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Ending Explained
The ending of Gears Tactics does a little bit to establish some story threads that we see paid off in Gears 4 and especially Gears 5.
SPOILER WARNING FOR GEARS TACTICS AND GEARS 4 and GEARS 5
Gears Tactics’ story isn’t necessarily what you would call "deep." On the surface level, it follows Gabe Diaz, the father of Gears 4 and 5 protagonist Kait Diaz, after he’s become disillusioned with the COG, the destruction and loss of life they’ve enabled with weapons like the Hammer of Dawn, and the cold hypocrisy of their leadership.
But before he can fully disconnect, he’s called into action one last time to stop a Locust scientist named Ukkon. This Locust leader appears to be interested in using what’s called Imulsion fluid to power a whole bunch of supercharged Locust creatures, ranging from the humanoid, poisonous disciples to the immense Brumak and Hydra boss creatures. With the help of the grizzled Sid Redburn and the distrustful Mikayla Dorn, who leads a group of defectors just trying to get by in the aftermath of the Locust attacks, Diaz is able to figure out Ukkon’s plan, cripple his infrastructure, and ultimately kill Ukkon.
While Ukkon amounted to little more than an average conniving villain, he originated from New Hope, a facility that Sid Redburn used to work at during his early years as a COG soldier. In that lab, scientists worked to treat the victims of rustlung, an ailment often seen in Imulsion miners and their children, and was discovered to be an early stage of Lambency.
That facility, however, was ultimately where scientists like Dr. Niles Samson used genetic modification to create the Locust in order to find a cure for rustlung. Ukkon himself ended up being one of these subjects. Sid, torn over the fact that he played a (admittedly very small) role in the creation of the Locust, attempts to kidnap Ukkon from Diaz and Mikayla and use him as leverage to convince COG leadership to pump more resources into the war, rather than staying on the backfoot. This ultimately doesn’t pan out, but Ukkon is still out of the picture.
But that’s not all that ties us to the events of the mainline Gears of War games.
Late in the campaign, on a seemingly normal rescue mission that players have already performed a few times by now, Diaz discovers a young woman named Reyna, who had been kidnapped by Locust forces and placed inside one of their torture pods.
Afterwards, Reyna becomes a member of Diaz’s squad, vowing revenge on the Locust and Ukkon for destroying her home and life, but also saying that the COG are literal fascists, which...well, she isn’t wrong.
Over the course of the rest of the campaign, Diaz and Reyna clearly form a bond with one another. Diaz is concerned by Reyna’s mental health and general wellbeing, going out of his way to ask what happened to her, and Reyna clearly admires Diaz for his willingness to admit the COG’s faults, and general bravery in combat.
If the names (and Diaz’s hair) didn’t already give it away, Gabe Diaz and Reyna are Kait Diaz’s parents, and by the end of Gears Tactics, we see them both resolve to live outside the COG’s control.
This is effectively the start of the Outsiders, a group in Gears 4 and 5 who chose to live outside of the walled-off COG region after the Locust War. Gabe and Reyna would go on to lead their own group of Outsiders, though generally all Outsider groups traded and communicated with one another.
Knowing all this doesn’t fundamentally change anything we know about the plots of Gears 4 or 5, but it is bittersweet to see the relationship that would go on to influence a lot of what Kate Diaz is like as a character. That said, Gears 4 and especially Gears 5 revealed a lot about the nature of Kait’s relationship with her mother, and Reyna’s own dark past. But just in case you haven’t played Gears 5 yet, we’ll leave that to your imagination.