Gears 2: Campaign and story were primary focus for improvement, says Bleszinski

Gears of War 2 dev lead Cliff Bleszinski, speaking at a recent event for the game in London, has picked out the first title's campaign and story as the two aspects prioritized for improvement in the sequel.

"The campaign and the story were the obvious ones," he said. "Doing something that has a little bit of heart in it."

Bleszinski added, though, that core gameplay elements were also targeted early on as features in need of a bump up.

"At the same time, though, I was dying to get back into the code and tweak the cover system, because when I played the first game I thought we did a really good job, but then there's so many little moments when you're running and you accidentally slam into a wall or you want to slot turn and you can't interrupt the slot turn – and you can now – or you dive toward cover and now you can interrupt that but you couldn't in the first game.

"You know, when you're knocked down but not out I wanted to crawl around, and all that sort of stuff. Tweaking all those things were very, very high on the list, and that's one thing I'm really happy we were able to do."

Gears of War 2 ships for 360 on November 7. For the rest of our coverage from the event, including play impressions and new shots, click this.