Gears of War is pretty much the flagship franchise of Microsoft, along with Halo of course. It may seem a bit hard to believe, but the first original Gears of war game launched in 2006. That’s over a decade ago already, and its roots are big and strong now in the gaming world.
The Gears of War saga is, and has always been, a more complex series of games than it may look at first sight. Mixing intense and violent combat, amazing scenes, horrible monsters, comedy and emotions in just one package.
Over the last 13 years we’ve seen how the saga evolved, and even with how great most of the games have been, it is fair to say that Gears 5 is one of the best. Now, you’ve seen the title here, you’re looking for it, so let’s get into the dangerous territories of the spoilers
So, who dies in Gears 5…
The first person to die is Lizzie Carmine. The Hammer of Dawn is used to take out a massive Swarm, and while it works at first, it malfunctions causing it to fire haphazardly. The result is that Lizzie Carmine and other civilians are killed. But who else dies in Gears of War 5?
Well, actually it depends. On what, you may ask, right? Well, it depends on who you decide dies actually. Now it’s not like any character in the game may die, but rather you get to choose between two of them. In order to explain this a little bit better, we have to talk about the entire ending of the game, but you’ve already been warned about the major spoilers and agreed to keep on reading, so remember, it was your decision
The ending of the game takes us to a final fight where Fahz, Kait, Del, JD and Marcus Fenix, and the others are working as a team to try and get the Hammer of Dawn back and give one final shot at destroying the Swarm. This is when an odd version of Kait’s mother show up, now known as Queen Reyna, she then moves on to wrap her tentacles around the necks of Del and JD.
You’ve probably guessed it by now, but this is when you must take your decision and choose who are you going to save. Will you save Del’s or JD’s life?
After you choose which character to save, Queen Reyna will immediately snap the other character’s neck and, obviously, killing him. After all of this fight is far from over, since now they all have to fight the Riftworm monster. But near the end of this fight, we get to see another tragic moment, and this time we don’t get to choose.
In order to get the Hammer of Dawn back online, our beloved robot-companion JACK, has to sacrifice itself to destroy the beast. And this is the point where we say goodbye to one of the few characters that had been around since the very first game.
Of course, it doesn’t affect much of the game who you choose to save, only that the reaction of the other characters change depending on whose left alive. Marcus, for instance, has a much stronger reaction to JD’s death than to Del’s. Now this does present some complications for the future of the franchise.
What’s next in the Story?
Allowing the player to choose on the death of any major character presents some serious problems for the future of any franchise, and the Gears of War saga is no different. We now know that the saga is still not over with Gears 5, but rather the opposite.
Let’s say that on your playthrough you decide to save JD, but your friend decides to save Del in their playthrough instead. Then Gears 6 comes out, who’s going to be alive and who’s going to be dead. The Coalition, the game developers, have not announced how they plan to proceed with this, and of course it makes sense, today being the launching date for the general public and all that, they just would not go around spoiling the ending of their game like we are doing right now.
What could happen now
The Coalition could also deal with this by having the public vote. And we’re not talking about some poll on the internet, but rather tracking the choices the players actually take on the game. Counting each individual choice of every user The Coalition can get the most verifiable idea of which character the players would prefer to be canonically saved.
It would pretty much work like the statistics in every Telltale games. But Gears of War also has a precedent of giving the players a say over the death of a character. Remember how in the first Gears of War and in the sequel the Carmine’s were brutally killed off? Well, for the third game in the saga, things were slightly different.
Epic Games launched a campaign to let the players decide if they wanted the third Carmine Brother, Clayton, to be saved. To vote in favor to keep him alive, players would have to buy a t-shirt for the Xbox Avatar. Thanks to this the third brother survived through the game.
Whatever they decide to pull off, one thing’s for certain. The Coalition has to make a decision on how to deal with this. Leaving the open option will be very problematic due to the ramifications it will carry on for the games that may come after Gears 6, that is, of course, if they decide to keep on making more games of the “main series” or just continue the universe with spin-offs and different types of games, which is now popular with some game series
Death Scenes from Gears of War 5
So to recap – who dies in Gears 5? Early in the story Lizzie is killed when the Hammer of Dawn malfunctions. Towards the end of the story, you must choose between JD or Del. It’s one of the other. Later in the story, JACK the drone is killed off too. It’s sad.
