wall scenario that the game loves to throw at you on a continuous basis.
If only we had access to something that could solve this situation.
With our characters pausing to tally up their kill counts surrounded , the player's character decides that if they want to get inside the central building, this is the only way because f*ck logic taking on seven guys is suddenly too hard to do. Adams, being the more logical of the two, decides that plan is total bullsh*t, and proceeds to push the player over a wall to safety whilst "going out guns a-blazing." After your character runs away, you discover that Adams killed all of them and dies off-screen. If the player had just stayed and helped instead giving up like a little b*tch, they would both easily have walked away from that scenario alive. Perhaps it could have been more believable if these guys hadn't just killed hundreds of soldiers to get to this point in the game, or if the developers actually added a second helicopter two dozen extra guys to surround them, this scenario would be somewhat believable. This would be the equivalent of Obi-wan being surrounded by like five stormtroopers and dying. If you'd like to see the level and cutscene in question, click this link, if you just want to see the cutscene, just jump ahead to about the 16-minute mark.
4) Dom
The fourth character on our list is Dominic Santiago (Dom) from the Gears of War series. This hardened killing machine serves as the second player throughout the majority of the series and is the secret butt-buddy best friend of the main character Marcus Fenix. These soldiers have been through several hells together and it has scarred their anuses them deeply. Like our last character, Adams, Dom sacrifices himself to save his mates from severely underwhelming odds but this time, not only was his death avoidable, his sacrifice was also pointless.
It can get awfully lonely in the closet underground.
Without spoiling too much, Marcus and Dom find themselves in the aftermath of a war against the Locust army (basically a bunch of worm dudes that live underground and one day wondered just what all this fuss about sun-tans was about and had to invade the surface to escape the lambent, because if you're having some trouble waging a war on one front, the logical thing to do is to start a second war on another front.) and are currently fighting the Lambent pandemic (they're like zombie parasites, only they know how to shoot guns, mutate, and explode when killed.) The main objective of their mission and only means of saving the world is to find a secret military outpost called Azura and help Marcus's father activate a weapon that will simultaneously destroy both the lambent and locust. To do so, they must find a usable submarine and fuel to power said submarine.
To find enough fuel, Dom suggests going to the hometown of his dead wife (whom he killed, but that's an entirely different can of worms.) to acquire fuel. Upon arriving at the town's fuel depot (which is conveniently at the town entrance) they discover that the town has been seemingly abandoned, and then find out that it is full of lambent humans. They reactivate a fuel pump and return to the entrance only to be caught in a massive orgy with Roland three-way firefight with the Locust and Lambent. At some point Dom gets separated from the group and finds the perfect chance to kill himself by driving the giant fuel truck into the fuel depot, subsequently blowing up everyone that isn't a good guy because friendly fire was turned off only the good guys remembered to use the magical chest-high walls that their universe seemingly consists only of. See the cutscene below and on a side note, why would anyone ever toss aside a gun with a built-in chainsaw?
Like the death of Adams from Spec Ops: The Line, Dom dies saving everyone from odds that they should be very used to, this is the third game after all, the main characters have certainly proved that the only thing they can't kill is their feelings toward each other. They killed a giant miles-long worm capable of sinking entire cities in the second game, and earlier in gears of war 3 they've taken on several hundred enemies with pretty much no problem whatsoever. That level was pretty much a shooting gallery for the good guys and there was no reason they couldn't handle the situation or lack thereof.
Just a typical day in the Gears of War universe.
Everyone is sad and they move on to a pointless filler arc a different city to find fuel, but Dom's death was not in vain! Or it wasn't until they reached the shipyard containing a submarine and magically find fuel there. (It is literally a mission objective that you can complete in about 20 minutes.) The game just sort of expects the players to not notice that they spent roughly 40% of the story mode finding something they didn't even need because no one bothered to check if the shipyard contained fuel for the very ships it contains. This only serves to make Dom's death feel less like a noble sacrifice and more like a crappy plot device that the story writers desperately tossed in to make the players cry.
5) Paxton Fettel
The final entry on our list today is Paxton Fettel, the ghost-child of F.E.A.R. series antagonist/psychic ghost child Alma and brother of the game's interestingly unnamed central protagonist Pointman. This unlucky evil bastard has been killed twice, and by his own brother both times! In the F.E.A.R. series, Paxton Fettel is a very powerful psychic person and master of the paranormal. He tried to do a bunch of evil stuff in the first game, came back in a DLC for the second game, and became one of two playable characters in the third game.
The developers decided reusing dead characters was a better design choice than creating new ones.
Throughout the third game, Paxton Fettel demonstrates his ghost abilities and otherwise flaunts his immortality several times. It's pretty clear that he is a ghost and cannot be killed by conventional means, but at the end of the game he and Pointman have a disagreement over who gets the last macguffin bagel in the fridge (we're pretty sure that's what the game was about) and one of two endings can happen: Either Fettel possesses Pointman and kills him, or Pointman whips out a pistol and shoots a motherf**king ghost in the face.
