Warning: Minor action sequence spoiler ahead.

Shack: Have you kicked around anything in regards to Gears 3 yet? Is there an outline for that?

Cliff Bleszinski: We're in a wait-and-see mode with Gears 3. I almost got into a little bit of a tiff with a journalist a couple weeks ago who sat down and was like, "You said Gears of War would be a trilogy," and I was like, "I never said that." Some random person at Microsoft made a comment like a year ago about something like that. That is absolutely not the case, and we are taking it on a game-by-game basis. I think if you come out and say your game is a trilogy, it opens you up to a certain amount of cynicism that can just backfire on you.

So we'll see how the sale increase for this is, we'll see how the review scores are, and then we'll make the official call on what we're doing. But I can tell you, narrative-wise with Gears 2, we do answer a lot of the burning questions that people have.

Shack: But there are obviously some major unanswered questions.

Cliff Bleszinski: But you know what, it's the Lost formula. Answer questions people want to know, but also leave them wondering, so that if you get around to doing something else in a future product, you have some cool stuff that people will salivate over for a while.

It's no accident, man. In the game you hear from one of the other squadmates, who is actually the star of the comic book. That is the kind of seeding that [writer] Josh [Ortega] likes to put into things, which is very cool and part of making a little trans-media empire I guess.

Shack: I'm sure you have ideas of what you'd want to do with a Gears 3.

Cliff Bleszinski: I have ideas about everything, man. I have other universes I want to do too. I'll tell you what we're not going to do--we're not gonna be making a Wii game, we're not going to be doing an Xbox Live game, we're not going to be doing Jazz Jackrabbit, we're not going to be doing a fucking puzzle game, and we're not going be making a Gears of War RTS. [laughs]

Every single person--nobody is sitting around Epic going, "Hey what do I do now? I've got nothing to work on." Everybody has all sorts of stuff to be doing. People are like, "Yeah, why don't you do a Gears platformer." It's like, are you high? We're all swamped, man. We're hiring as much as we can.

Shack: You guys are getting pretty big now.

Cliff Bleszinski: We're over a hundred people now. It's manageable. You try and grow smart, grow intelligently, don't grow too quick. And you know, Epic is very picky, and it's a very excruciating hiring process. We put them through the ringer. Those that come through the other side usually stick around for a while. We have a very low turnover rate.

Shack: I don't want to throw out too many spoilers in an interview, but let's talk about the Rockworm sequence. That was probably the only time where I felt myself getting physically ill while playing a game.

Cliff Bleszinski: It's worm blood, dude. [laughs] We knew we wanted to have very large creatures that you had to deal with, and we didn't want the player dancing around while this giant worm was sticking out of the ground, and you had to like lob grenades or something.

We have different bosses that are there for that, you know, the water beast. We just wanted a giant worm, and what would be the ideal way to kill it? From the inside out. Let him get eaten, and what's cooler than killing the arteries of three hearts with your chainsaw? And then try to avoid drowning in its own blood? [laughs]

Shack: That's going to horrify a lot of people's girlfriends.

Cliff Bleszinski: [laughs] It's almost like The Shining, where the elevator doors open up.

Shack: Yeah.

Cliff Bleszinski: This is all theater, man.

Shack: What was the line--something about coughing up somebody else's blood?

Cliff Bleszinski: [laughs] Hey, the goal is to give people something to talk about.

Shack: People will be talking about that. It almost felt like a stab at the anti-violent video games movement. "You want violence? Get a load of this!"

Cliff Bleszinski: Well, you're not a guy in Yankees hat beating down a guy in a Lakers jersey with a crowbar. You know, you're guys in big space armor, in an alien-looking disgusting environment. It's still very over-the-top, but you had to make sure the blood was right.

Shack: My favorite Gears moments are when it goes over-the-top for comedic effect.

Cliff Bleszinski: But at the same time, we tried to make sure there's still a little bit of heart this time around, no pun intended. Make sure you get to know Dom a little bit more, and put him through his paces. We do some stuff in this game that I haven't seen another game do story-wise.

Shack: Do you think people will be surprised by the story?

Cliff Bleszinski: I hope so. I think we're more confident in our storytelling abilities than we were the first time around, and we can take certain risks.