GAMING — Gears of War: E-Day has delivered a remarkable achievement in modern game development, demonstrating that progress is possible even when several parts of your game appear to have gone backwards.
Some players have criticised the apparent absence of environmental destruction and water interactions demonstrated in Gears of War 2. These complaints fundamentally misunderstand what video games are supposed to do now.
Finally, walls that stand for something
A comparison circulating on X has prompted complaints that an older game offered more responsive environmental destruction than its modern successor.
This is an unfair way to assess technological progress. It involves looking at the technology.
The modern bench has much greater emotional resilience. Shoot it, grenade it, unload an entire magazine into it: it remains secure in its identity.
Older benches crumbled under gunfire. We should be celebrating how far benches have come.
“People keep asking for environments that react to the player,” explained an industry spokesperson. “The more important question is whether the player has examined why they expect the environment to react.”
Besides, destructible cover creates an uncomfortable power imbalance between people with explosives and people without explosives.
Indestructible concrete gives everyone a seat at the table, provided the table is also indestructible.
The original developers were uninclusive nerds
The developers of Gears of War 2 approached their work with a narrow and deeply unfashionable obsession: making things happen when players interacted with them.
Presented with a body of water, their first instinct was to calculate how it moved.
Not once did they ask whose voices were being drowned out.
Another post highlights the sort of water effects that Gears of War 2 had, as well as Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney enthusiastically explaining what happened when characters interacted with water bodies.
Sweeney’s excitement serves as a troubling reminder of an era when senior industry figures could publicly express enthusiasm for their own products’ technical capabilities.
Yes, Tim, the water ripples. But does it progress the conversation?
A puddle responding accurately to an explosion is all very impressive until you realise it has contributed absolutely nothing to the discourse.
The old developers spent so much time asking whether they could simulate water that they never stopped to ask whether water had anything meaningful to say.
A diverse and inclusive replacement for things happening
Critics insist that a diverse storyline and sophisticated physics could exist in the same game. This is precisely the sort of unrealistic expectation that makes modern development so difficult.
Every hour spent making a sandbag burst is an hour that could have been spent ensuring the sandbag’s perspective was heard.
Our review therefore awards full marks for a diverse and inclusive storyline, which we have determined to be present using the same rigorous methodology with which we determined that the gameplay deserved full marks.
We were particularly moved by the environmental storytelling. The environment tells the story of a development budget that had other priorities.
A body of water that does nothing invites reflection. A bench that does nothing invites dialogue.
Our Verdict: 11/10
Ultimately, E-Day represents ten steps backwards to make one giant rainbow step for mankind. Some reviewers might deduct a point for each missing feature. We have awarded one instead.
That is how we arrived at 11/10.
The score also represents the number of steps backwards, providing a useful consistency between our verdict and the player experience.
We look forward to the next instalment, in which bullets will stop interacting with enemies altogether, allowing both sides to share their lived experiences without interruption.