This defies all physics and reality in the game, especially since Pointman tried to kill him at the beginning of this game too, albeit to no avail. We're pretty sure that everyone can agree that the premise of a ghost being killed by a bullet is a complete and utter farce. This essentially the equivalent of stabbing a ghost Yoda with a lightsaber and expecting results. While there were several dozen other problems with this game (which will be addressed in an article later) this is the most pertinent issue. The game specifically goes out of its way to demonstrate Paxton Fettel's immortality and then pretends like that didn't happen. You don't just establish rules and then break them whenever you want, otherwise the entire premise and story begins to unwind and feel pointless. If we throw continuity out the window, then everything is pointless. The actions and plights of our characters become meaningless in this way.
This concludes the article. If you enjoyed it, why not give it a share or a like? If you didn't like it, leave a comment telling us why you agreed or disagreed with any of the information or arguments henceforth presented in this article. If you have ideas for other articles that you'd like us to cover, or perhaps a character or two to tack onto this one, message us or leave a comment. We thank you for perusing this article and blog!
Written and edited by Joey with super duper extra special editing assistance from Alex.
The other day I came upon a teaser trailer for a CGI film based on one of my favorite game franchises: Sly Cooper. This popular series, created by Sucker Punch Productions (You might also know them for the Infamous video game series) saw 3 games on the PlayStation 2 and a 4th game on the PlayStation 3 albeit by a different developer (Sanzaru) which had previously created an HD collection of the original games for PS3, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The series centers around Sly Cooper and associates, a gang of master thieves and their heists and shenanigans. The official trailer is below for anyone who wishes to rise above their ignorant ways who hasn't seen it yet.
Now the trailer has a few things that worry me. Before I start whining like an over-entitled fan-boy addressing my concerns, I would like to assert that I am very excited about this film and the opportunities it presents to the Sly Cooper franchise, video game film adaptations, and gaming culture/industry in general. (More on those potential opportunities later on in the article.)
To start, I'm worried that this film is moving away from the Looney-toons-esque atmosphere and style or rather, forgetting about it. The familiar and nostalgic "BLAM!" that would appear on the screen whenever sly KO'd an enemy as well as the signature sounds effects and stylistic elements that gave this series its unique name in the child-friendly platformer (genre of gaming, other examples include the ever-popular Mario series, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Portal, etc.) scene. I understand that general audiences would probably not be thrilled to see cel-shaded graphics on the silver screen but I'd certainly get a raging boner love to see such interesting visuals on the big screen.
Sly Cooper stole my virginity has always been a very pretty series.
Now I know that many "concerned citizens" are already declaring that this will be a horrible film and a disgrace to the franchise (Just read through the YouTube comments on the trailers if you would like to know more.) due simply to such minor details as pants. The characters in this trilogy have always had a notorious habit of free-balling not wearing pants. I understand that character design change is an inevitable reality when making the jump from one creative mind to another, and the inclusion of pants seems like a minor thing to me. I'm personally more worried about the film rendition of THE Murray (The THE is always necessary) as he looks about as likely to beat his wife as he is to eat a doughnut or THUNDER-FLOP onto enemies.I am more okay with the film iterations of Sly and Bentley though.
Don't rustle Murray's jimmies.
Now for the positives. The fact alone that this film is was even pitched and is currently being made means that Sly Cooper is breaking (stealing?) new ground. Video game films are notorious for not being of arguably sub-par quality. (Never again, Super Mario Bros.) The film industry still looks at the gaming industry as that dorky little brother that you don't try to acknowledge and hide from your friends, but this film easily has the potential to be a step in the right direction for video game films. This film also has the original voice actors for our dynamic anthropomorphic trio, so +1 for consistency!
I am curious to see what Carmelita (Sly's on again/off again Interpol police inspector love interest) will look like. I hope it's better than the rather awkward Sly 4 slutty Carmelita that only wore a sports bra and a miniskirt and sounded like a loud, angry, and obnoxious teenage girl acted completely out of her traditional character.
Maybe we'd know what the fox said if they didn't change her voice actress every game.
Overall, I am cautiously optimistic for this film, and you should be too. The studio making this film is clearly doing their research and paying their respects to the source material (the games). It has a few things that will bother me and probably other long-term fans of the series, but such a thing is inevitable when attempting anything like this. I just ask that each and every one of you approach this with an open mind and heart. I only hope they have music befitting a film of such a musically glorious franchise. What are your thoughts on this film and the series in general? Leave a comment, thanks for reading, and remember to wear pants.
