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Darksider wrote:Gah.

What IS it with this bitch and special forces wank?

can anyone name ONE war that's been won by special forces? anybody?

Well, the Confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia/Commonwealth forces were mostly fought by special forces, with regular forces providing the patrols meant to stop them on both sides. But several guys sneaking in to drop a bomb someplace is HARDLY a war by any definition.

One also beggars to wonder what one means by "special" forces. Cause in older times, wars were won by raiders, when you could potentially win a conflict by capturing the leadership.

Peptuck wrote:I want to be shocked, but like a lot of you guys, I gave up on Traviss-dominated EU a while back.

Worse, it looks like she's trying to do the exact same thing with Gears of War. Her GOW novel Aspho Fields pretty much wanks special forces while cutting the COG down to ludicrious levels. According to her, the COG has no ability to replace much of their aircraft or vehicles, and there are no female Gears. Despite the fact that the COG has giant goddamn battle rigs with custom-built drill launchers that could only have been built after E-Day, and we encounter female KR pilots, Centaur drivers, and Gears throughout Gears 2.

It's remarkable how a woman who has repeatedly accused her detractors of being sexist displays an almost cave-man like sexism against her own gender in everything she writes, wanking off to big n' tuff special forces soldiers who's women know their proper place in the kitchen making babies.
Even when this directly contradicts the source material. God damn.

I had no idea the Gears novel had such stupid crap in it (although the LOL 6600 CALORIES thing was funny as hell). I mean, before the first game came out it was easy to read between the lines and understand the state of the war, and saying there aren't many gears or that they can't replace any hardware is clearly absurd - particuarly that non-Delta gears appear to suck absolute ass and are generally shown being utterly schooled.

I've not played Gears so I don't know the specifics, but it seems Traviss follows the same pattern of completely diminishing the military capabilities of the in-universe factions in order to glorify her small band of elite warrior men of absolute triumph and perfection that she has with Star Wars.
This would explain her penchant for minimalism and her rampant defense of it - the whole universe must be subverted into relying on her pet soldiers no matter what.

I mean the Gears backstory has such awesome shit in it - like E-day, swarms of locust attacking the humans, then the utter annihilation of the locust armies foolishly exposed to the laser satellite network (along with all seizable industry), which led to the Gears1 situation where locust only expose themselves when covered by jamming and with the sky inked by nemacyst, where they launch a major operation to capture a train containing giant nuclear torpedoes targetted on one of their strongholds, even as the human and locust leaders play a game on an entirely different level at huge cost to their people and the planet.

No, it's really about special forces. LOL!

Stark wrote:I mean the Gears backstory has such awesome shit in it - like E-day, swarms of locust attacking the humans, then the utter annihilation of the locust armies foolishly exposed to the laser satellite network (along with all seizable industry), which led to the Gears1 situation where locust only expose themselves when covered by jamming and with the sky inked by nemacyst, where they launch a major operation to capture a train containing giant nuclear torpedoes targetted on one of their strongholds, even as the human and locust leaders play a game on an entirely different level at huge cost to their people and the planet.

No, it's really about special forces. LOL!

Which is the irony. This should be prime territory for Travis, given her masturbation of said forces. The universe has made warfare into a vast mini battles with small group tactics because the humans did the logical thing. They raped said large armies with their artillery.

But instead we get her masturbation as the Special Forces ONLY! mindset and so we get something that had potential thrown straight into the shitter. Personally she should've been given the Halo books . I can only imagine the wank she would've done above and beyond for MC. His penis would've been a tree chopper.

Stark wrote:I had no idea the Gears novel had such stupid crap in it (although the LOL 6600 CALORIES thing was funny as hell). I mean, before the first game came out it was easy to read between the lines and understand the state of the war, and saying there aren't many gears or that they can't replace any hardware is clearly absurd - particuarly that non-Delta gears appear to suck absolute ass and are generally shown being utterly schooled.

There's only one real saving grace in the novel, and that is that she does a great job characterizing the various Gears and manages to somehow make Hoffman an actually cool, likable old bastard. There's some really brilliant stuff about Marcus and Cole and even Baird in there.

It just falls flat in every other possible regard. Oh, and btw, the COG is still stuck in WWI mode with military emphasis on infantry, armor, and artillery. The COG navy and air force are stuck purely on fire-support role. The idea of air-mobile military units or amphibious invasions is nonexistent.

