It’s ironic OP here claims other people haven’t played the games, because their own examples read like a 5-minute skim of a Wikipedia page. So I'll break it down in the sin of a long post for this poser:
I do not doubt this clown plays games. Anyone can show an "achievement" score screenshot from someone's profile, but that only shows someone played the games, not that they are a fan or a gamer in reality.
Anyone who actually knows Gears lore understands that Anya and Myrrah aren't just 'important women' dropped in for representation. Anya’s story is rooted in the dark, authoritarian horror of the COG forcing women into breeding farms before things got so desperate in Gears 3 that she had to pick up a rifle. In fact, with E-Day showing that women hold positions of power in most ranks and politics, it shows this isn't a patriarchy but a sexist display of an incompetent matriarchal dystopia. It reads as rather sexist, giving a message that women SHOULDN'T, despite Chairmen like Prescott and Dalyell being male, hold political power or make decisions of leadership. They made the calls before, during, and after E-Day, including the breeding programs mentioned in Gears 3. The Coalition didn’t think that through and don’t know thier own lore.
I’m not even a hardcore fan, but I literally own the first three 360 steelbooks since their launch dates and have played through the first three games—and even I know this argument is total nonsense. My familiarity with the lore is sketchy, but even I know Myrrah is essentially the Hitler of the Gears universe. She is a genocidal dictator who tried to wipe humanity off the face of the earth. Using a literal monster to defend modern corporate writing choices proves you either have no idea what you're talking about or you're being disingenuous because you know the Fandom and lore disprove your feelings. You don't get to lecture people about 'not playing the games' and shame them as not gamers when your own examples are this clueless or disingenuous.
In fact, it not only shows you know calling them sexist, racist, and every ism in the book doesn’t work, but reveals your own projection and outs you as a poser and a clown. Let's break down the lore, shall we?
I don’t claim to be a fan despite playing the games. Still, if you actually knew the fandom, or paid attention to the story as I did, you’d know players have loved gritty, well-written female Gears like Bernie Mataki and Sam Byrne in Gears 3; but The Coalition’s handling of them in 4 and 5 quickly soured that. Mags, however, is a perfect example of why real-world militaries have standards. Her asthma—I'm sorry, "Rustlung"—and trauma put her squad and the mission in danger when they had to sidetrack to go get her inhaler at her apartment in the middle of an invasion. There are scenes of this everywhere, so you don't have to play the game to know. Yes, I know Rustlung was in Gears 2, but let's call a spade a spade here: she is a half-blind, asthmatic, traumatized woman of color corpo checkmark since Gears 4.
As a Combat Veteran, Mags could be a hottie or male. It still pisses me off because I met some real shitbags in my time in the service who got squadmates killed and put people's lives and missions in jeopardy that fit Mags to a T. The fact that she’s a supposed decorated war hero doesn’t fill me with sympathy or respect, but as a disabled veteran, it infuriates me, as any seasoned vet worth thier salt would know they are a liability unfit for duty and, at the very least, not combat fit for the frontlines if they had her physical and mental state. Depicting Mags Carter as a decorated war hero forcing Bravo Squad to sidetrack to her apartment for an inhaler mid-invasion flies in the face of basic unit cohesion. Again, you can say it wasn’t her choice and the COG leadership ordered her to serve. That only goes back to what I said about the leadership from the writer's own vision and values. And yes, there are incompetent leaders, but COG's leadership on E-Day makes those leaders extremely lucid by comparison. Mags is no exception. Mags isn't original; she's just a clone of Kait: a female "boss ass bitch" who never truly earned her place, where the writers did a sexism to avoid sexism, just as they did in 4 and 5, literally destroying the fandom. The writers chose to build artificial drama at the expense of basic military logic, and the structural cracks in the storytelling show exactly why real fans are checking out. This explains why they were fired before launch. I don’t blame the leadership for that call. It makes logical sense here.
If you want to grandstand, then you have to admit E-Day is the most Sexist and Ableist Story, pandering to politics over gameplay features and explaining why the story is so bad the Devs fear layoffs. Even removing the LGBT tag for “PVP” amid the backlash silently admits they know the game is horrible and why XBOX put it on Game Pass. But since Microsoft's acquisition and the Coalition's handling, real gamers and the dwindling fan base aren't surprised. Real fans aren't mad about women being in Gears; they are mad that modern writers—writers who got fired right before launch—are replacing battle-hardened, bleak military storytelling with corporate checklists.
What makes it worse is that everything I said is easy to find on the wikis. The OP's remarks a bad cherry-picking because he doesn't mention Bernie and Sam as I did, because he actually knows his take is bad. You don't need a culture-war content creator or to play the game to see how bad this is, when regular people are actively trying to refund it because the quality is so poor. Even watching the cutscenes on YouTube, or watching streamers like burntpeanut play and roast it, mainstream creators like MoistCr1TiKaL expressed disappointment that the game was released feature-incomplete, without basic features like ranked mode. This saves you 80 bucks and time better spent on quality games from devs who respect you enough not to do a bait-and-switch, Matt Searcy boldly stated in 2024. These Devs and games deserve your time and money, and real gamers know it and choose them.
It’s ok to like the Game. But let's not pretend this isn't a crashout because Gamers and Fans rejected it. After all, the Coalition's "values"—as they have admitted in 2024—favor Kotaku Journalists and political reimagining over what made the Game a Great IP beloved by Fans and Gamers.
No doubt someone or the OP is going to say TLDR, or claim Im crashing out or do a “Nuh-uh, you're wrong, bro” corpo shill meltdown response. But I said my peace, and the facts speak for themselves here. Besides I got more important things to do than act suprised over something that was plainly obvious for a near decade.
I’ll leave this screenshot here incase the clown blocks me or deletes it. I'm done with this poser.
The internet is forever🎤🖐️