Even before Gears of War: E-Day launched, there were some corners of the internet where the usual suspects were waging a culture war against the shooter over its inclusion of women. But if they’ve actually played these games, they know that women have been a part of Gears since the start.
Not long after the release of E-Day earlier this month, certain individuals who routinely flood the web with angry videos and posts began targeting the cover shooter for two main reasons. For one, it included, in their words, a “girlboss” in the form of a tough female commander who gives orders during many missions. Secondly, many of these people also began spreading around the lie that Mags, a gay black woman in your squad, was actually the main character of the game, not Marcus or Dom. These chuds suggested that Gears of War: E-Day had been developed for a “modern audience.”
However, as many on the Gears of War subreddit have been pointing out over and over again, if you actually played the past games and didn’t just complain about things online, you’d know that women have been a key part of Gears of War since the very first game released back on Xbox 360.
The most obvious example is, of course, Anya Stroud, who serves as the voice in your ear in the first two games before eventually grabbing a lancer of her own, putting on some armor, and fighting on the front lines in Gears of War 3. She was a key player over the course of the trilogy and, in expanded lore, was a very important Gears character.
Also introduced in the original game and expanded upon in the rest of the trilogy is Queen Myrrah, a human woman seemingly in charge of the Locust horde. The Queen also has a connection to Kait Diaz and her mother, two more women who play key roles in the later Gears games.
In Gears of War 3, as mentioned, Anya becomes a frontline soldier like her mom. But there are other women fighting the Locust in Gears of War 3. There’s the tough-as-nails Bernie, who helps Marcus and the rest of his buds hold a key fort in the later part of the game. There’s also Samantha “Sam” Byrne, who fights alongside Cole and Baird throughout most of Gears of War 3 and is seen still kicking ass in Gears of War 4. Let’s also not forget Alicia, a member of Zeta-Six who died at the hands of General RAAM, as seen in a Gears 3 DLC storyline. Also, shout-out to Dr. Mikayla Dorn in Gears Tactics, as well as the women COG soldiers you can recruit in that game. Oh, and I can’t forget Sofia Hendrick, a female member of the COG’s elite Onyx Guard who is a playable character in Gears of War: Judgment.
And that’s just some of the women who have appeared in Gears of War over the last 20 years. I’ve left out many because, frankly, it would take far too many words to list every single woman who has appeared in Gears. Heck, in Gears 2 there’s an unnamed woman COG soldier fighting alongside the infantry as a field medic. So you can’t argue that women didn’t fight side-by-side with the men until Gears 3. Plus, Judgment and that Gears 3 DLC I mentioned are both set before or during the events of the original game, further establishing on-screen that women have long been a part of the COG military.
To be clear, Gears hasn’t handled its women characters perfectly over the years. For example, yes, Anya was often just a battlefield secretary in the early games. That doesn’t change the fact that, for as long as Gears of War has been around, it has featured women, including women of color. So anybody who complains about it is either ignorant of the franchise’s past or is just trying to game current social media trends that reward engagement of any kind. In other words, you can ignore the chuds making up bullshit on Twitter and YouTube.