This is, of course, only there so that when Hoffman develops his HOLY SHIT SPECIAL FORCES AMPHIBIOUS COMMANDO RAID RAWK LOBSTER later on, its all LOOK WE'RE INNOVATIVE AND YOU PEOPLE ARE STUPID FOR NOT USING SPECIAL FORCES. And then multiple people go off on spiels about SPECIAL FORCES WILL REPLACE ALL CONVENTIONAL ARMIES LOOK AT MY COMMANDO ERECTION WOOT

Oh, and Traviss beats the idea that "weapons developers = THA DEBIL" into the bedrock.

There's barely any exploration into the Locust except to do shit that makes them even more evil (e.g. Locust have to reproduce via rape) and the Locust engage in a super ultra elaborate mega Xanatos battle plan whose primary objective is to....kill two or three Gears.

Really. The Locust more or less ignore the ultra-vital strategic and vulnerable food supply convoy - whose loss will result in Jacinto probably starving to death in a few months - to focus on killing a half-dozen grunts.

I wish I was making this shit up.

Darth Onasi wrote:

Peptuck wrote:I want to be shocked, but like a lot of you guys, I gave up on Traviss-dominated EU a while back.

Worse, it looks like she's trying to do the exact same thing with Gears of War. Her GOW novel Aspho Fields pretty much wanks special forces while cutting the COG down to ludicrious levels. According to her, the COG has no ability to replace much of their aircraft or vehicles, and there are no female Gears. Despite the fact that the COG has giant goddamn battle rigs with custom-built drill launchers that could only have been built after E-Day, and we encounter female KR pilots, Centaur drivers, and Gears throughout Gears 2.

It's remarkable how a woman who has repeatedly accused her detractors of being sexist displays an almost cave-man like sexism against her own gender in everything she writes, wanking off to big n' tuff special forces soldiers who's women know their proper place in the kitchen making babies.

The sad part? That is exactly what is happening in the fucking book. Women are pretty much nothing but breeding stock in the COG according to Aspho Fields. Anya is actually remarked on as the only of-age woman during the post E-Day stuff (aside from Bernie Mataki, who is too old to bear kids) who isn't pregnant or raising children.

What makes that actually disturbing is that in Gears women are largely shown in positions of power. The queen is a mother to her whole species and the centre of their religion. Anya is the literal Voice of Control, steering the burly but poorly-informed men on their path to universal salvation, and a loss of contact always leads to chaos and death and purgatory. Thematically they have HEAPS of power, but Travis is clearly writing Gears-themed post-apoc fanfic.

Is it too much to hope for that the Gears fandom backlashes on her for so perverting the spirit of their franchise as well?







...yes, I'm sure it is, but a man can hope, right?

And I thought the little super-goblin creatures from the Zahn books who could smell members of the Skywalker family were pure wank.

I'm pretty much treating the book like any other piece of Traviss trash: it never happened in my vision of Gears.

Which is sad, because the actual character development of the established characters and the original characters - particularly Carlos Santiago and Bernie Mataki - are decently done. But everything else is complete Traviss wanktastic shit-stupid.

Honestly, I want to see Traviss' reaction once the Gears fandom starts to really catch a whiff of the idiocy in the book.

Generally game developers enjoy completely contradicting books based on their games and disavowing them (see Resident Evil) so the fans might just prefer to ignore it.

e.g. Locust have to reproduce via rape

I haven't read the book, so what is this referring to?

But instead we get her masturbation as the Special Forces ONLY! mindset and so we get something that had potential thrown straight into the shitter. Personally she should've been given the Halo books . I can only imagine the wank she would've done above and beyond for MC. His penis would've been a tree chopper.

No dude! I like Halo, but the books are bad enough as it is, keep this idiot bitch away. In fact keep her away from as many franchises as possible.

The Vortex Empire wrote:

e.g. Locust have to reproduce via rape

I haven't read the book, so what is this referring to?

There are no fertile Locust females, so they have to abduct and forcibly impregnate humans?

PhilosopherOfSorts wrote:

But instead we get her masturbation as the Special Forces ONLY! mindset and so we get something that had potential thrown straight into the shitter. Personally she should've been given the Halo books . I can only imagine the wank she would've done above and beyond for MC. His penis would've been a tree chopper.

No dude! I like Halo, but the books are bad enough as it is, keep this idiot bitch away. In fact keep her away from as many franchises as possible.

