Retcon To The Future: Thoughts on Expanding Universes

So the other day I was playing through the Gears of War 3 DLC "Raam's Shadow," which in a very cool move by Epic is technically a prequel to Gears 1, detailing the fall of one COG-controlled city a couple of weeks post-E-Day. It's a very interesting idea and makes a very stark contrast to the ruin that is the Gears 3 present.

However, one thing I noticed is something that has bothered me in the past that I decided to finally write about: retcons, for lack of a better term. In this case, weapons and enemy types that were not in Gears 1 that are suddenly appearing in this DLC.

In some cases, it makes perfect sense. The retro lancer being in the campaign makes sense, because they would have been around and were only not used till Gears 3 because the Lancer 2.0 was still in abundance/in production. It kind of makes sense a Scorcher would be around, since perhaps Delta Squad would not have used it since it's a speciality weapon.

However, it becomes a problem with other things. For instance, the One-Shot makes an appearance, in Locust hands no less. If either side had access to such a powerful weapon, why did it not make an appearance in Gears 1 or 2? Similarly, Grinders and Bloodmounts show up, and I question why they weren't walking around in Gears 1. Additionally, the Command Center upgrade was added to Gears 3, which allows you to remotely call down Hammer strikes. They decided to add this in to the DLC campaign, and you use it multiple times. If this technology existed, why in Gears 1 and 2 were there all those times when a Hammer strike would have been invaluable but wasn't sure because of a lack of a targeting device? Why wouldn't they just use this apparently common remote targeting system?

"Out of character," as it were, I totally understand why Epic did this. They didn't want to scale back things to only stuff that was available to Gears 1, since that would limit gameplay options, but from a universe perspective for me personally this is the equivalent of breaking the 4th wall. I know it's a relatively minor issue, but it bugs me all the same.

Other series have done things similarly. I was annoyed in Starcraft 2 when it was revealed that the Protoss had a ton of giant, robot death walkers they waited until after the destruction of their homeworld to release. Sure, it made sense to give background to a new unit, but from my in-universe perspective it seemed unrealistic and bugged me.

Similarly, Star Wars EU post-prequels is a huge offender. After the release of Episode 1, seeing Gungans in cantina and just around in general suddenly because very common. In a general rule, it seemed like just because something had been shown in the prequels, it suddenly became essential to include as much prequel races, items, etc in the books and comics, including Luke stumbling across a ship of the type Obi-wan and Anakin fly in episode 2. Again, I understand the intent, but to me it just seems incredibly shoe-horned, especially in a setting that is as widely expanded and defined as the SW EU. Especially irking is the idea of the Clone Wars: prior to the prequels, people never talked about them in detail and it was mostly hushed up. This idea made sense to me, since no one wanted to be heard slandering the Empire, most participants in the Wars were either dead or clones, and even many modern wars aren't talked about much anymore in most circles. However, post prequels all the mystery is shed, and suddenly everyone knows everything about the events and it's a complete atmosphere shift in every way. I know why they did it, and why there's a shift, but it ends up feeling very inconsistent overall.

Overall, although I realize the temptation of adding in new stuff to maintain overall consistency, stuff like this just really tends to bother me, although I couldn't necessarily explain why. I realize the occasional necessity, but I think it's oftentimes overused. As usual, I welcome your feedback (as if I could stop you :-P)

-HTMC