Why We Need More DLC for Gears of War 3

With the recent(ish) announcement of Gears of War: Judgement, Gears of War 3 might not be the very first thing on peoples' minds but there is, beneath the virtual surface, a voice that's growing: the voice of the fans.

There's no doubting the success of the Gears of War trilogy. While I sincerely look forward to getting my hands on the prequel when it hits store shelves early next year, I'm not done enjoying Gears of War 3 yet. Considering the online world of Gears of War 3 is still as active as ever, it's easy to see that it still offers one of the most enjoyable online multiplayer experiences to this day. Before we get into why we need a fifth and final DLC for Gears of War 3, let's take a look at what we've been given so far:

Horde Command Pack:

• Three Maps: Blood Drive, Rustlung, Azura
• Three Character Skins: Big Rig Dizzy, Bernie, Onyx Guard
• Two Weapon Skin Sets: Team Plasma, Jungle Camo
• Four Fortification Upgrades for Horde and Beast modes
• New Achievements worth 250 Gamerscore

RAAM's Shadow:

• A new three-hour campaign set prior to the original Gears of War featuring Zeta Squad, led by Minh Young Kim, and its battle against General RAAM. Players will also get a chance to play as RAAM himself and fight against the Gears.
• Six Character Skins: Minh Young Kim, General RAAM, Michael Barrick, Tai Kaliso, Alicia Valera, Theron Elite
• The Chocolate Weapon Skin Set
• New Achievements worth 250 Gamerscore

Fenix Rising:

• Five Maps: Academy, Escalation, The Slab, Anvil, Depths
• Four Character Skins: Recruit Clayton, Thrashball Cole, Savage Kantus, Savage Marauder
• Three Weapon Skin Sets: Re-Up Plasma, Re-Up Omen, Re-Up Electric
• The Re-Up System for Multiplayer: Essentially a "prestige" system like the "Call of Duty series". Players can "re-enlist" and begin their rank from 1 again after reaching level 100. All unlocks and custom items remain. Additionally Re-Upping can grant access to the three new weapon skins and new emblems. The player can Re-Up through four tiers of colors, Bronze (default level 100), Red, Green, and Gold.
• New Achievements worth 250 Gamerscore

Forces of Nature:

• Five Maps: Aftermath, Artillery, Cove, Jacinto, and Raven Down
• Four Character Skins: Mechanic Baird, Commando Dom, Savage Hunter, and Savage Grenadier Elite Limited.
• Seven weapon skins, two will have to be unlocked.
• Guardian will also return.
• New achievements worth 250 gamerscore.

No complaints with these really...

They gave us everything from skins to maps and everything in between and, while they originally said 'Forces of Nature' would be their final DLC,  Epic Games did mention the possibility of releasing more DLC if the fan support was there. Well, I'm here to say the fan support IS here and we want more!

So what do we want? Well, considering two out of five of the maps from the last DLC 'Forces of Nature' were just rehashed version of older maps, we'd like some more areas to explore during our multiplayer experience. Some possible areas could be the Fuel Depot, Sanctuary, Flood and Underhill. While new weapon skins are fine and dandy, we'd really like to see something more solid with the next DLC. Playable characters such as Scourge or Alex Brand would also be pretty sweet but, to be honest, the thing I'd like to see the most is another chunk of campaign similar to that in RAMM's Shadow.

From what we've seen on the new multiplayer aspect of Gears of War: Judgement, it's pretty apparent that Epic Games has kicked things up a notch. All we ask for is the chance for Gears of War 3 to experience a taste of that. Prequels are all fine and dandy but with both Gears of War and God of War taking the prequel route next year, the main story needs some love too.

Give us a fifth DLC and make it a powerful finale to the Gears of War trilogy.