History TearJerker / GearsOfWar

* Whats the first thing JD does once he gets home? [[spoiler: Visit his mother Anya's grave. Apparently her tomorrow was just a bit shorter.]]

* Whats the first thing JD does once he gets home? [[spoiler: Visit his mother Anya's grave. Apparently her tomorrow was shorter then Marcus.]]

* Whats the first thing JD does once he gets home? [[spoilers: Visit his mother Anya's grave. Apparently her tomorrow was shorter then Marcus.]]

** [[spoiler: The Stranded themselves qualify, given that most of Char was devastated by Hammer Of Dawn strikes and many people were killed and turned to ash, it's hard to blame them for hating the COG. Griffin is a pretty tragic figure as well, many of the people killed in the strikes were his employees, whom he considered family, and then having the remainder of his people die after being attacked by Myrrah's army(indirectly caused by the main characters), leaving him as the lone survivor in a desolate and decrepit city makes his harsh rant to Marcus a bit more understandable]]

* [[spoiler: The biggest one of them all in ''3'' goes to [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOjtv044sA4 Dom's death]], possibly for the entire series as well. He rams a junker into a tank full of Imulsion, parked at a "gas" station uner a leaking Imulsion pipeline, just so Marcus and the others can escape. And just when you think you can hold it in as he sacrifices himself, Gary Jules' DarkReprise of ''Mad World'' by TearsForFears, which is practically the series' theme song, begins to play. The one character that people never expected to die, actually did. Not to mention the people that grew attached to him after spending all those times in ''Gears 1 and 2'' co-op were affected as well.]]

* Afterward, when Griffin talks too much shit about the COG, Marcus for the very first time in three games, ''[[CrowningMomentOfAwesome totally loses his shit]]'' [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome at him]] and starts yelling at him about how [[spoiler: Dom was his brother]] [[ShutUpHannibal and he doesn't care about Griffin or the asshole, ungrateful Stranded who've been belittling the Gears for the last few chapters]]. Considering that Marcus has at most shown annoyance or constrained anger at problems before, to see him totally flip out over [[spoiler: Dom's death]] is heartbreaking.

* ''GearsOfWar 2''. Ever since the war started, Dom has been trying to find his missing wife, Maria. He doesn't get anywhere in the first game, but it's a major plot thread in the second. [[spoiler: Dom finally finds Maria, and at first she seems exactly how he remembered. But, as he embraces her she starts to slip out of his hands, Marcus tells him to look again, and it's revealed he was hallucinating. Instead of being his beautiful wife, Maria is now an emaciated, brain-dead shell, reduced to nothing after months of torture. Dom tries to talk her out of it until he realizes the only moral thing he can do is euthanize her himself.]] Quite possibly the single most powerful, painful, and gut-wrenchingly horrifying moment this troper's ever seen in a video game. After it was over, I had to put down the controller and just cry for a few minutes.

** [[spoiler: Tai's death]] was also a heartwrencher, especially since everyone thought [[spoiler: he]] was pretty much [[spoiler: unkillable]], and of course, ''how'' it ends.
*** This troper agrees. Watching a badass that was second only to Marcus in terms of general badassery [[spoiler: blow his brains out with a shotgun]]...it just made me want to personally gut every Locust he found with his chainsaw.

** This troper actually had to put down the controller and stop playing for a bit because he was feeling so depressed after that scene.
** I was able to resist the urge to cry during that scene. [[ManlyTears Then I saw the look on Marcus's face.]]

** The entire sequence at the Thrashball stadium.
*** Hell all of Cole's lines in 3 were really sad; each whooo, and quip is laboured and forced. He's putting it all on for everybody else's sake, a top notch performance from Lester Speight.
*** True for Hanover at least. After leaving, he seemed to get back to his old self again.
**** This troper wondered how much of it was for show. He certainly played it up for his fans, but while things like the cutout in the supermarket certainly left him shaken, the pure ''joy'' during such dark times that the Stranded receive him with, not to mention the sight of his statue ''still intact'' at the Stadium, reassures him that legacies survive when ways of life do not.

