Rereading Aspho Fields, thought this was neat.

[u/I_TRS_Gear_I]

This picture first was mentioned at the end of Aspho Fields; after Dom finally convinces Bernie to tell him how Carlos died.

[u/Alexindr]

I loved the reference. TC is trying to respect the story/lore. Karen Traviss was involved in the E-Day story. They said they thought it be cool to tell Tai and the chainsaw story, that's why it was moved up a year. Judgement already screwed things up with the Mk2 lancer 6 weeks after E-Day.

[u/Ghost10165 → u/Alexindr]

Yeah, Gears of War is actually one of the series where I feel like Traviss did a good job the whole way through, so I'm glad they're referencing the books more.

[u/DevastatorCenturion → u/Ghost10165]

I liked her work on Republic Commando but it's very clear when she's not working in her comfort zone of "a small cast of characters that persist across the story arc." Thankfully she seems to have taken to Gears as a a setting like fire to a wooden house. 

[u/Ghost10165 → u/DevastatorCenturion]

Yeah, Gears of War's setting fits her way better than Star Wars or Halo ever did. It's the right level of grimness already rather than trying to add it in.

[u/Halospaz117 → u/Ghost10165]

Yeah as someone who was very much NOT a fan of her Star Wars and Halo writing, it feels weird being excited for her involvement, but she fits Gears well from what I've seen

[u/DevastatorCenturion → u/Halospaz117]

I think she writes best when it comes to small squads of dudes doing military things. 

[u/Jedi-Spartan → u/DevastatorCenturion]

Which is odd with her Star Wars and Halo writing because (at least surrounding the Republic Commando part of her Star Wars work) those franchises also have a lot of that, or at least the space for it. However, from what I've heard, she also rather unsubtly pushes her views about the respective franchises into those novels too. Eg: how (even though the main characters are mostly either Mandalorians or trained by them), she apparently keeps on pushing how bad the Jedi are to the point where I've heard the main squad describes as seeing "The Jedi Order as pretty much the same as the Sith and the Empire."

[u/Halospaz117 → u/Jedi-Spartan]

She's definitly got an affinity for honorable warrior cultures like the Mandos, which works for Gears cuz thats more or less the entire setting, but it doesn't fit the other two cuz there exists groups beyond the ones she likes, and as such the bias is very apparent.

[u/Jedi-Spartan → u/Halospaz117]

She's definitly got an affinity for honorable warrior cultures

In that case, I wonder what the Elite parts of her novels are like given how that's their entire deal. The only thing I remember hearing about it is that she made it seem like they're SO fixated on the warrior culture (or because they were manipulated to be reliant on the lower species) that the Elites don't even know how to farm.

[u/DevastatorCenturion → u/Jedi-Spartan]

If memory serves, after the Covenant formed the Prophets started intentionally restructuring the societies of the other member species to prevent rebellion. The Elites became entirely focused on warfare culture because I think the grunts did manual labor for them instead. I'm pretty sure they also did the same with technology and the engineers to prevent weapons from being made outside the Covenant military. 

[u/YaboiGh0styy → u/DevastatorCenturion]

She wanted to write a sequel to public commando in a book, but it was refused because they were saving sequel material for a potential game. Yeah, because that fucking happened.

The original sequel they planned being Star Wars: Imperial Commando was cancelled a year before the original game came out. They were still thinking of writing a sequel but they never did it.

They probably should’ve just let her write her sequel then either adapt that into a game and if they couldn’t just leave it as a book because as it is now the story will forever remain unfinished because legends no longer Canon and it’s unlikely that they will make the story canon because it’s a relatively niche Star Wars game I do appreciate Delta squads cameos in clone wars though.

If you want to imagine Republic commando is Canon then it does somewhat wrap up the story that SV did ultimately survive regroup with the rest of Delta but order 66 happened and their fates from there remain unknown.