The Halo books are pretty terrible as well. I don't think it would be possible to wank Master Chief beyond what has already been done (run a few hundred meters with torn ligaments! survive a free-fall from orbit with no damage! (I know Halo 3 has him doing something like this as well, but the book did it first. And worse.)) Karen Traviss really couldn't do much worse to the franchise. Although I'm sure she would probably have the Spartans MK II start aping Spartan culture or some shit. Or maybe discover an alien race of all badasses who they would suddenly learn the language of.

EDIT--Hit submit instead of preview.

DesertFly wrote:

There are no fertile Locust females, so they have to abduct and forcibly impregnate humans?

Which is pretty funny considering what Gears2 suggests about the Queen's place in locust society and the way the locust are called 'drones'.

Stark wrote:

DesertFly wrote:

There are no fertile Locust females, so they have to abduct and forcibly impregnate humans?

Which is pretty funny considering what Gears2 suggests about the Queen's place in locust society and the way the locust are called 'drones'.

What, is she the one responsible for all new Locust, like an ant colony?

Since a) they've been down there a long time but b) something was taken there by humans from the Sire base and c) there are no locust children and the drones are the bulk of the army and more homogenous than the other factions (like therons, monks, etc all being quite different to each other and locust drones) I speculate that the Queen is somehow the source of the huge locust drone armies that tried to overrun the surface (and were promptly annihilated) and that the other guys are the 'original' or 'normal' locust who've been down there for ages. She is clearly not 'of' the locust, and the drone religion revealed in pickups suggests she's considered the source of their species (and there are like three other females we've ever seen, and in military outposts it's 90% drones). This explains the significance of the Sires and how the locust coudl have been down there for ages and yet not been noticed; if you assume complicity with the humans it also explains how the army could have been armed. I'm sure Gears3 will resolve this, but this is one way of looking at the evidence.

DesertFly wrote:The Halo books are pretty terrible as well. I don't think it would be possible to wank Master Chief beyond what has already been done (run a few hundred meters with torn ligaments! survive a free-fall from orbit with no damage! (I know Halo 3 has him doing something like this as well, but the book did it first. And worse.)) Karen Traviss really couldn't do much worse to the franchise. Although I'm sure she would probably have the Spartans MK II start aping Spartan culture or some shit. Or maybe discover an alien race of all badasses who they would suddenly learn the language of.

EDIT--Hit submit instead of preview.

The Spartans would suddenly start spewing their own language (Spart'oa? ) and whole books would revolve around their awesome warrior culture, MC would eat whole starships for breakfast. Cortana would spend every other line on how much of a perfect, manly specimen MC is. Oh and there'd be no female Spartans of course.

Coiler wrote:

Darksider wrote: can anyone name ONE war that's been won by special forces? anybody?

Hmmmmm, thinking...., nope, can't really find any.

I have an example of a war that was ended by a raid, but it was carried out by a sizable force, and not a handful of Dutch uber-marines.

By God I think the Devil shits Dutchmen!

Darth Onasi wrote:Generally game developers enjoy completely contradicting books based on their games and disavowing them (see Resident Evil) so the fans might just prefer to ignore it.

That's also happened with Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. Basically the books are just ignored by the videogaming community when they contradict the games.

Default accepting any spin-off literature seems like a totally retarded attitude in the absence of a proper policy. I certainly lose no sleep over whatever stupid crap is in Gears novels, because Epic sure doesn't and I'm not some obsessive completist. From what I've read here Gears2 has already contradicted a pile of Travis' nonsense, and when Epic doesn't care, I sure fucking don't.

DesertFly wrote:

The Vortex Empire wrote:

e.g. Locust have to reproduce via rape

I haven't read the book, so what is this referring to?

There are no fertile Locust females, so they have to abduct and forcibly impregnate humans?

They have to tie down the Berserkers to be able to impregnate them; apparently, they're so violent they kill the male before he can impregnate her.

Yeah.

The Halo books are pretty terrible as well. I don't think it would be possible to wank Master Chief beyond what has already been done (run a few hundred meters with torn ligaments! survive a free-fall from orbit with no damage! (I know Halo 3 has him doing something like this as well, but the book did it first. And worse.)).

In the free fall instance, none of the Spartans made it out with no damage. Several of them were killed, and I think five were immobilized. The rest suffered varying degrees of damage to the point where there were only a few combat effectives.

Peptuck wrote:In the free fall instance, none of the Spartans made it out with no damage. Several of them were killed, and I think five were immobilized. The rest suffered varying degrees of damage to the point where there were only a few combat effectives.

I admit my memory's a little rusty, but the gist of it remains the same: humans with their wanky little battle suits were able to do things in the book that are far beyond anything similar characters are capable of in the games that the books are based upon.