Gears of War. It brings to mind the glorious tales of navigating a world built entirely out of chest-high walls heroism, brotherhood, and the tragedies of wars unsung and uncountable. This Xbox360 series centers around the main protagonist Marcus Fenix and his struggles against the Locust. He is a Pendulum wars hero and is the hero of the human race and their war against the Locust, or so the games would have you believe. Upon closer scrutiny, I've found that the real hero is actually Chairman Prescott.
While a lot of people (fictional or otherwise) will give him grief for his actions, it is these very same actions that allowed humanity to survive. Players are first introduced to this character in Queers Gears of War 2. He leads the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) as the Chairman, which is equivalent to being super-president of the United States. (Cut scene below, it is very much worth watching unless you don't like spoilers)
Prescott is notorious for his decision to initiate the hammer of dawn strikes that covered the world in death.These strikes were initiated to slow the overwhelming invasion forces of the Locust that were threatening to overrun the planet, there were untold millions of civilians that died in these strikes as well. If not for his actions here, the COG would have been overwhelmed and humanity destroyed. Now in the third game the players learn that Adam Fenix (father of Marcus Fenix) was not actually killed by the locust but was instead kidnapped rescued by Prescott's elite (that is still up for debate) Onyx forces and airlifted via helicopter to a secret COG base known (or rather unknown) as Azura.
Azura is a lavish island filled with some of the most beautiful architecture ever seen in Gears of War. Azura is filled with the world's finest citizens (chiefly scientists) and its original purpose was to serve as a doomsday bunker in the Pendulum wars. Now the common misconception is that Prescott himself authorized the building of Azura, but like most of Prescott's problems, this was the result of previous COG administrations. Azura is basically what would happen if the U.S. congress and Russian government tried to build a doomsday bunker, assuming congress actually had money.
TOTALLY doomsday-proof
Now it was noted once or twice in Gears of War 3 that Prescott refused to
stay on Azura during the majority of the war with the Locust because he
needed to be with the people on the mainland... for some reason. I choose to believe he felt guilty about all of his actions, and this was his form of self-punishment.
When the Lambent problem came to light, Prescott forced Adam Fenix (who had decided it was a good idea to not tell humanity about the Locust who were threatening to invade the surface to escape the Lambent) to develop a cure or vaccine for Lambency. When those routes prove ineffective, Adam Fenix decides to build a special counter-weapon that is the size of a building to wipe out the infection. Many characters in the game seem to forget that the personnel, resources, and time had to be provided by someone, and that someone was Prescott. This entire operation was kept a secret from everyone not on Azura because of a little thing that those of us who have any experience with the military know as OPSEC (operational security). If this particular operation were to be compromised, it would kind of mean THE END OF THE WORLD. So I can't sympathize with these characters in Gears of War 3 who seem surprised at all that Azura would be kept secret from pretty much everyone. Their anger is ill-placed and without warrant. Prescott did what was necessary to ensure the survival of our species.
Now the most questionable thing that Prescott ever did was his disappearance between the events of Gears of War 2 and Gears of War 3. The reason given by the games and books was that Prescott was bringing samples of Lambency to Azura to assist in Adam Fenix's research and to oversee the operation during its final stages. One could of course reason that this was to further keep OPSEC in check, albeit it didn't really work because the Locust Queen invaded and overran the island anyway. (What makes the Onyx guard so elite again?)
They didn't even remember to bring the chest-high walls!
In the end, Prescott is the main reason that humanity survived and the main reason Marcus Fenix had armor to soak up bullets, bullets with which to shoot other guys, and chest-high walls with which to prop his firm buttocks against. Despite what many people say, I find Prescott to be my favorite character (other than the Carmine brothers of course) in the Bros Gears of War franchise due to the inherent grey morality of his actions and his willingness to make the tough decisions. After all, someone had to make them, would you have made the same decisions? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading.
By the way, I'd recommend reading the Gears of War novel The Slab
because it elaborates upon several plot points that I find weren't properly
explained in the games or previous novels. I've read it, and it is indeed a damn fine read if you just
so happen to be a fan of Gears of War. (If you've read this far into the
article, you probably are.)
This is the first blog I've ever done. I've never really been one to search around and read them either. As noted in the title "Philosophy Gamer," I play video games, and I enjoy philosophy, and I enjoy mixing the two often. It doesn't take a genius (read: it probably does) to realize that the gaming industry is a very unique industry and that industry is having what some would perceive to be A LOT of shortcomings. I complain about these things all the time, and it was brought to my attention by several unnamed individuals that instead of telling all of them over and over, I should put the expertise that is my writing to use (+1 ego stroked) and talk about the gaming industry (and sometimes other things too... maybe) and share my perceptions with the world. Now I realize that some of you (perhaps many of you) will disagree with my words and my philosophies. This is the internet after all. All I ask is that you respect my opinion and in turn I shall respect yours even if I disagree with it, and perhaps if you make a good argument (even if I disagree with it) I'll share it on here with no changes except perhaps for a retort (or support!) at the bottom of it. Now enough talking about what I'm going to do.
