Cliff Bleszinski: We definitely knew we wanted a bigger co-op experience. Five players make sense, because in multiplayer we support five-on-five now. Being able to help your buddies by voice chat after you're dead -- "you've got two Boomers coming around the corner!" -- shifts your role into a meta-strategy game, too. We wanted the campaign to be bigger, but we didn't want to arbitrarily string four players together like a chain gang. Did you ever see Oh Brother Where Art Thou? If you look at the online numbers for other games, the number of players that play four-player co-op are surprisingly small.

Why is that? Is that why the Gears 2 campaign only supports two players?

The thing is, everybody says they want four-player co-op...but as you add in more players, the narrative experience decreases exponentially. Have you ever tried to watch a movie with four drunk people? Some have to go pee, some have to grab chips...I don't want to discount that [larger co-op] experience, but we took what works with four or five players and moved it into a Smash TV or Geometry Wars setting. For a story-driven campaign mode like ours, I think two players is kind of a sweet spot. It's easy to grab one buddy, whether you're online or on splitscreen, and just go.

Golden guns -- are they just aesthetic?

The golden Hammerburst is offered to folks who go to the midnight madness launch events. The gold Lancer comes with the Collector's Edition of Gears of War 2. So if you go to the midnight madness and buy the Collector's Edition, you get both. It's such a cheesy thing -- it's just a weapon skin, a texture -- but it winds up being a big deal in gameplay. It looks impressive when you see it in-game, and it helps player visibility so you can spot friends more quickly.