Been playing Gears 5 since 6pm yesterday (when it went live on the West Coast). Played about an hour of the campaign and love it. It's one of the most gorgeous games out there right now. Looks slick. Feels good too. Now as far as Horde Mode goes....really haven't been able to do much with it. The problem is that everyone is playing Gears right now and it's destroying the servers, kicking people out of their sessions left and right. Horde is about surviving all 50 Waves to declare victory. As of today, I have yet to advance beyond Wave 15 before getting kicked. Played 5 Public Horde Session and in every case, everyone gets the boot.

And now, Xbox itself is down. No one can sign in. So, I can't even play Campaign while the Gears team fixes their Servers. Now I have to deal with Xbox as well? This is bullsh*t.

SPOILER ALERT: Read with caution if you proceed further

So, I just finished Gears 5 and overall I really enjoyed the game. Visually is the best looking Gears yet. But I'm not gonna talk about the technically aspect of the game but more on the story....or more specifically a KEY element near the end and that's when we, as the player are asked to choose who to save: Del or JD. Now when I made the choice (to save Del), I had it in my mind, in that moment that Reyna was just going to kidnap JD and that would be our final mission: To Rescue and save JD.

Nope.

It's literally a Sophia's Choice. You choose one, the other perishes and it was truly, utterly shocking to see JD's neck getting snapped. I was totally caught off guard and immediately started regretting, overthinking if I had made the right choice. I didn't think this choice would have such a profound impact on the rest of the game. But then my analytical mind kicked in and I began to think long term for the franchise. We all know that this is the 2nd installment in the latest Gears Trilogy. We know a 3rd one will come out.

So. How does The Coalition (Game Studio) account for this? Think about it. I chose to save Del for my playthrough and immediately began to think as a writer for the 3rd part. Either Del dies at the end as well to take out the equation of either Del or JD showing up in the 3rd installment and thus freeing up the writers need to get around what the player ultimately chooses. So, Del makes it to the end. JD is gone. So here is the dilemma. What about those players that chose to save JD instead? You see where there is a huge plot hole now?

Gears 6 rolls around and Del (or JD) is now back in the game, in spite of whatever choice the player made in Gears 5. I have no f*cking idea how the Coalition gets around this massive plot hole.

For the sake of knowing everything, I went back and chose to save JD after the fact just to see what happens. Like if I chose to save JD instead, Reyna would still kill him. Choosing to save JD ends with Del getting his neck snapped and the following cut scene shows JD crying at the lost of Del as Del did for JD when he went down. So yeah....I'm baffled how they are going to get around this in Gears 6.