Act 1: Ashes – As the game opens 14 years after the day of the emergency, former soldier Marcus Fenix is released from Jacinto maximum security prison by his close friend, Dominic Santiago, who needs help from Fenix in the fight against the grasshopper. They both manage to escape from the prison moments before it is destroyed by a corpse and later meet up with the other Delta squad members, Anthony Carmine and Minh Young Kim. They are ordered to find Alpha Squad and secure possession of the “resonator”, a device intended to map Locust’s network of underground tunnels for the light bomb. On the way to Alpha’s last known location, Carmine is killed by a locust shooter. Marcus, Dom and Kim are able to meet up with a private Alpha squad, Augustus Cole, who says that the rest of Alpha is in the Tomb of Unknowns and that transmissions have been blocked by seeders. Marcus then eliminates the seeders using the hammer of dawn. After encountering three more Alpha privates, Damon Baird, Gyules, and unknown equipment, they are ambushed by locust forces. Kim is separated from the others and is killed by General Raam. While retreating into the tomb, the unknown outfit is killed while providing cover fire. After Marcus defeats a locust berserker, which kills Gyules, the team confirms with headquarters that the resonator is safe and is ordered to the Lethia imulsion facility, six miles from their position. Marcus is also in charge of Delta Squad in Kim’s place.
Act 2: The Nightfall – Dom suggests that the quickest way to get to the mine would be to borrow a junker from a stranded woman named Franklin, who owes Dom a favor of agreements in the past. After arriving at the camp, Franklin reluctantly agrees to give him the Junker on the condition that Cole and Baird stay behind at the trapped camp to help them fend off the grasshopper. Dom agrees, and he and Marcus head through the ruined city as dusk descends, bringing Kryll’s creatures, bat-like carnivores that attack anything in the dark. The two fight through the locust forces to reach Aspho’s gas station, where the Junker is kept, and then take him back to camp, defending themselves from the Kryll with a trash-equipped ultraviolet light that can kill the Kryll. The two arrive at the trapped camp just in time to help defend it from a massive locust attack. Once the situation is secured, the team moves towards the mining facility on Junker.