-->'''Dom''': "Marcus! I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do, man! I...."
-->'''Marcus''': "Dom.''(whispers)'' Its okay."

* The entire chapter spent in [[MeaningfulName Char]]. The absolute devestation wrought by the [[KillSat Hammer of Dawn]] is a powerful sight. The real kicker, though, is the citizens, reduced to statues of ash and frozen in place, all trying and failing to flee from the destruction.

* The entire chapter spent in [[MeaningfulName Char]]. The absolute devestation wrought by the [[KillSat Hammer of Dawn]] is a powferul sight. The real kicker, though, is the citizens, reduced to statues of ash and frozen in place, all trying and failing to flee from the destruction.

* [[spoiler: The biggest one of them all in ''3'' goes to Dom's death, possibly for the entire series as well. He rams a junker into a tank full of Imulsion, parked at a "gas" station uner a leaking Imulsion pipeline, just so Marcus and the others can escape. And just when you think you can hold it in as he sacrifices himself, Gary Jules' DarkReprise of ''Mad World'' by TearsForFears, which is practically the series' theme song, begins to play. The one character that people never expected to die, actually did. Not to mention the people that grew attached to him after spending all those times in ''Gears 1 and 2'' co-op were affected as well.]]

*** He was [[spoiler:disemboweled and nearly ''torn in half'' by the Riftworm's...immune system. That may actually have been more of a fight than his brother, who was abruptly [[BoomHeadshot sniped]] from about a hundred feet away.]]

* [[spoiler: The biggest one of them all in ''3'' goes to Dom's death, possibly for the entire series as well. He rams a junker into some explosives situated beneath a gas barge just so Marcus and the others can escape. And just when you think you can hold it in as he sacrifices himself, Gary Jules' DarkReprise of ''Mad World'' by TearsForFears, which is practically the series' theme song, begins to play. The one character that people never expected to die, actually did. Not to mention the people that grew attached to him after spending all those times in ''Gears 1 and 2'' co-op were affected as well.]]

* "You ever think maybe you were dead, and nobody told you?" One line is all one needs to understand the distance that separates the Augustus Cole of the present from the Cole Train he was at the start of the war. ''GearsOfWar'' is really a game that is best at being quite subtle about the pain its characters endure, and that line sums up everything about Cole so succinctly. A collectible you pick up also reveals that Cole lost his family on E-Day and that he joined the army six days later.

** TheRookie in Gears of War 2, Ben [[spoiler: Carmine]]. What else to say? The guy lost [[spoiler: his brother Anthony]] in the first game, gets drafted into the the same squad and exhibits the same impulsive combat behaviour, which greatly concerns Marcus and Dom who still have [[IdiotHero IdiotHero]] [[spoiler: Anthony]]'s death fresh in memory. Ben stays upbeat along the way, tries to be heroic and live up to the standards of his teammates while Marcus and Dom, familiar with the grim reality of the war, realize things aren't going to end well this time around either. [[DownerEnding They're right.]]

* ''GearsOfWar 2''. Ever since the war started, Dom has been trying to find his missing wife, Maria. He doesn't get anywhere in the first game, but it's a major plot thread in the second. [[spoiler: Dom finally finds Maria, and at first she seems exactly how he remembered. But, as he embraces her she starts to slip out of his hands, and it's revealed he was hallucinating. Instead of being his beautiful wife, Maria is now an emaciated, brain-dead shell, reduced to nothing after months of torture. Dom tries to talk her out of it until he realized the only moral thing he can do is euthanize her himself.]] Quite possibly the single most powerful, painful, and gut-wrenchingly horrifying moments this troper's ever seen in a video game. After it was over, I had to put down the controller and just cry for a few minutes.
** Possibly making it even worse: as Marcus walks away, for just a moment, you can see a flicker of sadness and grief on a face that has before shown nothing but varying degrees of blunt stocism and quiet rage. If someone as impossibly stone-cold as Marcus Fenix can show grief....

-->'''Marcus''': "Dom.''(whispers)'' Its ''okay''."